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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/28461-8.txt b/28461-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..55e986a --- /dev/null +++ b/28461-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13089 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Combined Maze, by May Sinclair + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Combined Maze + +Author: May Sinclair + +Release Date: March 31, 2009 [EBook #28461] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMBINED MAZE *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + THE COMBINED MAZE + + BY MAY SINCLAIR + + AUTHOR OF "THE DIVINE FIRE" + + +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS +NEW YORK AND LONDON +MCMXIII + +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA +PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1913 + + + + +[Illustration: SHE CLOSED HER EYES, AND HIS HOLD TIGHTENED] + + + + +THE COMBINED MAZE + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +You may say that there was something wrong somewhere, some mistake, from +the very beginning, in his parentage, in the time and place and manner +of his birth. It was in the early eighties, over a shabby chemist's shop +in Wandsworth High Street, and it came of the union of Fulleymore +Ransome, a little, middle-aged chemist, weedy, parched, furtively +inebriate, and his wife Emma, the daughter of John Randall, a draper. + +They called him John Randall Fulleymore Ransome, and Ranny for short. + +Ranny should have been born in lands of adventure, under the green light +of a virgin forest, or on some illimitable prairie; he should have +sailed with the vikings or fought with Cromwell's Ironsides; or, better +still, he should have run, half-naked, splendidly pagan, bearing the +torch of Marathon. + +And yet he bore his torch. + +From the very first his mother said that Ranny was that venturesome. He +showed it in his ill-considered and ungovernable determination to be +born, and it was hard to say which of them, Ranny or his mother, more +nearly died of it. She must have been aware that there was a hitch +somewhere; for, referring again and again, as she did, to Ranny's +venturesomeness, she would say, "It beats me where he gets it from." + +He may have got some of it from her, for she, poor thing, had sunk, +adventurously, in one disastrous marriage her whole stock of youth and +gaiety and charm. It was Ranny's youth and charm and gaiety that made +him so surprising and so unaccountable. + +Circumstances were not encouraging to Ranny's youth, nor to his private +and particular ambition, the cultivation of a superb physique. For, not +only was he a little chemist's son, he was a great furniture dealer's +inexpensive and utterly insignificant clerk, one of a dozen confined in +a long mahogany pen where they sat at long mahogany desks, upon high +mahogany stools, making invoices of chairs and tables and wardrobes and +washstands and all manner of furniture. You would never have known, to +see him sitting there, that John Randall Fulleymore Ransome was a leader +in Section I of the London Polytechnic Gymnasium. + +So far, in his way, he testified, he bore his torch. Confined as he was +in a mahogany pen, born and brought up in the odor of drugs, and +surrounded by every ignominious sign of disease and infirmity, his dream +was yet of cleanness, of health, and the splendor of physical +perfection. The thing that young Ransome most loathed and abhorred was +Flabbiness, next to Flabbiness, Weediness. The years of his adolescence +were one long struggle and battle against these two. He had them ever +before him, and associated them, absurdly but inveterately, with a +pharmaceutical chemist's occupation; of Weediness his father being the +prime example; while for Flabbiness, young Mercier, his father's +assistant--well, Mercier, as he said, "took the biscuit." It was +horrible for young Ransome to inhabit the same house with young Mercier, +because of his flabbiness. + +In all cities there are many thousand Ransomes, more or less confined in +mahogany cages, but John Randall Fulleymore stands for all of them. He +was one of those who, in a cold twilight on a Saturday afternoon, +stagger from the trampled field, hot-eyed under their wild hair, whose +garments are stained from the torn grass and uptrodden earth, with here +and there a rent and the white gleam of a shoulder or a thigh; whose +vivid, virile odor has a tang of earth in it. He is the image and the +type of these forlorn, foredoomed young athletes, these exponents of a +city's desperate adolescence, these inarticulate enthusiasts of the +earth. He bursts from his pen in the evening at seven or half past, he +snatches somewhere a cup of cocoa and a sandwich, and at nine he is +seen, half pagan in his "zephyr" and his "shorts," sprinting like mad +through the main thoroughfares. In summer some pitch, more or less +perfect, waits for him in suburban playing fields; and the River knows +him, at Battersea, at Chelsea, at Hammersmith, and at Wandsworth, the +River knows him as he is, the indomitable and impassioned worshiper of +the body and the earth. + +And if the moon sees him sometimes haggard, panting, though indomitable, +though impassioned, reeling on the last lap of his last mile, and +limping through Wandsworth High Street home to the house of the weedy +pharmaceutical chemist his father, if the moon sees Ransome, why, the +Moon is a lady, and she does not tell. + + * * * * * + +If you asked him what he did it for, he would say you did it because it +kept you fit, also (if you pressed him) because it kept you decent. + +And to know how right he was you had only to look at him, escaped from +his cage; you had only to follow his progress through the lighted +streets and observe his unbending behavior before the salutations of the +night. His fitness, combined with his decency, made him a wonder, a +desire, and a despair. Slender and upright, immaculately high-collared, +his thin serge suit molded by his sheer muscular development to the +semblance of perfection, Ranny was a mark for loitering feet and +wandering eyes. Ranny was brown-faced and brown-haired; he had brown +eyes made clear with a strain of gray, rather narrow eyes, ever so +slightly tilted, narrowing still, and lengthening, as with humor, at the +outer corners. There was humor in his mouth, wide but fine, that tilted +slightly upward when he spoke. There was humor even in his nose with its +subtle curve, the slender length of its bridge, and its tip, wide +spread, and like his mouth and eyes, slightly uptilted. + +Ranny, in short, was fascinating. And at every turn his mysterious +decency betrayed the promise of his charm. + + * * * * * + +It was Fred Booty, his friend and companion of the pen, who first put +him in the right way, discerning in him a fine original genius for +adventure. + +For when Ranny's mother said he was that venturesome, she meant that he +was fond, fantastically and violently fond of danger, of adventure. His +cunning in this matter beat her clean--how he found the things to do he +did do; the things, the frightful things he did about the house with +bannisters and windows, of which she knew. As for the things he found to +do with bicycles on Wandsworth Common and Putney Hill they were known +mainly to his Maker and Fred Booty. Booty, who could judge (being "a bit +handy with a bike" himself), said of them that they were "a fair treat." + +But these were the deeds of his boyhood, and in nineteen-two Ransome +looked back on them with contempt. Follies they were, things a silly kid +does; and it wasn't by those monkey tricks that a fellow developed his +physique. Booty had found Ransome in his attic one Saturday afternoon, a +year ago, half stripped, and contemplating ruefully what he conceived to +be the first horrible, mushy dawn of Flabbiness in his biceps muscle. +All he wanted, Booty had then declared, was a turn or two at the Poly. +Gym. Then Booty took Ransome round to his place in Putney Bridge Road, +and they sat on Booty's bed with their arms round each other's shoulders +while Booty read aloud to Ransome from the pages of the Poly. +Prospectus. Booty was a slender, agile youth with an innocent, sanguine +face, the face of a beardless faun, finished off with a bush of blond +hair that stood up from his forehead like a monumental flame. + +He read very slowly, in a voice that had in it both an adolescent croak +and an engaging Cockney tang. + +"The Poly.," said Booty, "really was a Club, '_where_,'" he underlined +it, "'every reasonable facil'ty shall bee offered fer the formation of a +steadfast character, _and_--_of_--true friendships; fer trainin' the +intellec'--'" + +"Int'lec' be blowed," said Ransome. + +"'_And_ fer leadin' an upright, unselfish life. Day by day,'" read +Booty, "'the battle of life becomes more strenuous. To succeed entyles +careful preparation and stern'--stern, Ranny--'deetermination, it +deemands the choice of _good friends_ and the avoid'nce of those persons +and things which tend _to_ lessen, instead of _to_ increase the +reesources of the individyool.' There, wot d'you think of _that_, Ran?" + +Ran didn't think much of it until Booty pointed out to him, one by one, +the privileges he would enjoy as a member of the Poly. + +For the ridiculous yearly sum of ten-and-six (it was all he could rise +to) Ransome had become a member of the Poly. Ten-and-six threw open to +him every year the Poly. Gym., the Poly. Swimming Bath, and the Poly. +Circulating Library. For ten-and-six he could further command the +services (once a week) of the doctor attached to the Poly. and of its +experienced legal adviser. + +That tickled Ransome. He didn't see himself by any possibility requiring +communion with that experienced man. But it tickled him, the sheer +fantastic opulence and extravagance of the thing. It tickled him so much +that whenever you disagreed with or offended Ransome his jest was to +refer you, magnificently, to "my legal adviser." + +Yes, for fantastic opulence and extravagance, Ransome had never seen +anything to beat the Poly. There was no end to it, no end to the +privileges you enjoyed. He positively ran amuck among his +privileges--those, that is to say, offered him by the Poly. Swimming +Bath and the Poly. Gym. As he said, he "fair abused 'em." But he +considered that the Poly. "got home again" on his exceptionally moderate +use of the Circulating Library, and his total abstention from the Bible +Classes. He was not yet aware of any soul in him apart from that +abounding and sufficing physical energy expressed in Fitness, nor was he +violently conscious of any moral sense apart from Decency. + +And Ranny despised the votaries of intellectual light; he more than +suspected them of Weediness, if not of Flabbiness. Yet (as he waited for +Booty in the vestibule), through much darkness and confusion, and always +at an immeasurable distance from him, he discerned, glory beyond glory, +the things that the Poly., in its great mercy and pity, had reserved for +those "queer johnnies." It made him giddy merely to look at the posters +of its lectures and its classes. It gave him the headache to think of +the things the fellows--fellows of a deplorable physique--and girls, +too, did there. For his part, he looked forward to the day when, by a +further subscription of ten-and-six, he would enroll himself as a member +of the Athletic Club. + +It was as if the Poly. put out feeler after feeler to draw him to +itself. Only to one thing he would not be drawn. When Booty advised him +to join the Poly. Ramblers he stood firm. For some shy or unfathomable +reason of his own he refused to become a Poly. Rambler. When it came to +the Poly. Ramblers he was adamant. It was one of those vital points at +which he resisted this process of absorption in the Poly. Booty +denounced his attitude as eminently anti-social--uppish, he called it. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +All that winter Ransome's nights and days were regulated in a perfect +order--making statements of account for nine hours on five days of the +week and four on Saturdays. Three evenings for the Poly. Gym. One for +the Swimming Bath. One for sprinting. One (Saturday) for rest or +relaxation after the violence of Rugger. One (Sunday) for the +improvement of the mind. On Sundays he was very seldom good for anything +else. + +But in the spring of nineteen-two something stirred in him, something +watched and waited; with a subtle agitation, a vague and delicate +excitement, it exulted and aspired. The sensation, or whatever it was, +had as yet no separate existence of its own. So perfect, in this spring +of nineteen-two, was the harmony of Ransome's being that the pulse of +the unborn thing was one with all his other pulses; it was one, +indistinguishably, with the splendor of life, the madness of running, +and the joy he took in his own remarkable performances on the horizontal +bar. It had the effect of heightening, mysteriously and indescribably, +the joy, the madness, and the splendor. And it was dominant, insistent. +Like some great and unintelligible _motif_ it ran ringing and sounding +through the vast rhythmic tumult of physical energy. + +Not for a moment did he connect it with the increasing interest that he +took in the appearance of the Young Ladies of the Poly. Gym. He was not +aware how aware he was of their coming, nor how his heart thumped and +throbbed and his nerves trembled at the tramp, tramp of their feet along +the floor. + +For sometimes, it might be twice a year, the young men and the young +women of the Gymnasium met and mingled in a Grand Display. + +He was fairly well used to it; and yet he had never got over his +amazement at finding that girls, those things of constitutional and +predestined flabbiness, could do very nearly (though not quite) +everything that he could, leaving him little besides his pre-eminence on +the horizontal bar. And yearly the regiment of girls who could "do +things" at the Poly. increased under his very eyes. Their invasion +disturbed him in his vision of their flabbiness; it rubbed it into him, +the things that they could do. + +Not but what he had felt it--he had felt _them_--all about him, outside, +in the streets where they jostled him, and in the world made mostly of +mahogany, the world of counters and of desks, of pens where they too +were herded and shut up and compelled, like him, to toil. Queer things, +girls, for they seemed, incomprehensibly, to like it. Their liking it, +their businesslike assumption of equality, their incessant appearance +(authorized, it is true, by business) at the railings of his pen, the +peculiar disenchanting promiscuity of it all, preserved young Ransome in +his eccentricity of indifference to their sex. In fact, if you tried to +talk about sex to young Ransome (and Mercier did try) he would denounce +it as "silly goat's talk," and your absorption in it as "the most +mutton-headed form of Flabbiness yet out." + + * * * * * + +But that was before the Grand Display of the autumn of last year, when +Winny Dymond appeared in the March Past of Section I of the Women's +Gymnasium; before he had followed Winny as she ran at top speed through +all the turnings and windings of the Combined Maze. + +There were about fifty of them, picked; all attired in black stockings, +in dark-blue knickerbockers, and in tunics that reached to the knee, +red-belted and trimmed with red. Stunning, he called them; so much so +that they fair took away his breath. + +That was what he said when it was all over. By that time he was ashamed +to confess that at the moment of its apparition the March Past had been +somewhat of a shock to him. He had his ideas, and he was not prepared +for the uniform; still less was he prepared for a personal encounter +with such quantities of young women all at once. + +All sorts of girls--sturdy and slender girls; queer girls with lean, +wiry bodies; deceptive girls with bodies curiously plastic under the +appearance of fragility; here a young miracle of physical culture; there +a girl with the pointed breasts and flying shoulders, the limbs, the +hips, the questing face that recalled some fugitive soul of the woods +and mountains; long-nosed, sallow, nervous Jewish girls; English girls +with stolid, colorless faces; here and there a face rosy and full-blown, +or a pretty tilted profile and a wonderful, elaborate head of hair. One +or two of these heads positively lit up the procession with their red +and gold, gave it the splendor and beauty of a pageant. + +They came on, single file and double file and four abreast, the long +line doubling and turning upon itself; all alike in the straight drop +of the arms to the hips, the rise and fall of their black-stockinged +legs, the arching and pointing of the feet; all deliciously alike in +their air of indestructible propriety. Here you caught one leashing an +iniquitous little smile in the corners of her eyes under her lashes; or +one, aware of her proud beauty, and bearing herself because of it, with +the extreme of indestructible propriety. + +There were no words to express young Ransome's indifference to proud +beauty. + +If he found something tender and absurd in the movements of all those +long black stockings, it was for the sake and on account of the long +black stockings worn by little Winny Dymond. + +Winny Dymond was not proud, neither was she what he supposed you would +call beautiful. She was not one of those conspicuous by their flaming +and elaborate hair. + +What he first noted in her with wonder and admiration was the absence of +weediness and flabbiness. Better known, she stirred in him, as a child +might, an altogether indescribable sense of tenderness and absurdity. +She stood out for him simply by the fact that, of all the young ladies +of the Polytechnic, she was the only one he really knew--barring Maudie +Hollis, and Maudie, though she was the proud beauty of the Polytechnic, +didn't count. + +For Maudie was ear-marked, so to speak, as the property (when he could +afford a place to put her in) of Fred Booty. Ransome would no more have +dreamed of cultivating an independent acquaintance with Maudie than he +would of pocketing the silver cup that Booty won in last year's Hurdle +Race. It was because of Maudie, and at Booty's irresistible request, +that he, the slave of friendship, had consented, unwillingly and +perfunctorily at first, to become Miss Dymond's cavalier. Maudie, also +at Booty's passionate appeal, had for six months shared with Winny +Dymond a room off Wandsworth High Street, so that, as he put it, he +might feel that she was near him; with the desolating result that they +weren't by any means, no, not by a long chalk, so near. For Maudie, out +of levity or sheer exuberant kindness of the heart, had persuaded Winny +Dymond to join the Polytechnic. In her proud beauty and in her affianced +state she could afford to be exuberantly kind. And Booty in his vision +of nearness had been counting on the long journey by night from Regent +Street to Wandsworth High Street alone with Maudie; and, though Miss +Dymond practically effaced herself, it wasn't--with a girl of Maudie's +temperament--the same thing at all. For Maudie in company was apt to be +a little stiff and stand-offish in her manner. + +Then (one afternoon in the autumn of last year it was) Booty sounded +Ransome, finding himself alone with him in the mahogany pen when the +senior clerks were at their tea. "I say," he said, "there's something I +want _you_ to do for me," and Ransome, in his recklessness, his +magnificence, said "Right-O!" + +He said afterward that he had gathered from the expression of his +friend's face that his trouble was financial, a matter of five bob, or +fifteen at the very worst. And you could trust Boots to pay up any day. +So that he was properly floored when Boots, in a thick, earnest voice, +explained the nature of the service he required--that he, Ransome, +should go with him, nightly, to a convenient corner of Oxford Street, +and there collar that kid, Winny Dymond, and lug her along. + +"Do you mean," asked Ransome, "walk home with her?" + +Well, yes; that, Booty intimated, was about the size of it. She was a +Wandsworth girl, and they'd got, he supposed, all four of them, to get +there. + +He was trying to carry it off, to give an air of inevitability to his +preposterous proposal. But as young Ransome's face expressed his agony, +Booty became almost abject in supplication. He didn't know, Ranny +didn't, what it was to be situated like he, Booty, was. Booty wanted to +know how he'd feel if it was him. To be gone on a girl like he was and +only see her of an evenin' and then not be able to get any nearer her, +because of havin' to make polite remarks to that wretched kid she was +always cartin' round. At that rate he might just as well not be engaged +at all--to Maudie; better engage himself to the bloomin' kid at once. It +wasn't as if he had a decent chance of bein' spliced for good in a year +or two's time. His evenin's and his Sundays and so forth were jolly well +all he'd got. It was all very well for Ransome, _he_ wasn't gone on a +girl, else he'd know how erritatin' it was to the nerves. And if Ranny +hadn't got the spunk to stand by a pal and see him through, why, then +he'd cut the Poly. and make Maudie cut it too. + +To most of this Ranny was silent, for it seemed to him that Boots was +mad, or near it. But at that threat, so terrible to him, so terrible to +the Polytechnic, so terrible to Booty, and so palpable a sign of his +madness, he gave in. He said it was all right, only he didn't know what +on earth he was to say to her. + +Booty recovered his natural airiness. "Oh," he threw it off, "you say +nothing." + +And for the first night or so, as far as Ransome could remember, that +was what he did say. + +And he wasn't really clever at collaring her, either. There was +something elusive, fugitive, uncatchable about Winny Dymond. It was +Booty, driven by love to that extremity, who collared Maudie and walked +off with her, with a suddenness and swiftness that left them stranded +and amazed. "Fair pace-makin'," Ransome called it. + +And Winny struggled and strove with those little legs of hers (jolly +little legs he knew they were, too, in their long black stockings), +strove and struggled, as if her life depended on it, to overtake them. +And it was then that Ransome felt the first pricking of that sense of +tenderness and absurdity. + +He felt it again after a long silence when, as they were going toward +Wandsworth Bridge, Winny suddenly addressed him. + +"You know," she said, "you needn't trouble about _me_." + +"I'm not troublin'," he said. "Leastways--that is--" he hesitated and +was lost. + +"You are," said she, with decision, "if you think you've got to see me +home." + +He said he thought that, considering the lateness of the hour and the +loneliness of the scene, it was better that he should accompany her. + +"But I can accompany myself," said she. + +He smiled at the vision of Miss Dymond accompanying herself, at eleven +o'clock at night, too--the idea! He smiled at it as if he saw in it +something tender and absurd. He knew, of course, for he was not +absolutely without experience, that girls said these things; they said +them to draw fellows on; it was their artfulness. There was a word for +it; Ransome thought the word was "cock-a-tree." But Winny Dymond didn't +say those things--the least like that. She said them with the utmost +gravity and determination. You might almost have thought she was +offended but for the absence in her tone of any annoyance or +embarrassment. Her tone, indeed, suggested serene sincerity and a sort +of sympathy, the serious and compassionate consideration of his painful +case. It was as if she had been aware all along of the frightful +predicament he had been placed in by Fred Booty; as if she divined and +understood his anguish in it and desired to help him out. That was +evidently her idea--to help him out. + +And as it grew on him--her idea--it grew on him also that there was a +kind of fascination about the little figure in its long dark-blue coat. + +She wasn't--he supposed she wasn't--pretty, but he found himself +agreeably affected by her. He liked the queer look of her face, which +began with a sort of squarishness in roundness and ended, with a sudden +startling change of intention, in a pointed chin. He liked the clear +sallow and faint rose of her skin, and her mouth which might have been +too large if it had not been so firm and fine. He liked, vaguely, +without knowing that he liked it, the quietness of her brown eyes and +the faint, half-wondering arch above them; and quite definitely he liked +the way she parted her brown hair in the middle and smoothed it till it +lay in two long, low waves (just discernible under the brim of her hat) +upon her forehead. He did not know that long afterward he was never to +see Winny Dymond's eyes and parted hair without some vision of strength +and profound placidity and cleanness. + +All he said was he supposed there was no law against his occupying the +same pavement; and then he could have sworn that Winny's face sent a +little ghost of a smile flitting past him through the night. + +"Well, anyhow," she said, "you needn't talk to me unless you like." + +And at that he threw his head back and laughed aloud. And quite suddenly +the moon came out and stared at them; came bang up on their left above +the River (they were on the bridge now) out of a great cloud, a blazing +and enormous moon. It tickled him. He called her attention to it, and +said he didn't remember that he'd ever seen such a proper whopper of a +moon and with such a shine on him. They hadn't half polished him, he +said. Any one would think that things had all busted, got turned bottom +side upward, and it was the bally old sun that was up there, grinnin' at +them, through the hole he'd made. + +"The idea!" said Winny; but she laughed at it, a little shrill and +irresistible titter of delight always, as he was to learn, her homage to +"ideas." He had them sometimes; they came on him all of a sudden, like +that, and he couldn't help it; he couldn't stop them; he got them all +the worse, all the more ungovernably, when Booty lunged at him, as he +did, with his "Dry up, you silly blighter, you!" But that anybody should +take pleasure in his ideas, that _was_ an idea, if you like, to +Ransome. + +They got on after that like a house on fire. + + * * * * * + +But only for that night. For many nights that followed Winny proved more +fugitive, more uncatchable than ever. As often as not, when they arrived +in Oxford Street, she would be gone, fled half an hour before them, +accompanying herself all the way to Wandsworth. Once he pursued her down +Oxford Street, coming up with her as she boarded a bus in full flight; +and they sat in it in gravity and silence, as strangers to each other. +But nearly always she was too quick for him; she got away. And never (he +thanked Heaven for that, long afterward), never for a moment did he +misunderstand her. She made that impossible for him; impossible to +forget that in her and all her shyness there was no art at all of +"cock-a-tree," only her fixed and funny determination not "to put upon +him." + +And so the seeing home of Winny Dymond became a fascinating and +uncertain game, fascinating because of its uncertainty; it had all the +agitation and allurement of pursuit and capture; if she had wanted to +allure and agitate him, no art of "cock-a-tree" could have served her +better. He was determined to see Winny Dymond home. + +And all the time it grew, it grew on him, that sense of tenderness and +absurdity. He found it--that ineffable and poignant quality--in +everything about her and in everything she did--in the gravity of her +deportment at the Poly.; in her shy essaying of the parallel bars; in +the incredible swiftness with which she ran before him in the Maze; in +the way her hair, tied up with an immense black bow in a door-knocker +plat, rose and fell forever on her shoulders as she ran. He found it in +the fact he had discovered that her companions called her by absurd and +tender names; Winky, and even Winks, they called her. + +That was in the autumn of nineteen-one; and he was finding it all over +again now in the spring of nineteen-two. + +At last, he didn't know how it happened, but one night, having caught up +with her after a hot chase, close by the railings of the Parish Church +in Wandsworth High Street, in the very moment of parting from her he +turned round and said, "Look here, Miss Dymond, you think I don't like +seeing you home, don't you?" + +"To be sure I do. It must be a regular nuisance, night after night," she +answered. + +"Well, it isn't," he said. "I like it. But look here--if you hate it--" + +"Me?" + +She said it with a simple, naïve amazement. + +"Yes, you." + +He was almost brutal. + +"But I don't. What an idea!" + +"Well, if you don't, that settles it. Don't it?" + +And it did. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +It was the night of the Grand Display of the spring of nineteen-two. + +To the Gymnasium of the London Polytechnic you ascended (in +nineteen-two) as to a temple by a flight of steps, and found yourself in +a great oblong room of white walls, with white pillars supporting the +gallery that ran all round it. The railing of the gallery was of iron +tracery, painted green, with a brass balustrade. The great clean white +space, the long ropes for the trapezes which hung from the ceiling and +were looped up now to the stanchions, the coarse canvas of the +mattresses, the disciplined lines, the tramping feet, the commanding +voices of the instructors, gave a confused and dreamlike suggestion of +the lower deck of a man-of-war. To-night, under the west end of the +gallery, a small platform was raised for the Mayor of Marylebone and a +score of guests. The galleries themselves were packed with members of +the Polytechnic and their friends. + +The programme of the Grand Display announced as its first item: + + PARALLEL BARS + _Tableau by_ + MESSRS. BOOTY, TYSER, BUIST, WAUCHOPE, AND + J. R. F. RANSOME + +There was a murmur of surreptitious, half-ironic applause. "Stick it, +Ransome; stick it, old boy!" + +The reference was to his extraordinary attitude. + +J. R. F. Ransome appeared as the apex and the crown of a rude triangular +structure whose base was formed by the high parallel bars, flanked at +each end by two bodies (Booty and Tyser front), two supple adolescent +bodies, bent backward like two bows. He stood head downward on his hands +that grasped and were supported by the locked arms of two solid +athletes, Buist and Wauchope, themselves mounted gloriously and +perilously on the straining bars. + +Considered as to his arms, and the white "zephyr" and flannels that he +wore, he was merely a marvelous young man balancing himself with +difficulty in an unnatural posture. But his body, uptilted, poised as by +a miracle in air, with the slender curve of its back, its flattened +hips, its feet laid together like wings folded in the first downrush, +might have been the body of a young immortal descending with facile +precipitancy to earth. + +He maintained for a sensible moment his appearance of having just flown +from the roof of the Gymnasium. Far below, the photographer fumbled +leisurely with his apparatus. + +"Hurry up, there!" "Stick it, Ransome!" "Half a mo!" "Stick it, Ranny; +stick it!" they whispered. "Steady does it." + +And Ranny stuck it. Ranny actually, from his awful eminence, sang out, +"No fear!" + +The flashlight immortalized his moment. + +That was his way--to stick it; to see it out; to go through with the +adventure alert and gay, wearing that fine smile of his, so +extravagantly uplifted at the corners. "Stick it!" was the motto of his +individual recklessness and of the dogged, enduring conservatism of his +class. It kept him in a mahogany pen, at a mahogany desk, for forty-four +hours a week, and it sustained him in his orgies of physical energy at +the Poly. Gym. + +Best of all, it sustained him in his daily and nightly encounters with +young Mercier. + +He was all the more determined to stick it by the knowledge that young +Mercier was up there in the gallery looking at him. He could see him +leaning over the balustrade and smiling at him atrociously. He took +advantage of an interval and joined him. He was half inclined to ask him +what he meant by it. For he was always at it. Whenever young Mercier +caught Ranny doing a sprint he smiled atrociously. At Wandsworth, behind +the counter, or in the little zinc-roofed dispensing-room at the back, +among the horribly smelling materials of his craft, he smiled, +remembering him. + +Mercier was a black-haired, thick-set youth with heavy features in a +heavy, pasty face, a face oddly decorated by immense and slightly +prominent blue eyes, a face where all day long the sensual dream brooded +heavily. His black eyebrows gave it a certain accent and distinction. It +was because of his dream that Leonard Mercier could afford to smile. + +He was one of those who wanted to know what Ranny did it for. He +couldn't see what fun the young goat got out of his evenings. Not half, +no, nor a quarter of what he, Mercier, could get from one night at the +Empire or when he took his girl to Earl's Court or the Wandsworth +Coliseum. And, though up there in the gallery he had said "By Jove!" and +that he was blowed, and that that young Ransome was a corker, though he +boasted to three entire strangers that that young fellow was a friend of +his, his curiosity was still unsatisfied. He still wanted to know what +the young goat did it for. + +He wanted to know it now. And at his insistence young Ransome was +abashed. How could he explain to old Eno what he did it for or what it +felt like? He couldn't explain it to himself, he had no words for it, +for that ecstasy of living, that fusion of all faculties in one rhythm +and one vibration, one continuous transport of physical energy. Take +sprinting alone. How could he convey to Jujubes in his disgusting +flabbiness any sense of the fine madness of running, of the race of the +blood through the veins, of the hammer strokes of the heart, of the soft +pad of the feet on the highway? To Jujubes, who went in like a cushion +no matter where you prodded him, how describe the feel of a taut muscle, +the mounting swell of it, the resistance, and the small, almost +impalpable ripple and throb under the skin? He couldn't have described +it to himself. + +So he gave Jujubes his invariable casual answer. You did it because it +kept you fit and because (he let old Eno have it) it kept you decent. +Old Eno would be a lot decenter if he went in for it. It would do him +worlds of good. + +To which old Eno replied that he thought he saw himself! As for joining +Ranny's precious old Poly., why, for all the Life you were likely to see +there, you might as well be in a young ladies' boarding-school. And +Ransome said that that was where Jujubes ought to be. He liked young +ladies. Among them (he intimated) his flabbiness might not excite +remark. Girls (he pondered it) were flabby things. + +Chivalry constrained him to a mental reservation: Winny Dymond and the +young ladies of the Poly. Gym. excepted. + +But he was glad that Mercier didn't stay to see them. Young Leonard +(whose smile was growing more and more atrocious) had declared that the +young ladies of the Empire ballet were a bit more in his line, and he +had made off, elbowing his way through the crowded gallery and crooning +"Boys of the Empire!" as he went, while Ransome pursued him with the +scornful adjuration to "Go home and take a saline draught!" + +But you couldn't shame old Eno. He triumphed and exulted in his +flabbiness. For he was a Boy of the Empire. He had seen Life, and would +see more and more of it. + + * * * * * + +Ransome went down again into the hall. He removed himself from the crowd +and leaned against a pillar, in abstraction, arms folded, showing the +great muscles; a splendid figure in his white "zephyr" trimmed with +crimson, with the crimson sash of leadership knotted at his side. Thus +withdrawn, he watched, half furtively, the performance of the young +ladies of the Polytechnic Gymnasium. + +One by one, with an air incorruptibly decorous, the young ladies of the +Polytechnic Gymnasium hurled themselves upon the parallel bars; they +waggled themselves by their hands along them; they swung themselves from +side to side of them, and outstretched themselves between them with a +foot and a hand upon each bar; they raised their bodies, thus supported, +like an arch; they slackened them and flung themselves (with a crescendo +of decorous delirium) from side to side again, and over; alighting on +their feet in a curtseying posture and with the left arm extended in a +little perfunctory gesture of demonstration to the audience, as much as +to say, "There you are, and nothing could be easier!" + +Nothing could be more conventional and more unspeakably correct. Only +when Winny Dymond did it there was a difference, or it seemed so to +young Ransome. Winny approached the bars with shyness and a certain +earnestness and gravity of intent. She hesitated; for a moment she was +adorable in vacillation. She shook her head at the bars, she bit her lip +at them; she set her face at them in defiance; then, with a sudden +amazing celerity she gave a little run forward and leaped upon them; she +swung herself in perfect rhythm and motion onward and upward and from +side to side; she arched her sturdy but exquisitely supple body like a +bridge, flung herself over as if in pure abandonment of joy and lighted +on her feet, curtseying correctly but with something piteous in the +gesture of the outstretched arm, and upon her face an expression of +great surprise and wonder at herself, as if Winny said, not "There you +are!" but "Here I am, and oh, I never thought I should be!" + +And from his place by the pillar Ransome gave the little inarticulate +murmur he reserved for Winny. It was charged with his sense of +tenderness and absurdity. + + * * * * * + +A quarter to ten. His own performances--his wonderful performances on +the horizontal bar--were over; and over the demonstration by F. Booty +with the Indian clubs, where young Fred, slender and supple as a faun, +played on his own muscles in faultless rhythm. And now with an eye upon +the Mayor the order was given for the last item on the programme: + + +/# + THE COMBINED MAZE +#/ + +There was a rush of energetic young men who flung themselves upon the +properties of the Gymnasium. They ran them--the parallel bars, the +horses, the mattresses--in under the galleries; they uprooted the posts +of the horizontal bar; they cleared the whole of the vast oblong space +bounded by the pillars. + +An attendant then appeared with a bit of chalk in his hand, and with the +chalk he drew upon the floor certain mystic circles, one at each corner +of the oblong, one in the center, the heart of the Maze, and facing it +two smaller circles, one at each side on a visionary line. Seven mystic, +seven sacred circles in all did he draw, and vanished, unconscious of +the sanctity and symbolism of his deed. + +For he, with his bit of white chalk, had marked the course for the great +running, for the race that the young men and the young girls run +together with the racing of the stars, for the unloosening of the holy +primal energies in a figure and a measure and a ritual old as time. + +It was all very well for the instructor (blind instrument of unspeakably +mysterious forces) to pretend that he invented it, that august figure of +the seven-circled Maze; to explain it, as he does to the inquiring, by +the analogy of a billiard table with its pockets. For never yet, on any +billiard table, was a race run and a contest waged like that in which +these young men and girls ran and contended. Drawn up at the far end of +the hall under the east gallery in two ranks, four-breasted, the men on +the one side and the women on the other, they waited, and the leader of +each rank had a foot on a corner circle. They waited, marking time with +their feet, first, to the thudding beat of the barbell on the floor and +then to an unheard measure, secret and restrained, the murmur of life in +the blood, the rhythm of the soundless will, the beat of the unseen, +urging energy, that gathered to intensity, desirous of the race. + +As yet the soul of it slept in their rigid bodies, their grave, +forward-looking faces, their behavior, so excessively correct. Somebody +whispered the word, and on a sudden they let themselves go; they +started. Young Tyser, breasting the wind of his own speed, his head +uplifted and thrown backward, led the men, and she with the questing +face and wide-pointing breasts of Artemis led the girls; and he had +young Ransome on his heels and she Winny; and behind them the fourfold +serried ranks thinned and thinned out and spun themselves in two lines +of single file, two threads, one white, one dark blue, both flecked with +crimson, two threads that in their running were wound and unwound and +woven in a pattern, dark blue and white and crimson, that ran and never +paused and never ended and was never the same. For first, each line was +flung slantwise from the corner circle whence it had started, and where +the two met, point by point perpetually, in the center circle, they as +it were intersected, men and women wriggling, sliding, and darting with +incredible dexterity through each other's ranks; and the pattern was a +cross, a tricolor. Then they wheeled round the circle that was and was +not their goal, and did it all over again; but instead of intersecting +at the center circle they struck off there at a tangent, and the +pattern, blue by blue divided from white by white, and all red-flecked, +was two wide V's set point to point, a pattern that ran away and +vanished as each thread, returning, wheeled round the circle whence the +other thread had started. + +And all this at the top speed set by Tyser, and with the thud of the +men's feet and the pad of the women's; all this with a secret challenge +and defiance of one sex to the other, with separation and estrangement, +with a never-ending, baffling approach and flight, with the furtive +darting of man from woman and of woman from man, whirled in their +courses from each other as they met. + +And now the lines doubled; they were running two abreast, slantwise; and +as they intersected in the sacred center circle it was with a mingling +of the threads, a weaving of blue with white, and white with blue; so +that each man had in flight before him a maiden, and so that at their +circles, east and west, where they wheeled they wheeled together, side +by side, as the Maze flung them. And now they were circling and +serpentining up and down, and down and up, with contrary motion, in a +double figure of eight; they were winding in and out among the pillars +and wheeling round the middle circles north and south, side by side, +till they split there and parted and met again in the center and were +flung from it, to wheel again deliriously, double-ringed, round all the +six outermost circles at once. + +And now, as if they were torn from the ends of the earth by the +irresistible attraction of the seventh circle, they were whirling round +the center in a double ring, a ring of young men round a ring of girls; +and then, as by some mysterious compulsion, they divided and cast +themselves off in rows of two couples, man and girl by man and girl, +linked with arms on each other's shoulders, eight rows in all, eight +spokes that sprang from the sacred circle ringed with eight, four men +and four girls, who were the felly of the wheel, all running, all +revolving. Such was the magic of the Maze, and the unconscious genius of +the instructor, that the pattern of the running wound and unwound and +knit itself together in the supreme symbol of the great Wheel of Eight +Spokes, the Wheel of Life. + +And the ancient rhythmic rush and race of the worlds, and the wheeling +of all stars, the swinging and dancing of all atoms, the streaming and +eddying of the ancestral stuff of life was in the whirling of that +living Wheel; it was one immortal motion, continuous and triumphant in +the bodies of those men and maidens as they ran. And they, shop-girls +and shop-boys and young clerks, slipped off their memories of the desk +and counter, and a joy, an instinct, and a sense that had no memory woke +in them, savage, virgin, and shy; the pure and perfect joy of the young +body in its own strength and speed; the instinct of the hunter of the +hills and woodlands; the sense of feet padding on grass and fallen +leaves, of ears pricking alert, of eyes that face the dawn on the high +downs and go glancing through the coverts. And as this radiant and +vehement life rose in them like a tide their gravity and shyness and +severity passed from them; here and there hair was loosened, combs were +shed, and nobody stopped to gather them; for frenzy seized on the young +men, and their arms pressed on the girls' shoulders, urging the pace +faster and faster; and light, swift as their flying feet, shot from +their eyes, and they laughed each to the other as they ran. So divine +was now the madness of their running, so inspired the whirling of the +Wheel, that the thing showed plainly as the undying, immemorial ecstasy; +showed as the secret dance of magic and of mystery, taken over by the +London Polytechnic, and, at the very moment when its corybantic nature +most declared itself, constrained to an order and a beauty tremendous +and austere. + +So wise and powerful was the London Polytechnic. + +For Ransome, mixed with that joy of the running, there was a joy of his +own, an instinct and a sense, virgin and shy, absolved from memory. He +found it, when Winny Dymond ran before him, in the slender, innocent +movement of her hips under her thin tunic, in the absurd flap-flapping +of the door-knocker plat on her shoulders, in the glances flicked at him +by the tail of her eye as she wheeled from him in the endless pursuit +and capture and approach and flight, as she was parted, was flung from +him and returned to him in the windings of the Maze. He found it to +perfection in the pressure of each other's arms as the Maze wed them and +whirled them running, locked together in the pattern of the wheel. It +was not love so much as some inspired sense of comradeship mingled +inextricably with that other sense of absurdity and tenderness. + +Not love, not passion, even when in the excitement of the running she +swerved to the wrong side and he had to turn her with his two hands upon +her waist. For it was the law of their running that, though it was one +with the movement of life itself, mysteriously, while the thing lasted, +it precluded passion. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Ransome left Winny Dymond at St. Ann's Terrace, and went home along the +High Street. He went very slowly, as if in thought. + +At the railings of the Parish Church he paused, recalling something. Low +and square-towered, couchant in the moonlight behind its railings, the +Parish Church guarded under its long flank its huddled graves. + +He smiled for very Youth. It was here that he had run Winny to earth and +caught her. The Parish Church had been his accomplice in that capture. + +Wandsworth High Street twists and winds with the waywardness of a river. +The first turn brought him to the old stone bridge over the Wandle. On +the bridge before him, in the crook of the street, were the booths and +stalls of the night market, lit by blazing naphtha, color heaped on +color in a leaping, waving flare as of torches. On either side was a +twisted and jagged line of houses--brown-brick, flat-fronted, +eighteenth-century houses, and houses with painted fronts. Here a tall, +red-brick modern Parade shot up the gables of its insolent facade. +There, oldest of all, a yellow house stooped forward on the posts that +propped it. Somewhere up in the sky a tall chimney and a cupola. All +beautiful under the night, all dark or dim, with sudden flashes and +pallors and gleams, lamplit and moonlit; and all impressed upon +Ransome's brain with an extraordinary vividness and importance, as if he +had suddenly discovered something new about Wandsworth High Street. + +What he had discovered was the blessedness of living as he did in +Wandsworth High Street within three minutes' walk of St. Ann's Terrace. + +To be sure, what with the shop and the storage for drugs, Ransome's +father's house, with Ransome and his father and his mother and Mercier +and the maid in it, was somewhat cramped. And neither Ransome nor his +father nor his mother knew how beautiful it was with its brown-brick +front, its steep-pitched roof, and the two dormer windows looking down +on the High Street like two sleepy eyes under drooping lids. A narrow +slip of a house, it stood a foot or two back between the wine merchant's +and John Randall the draper's shop, and had the air of being squeezed +out of existence by them. Yet the name of Fulleymore Ransome, in gold +letters on a black ground, and with Pharmaceutical Chemist under it in a +scroll, more than held its own beside John Randall. The chemist's +dignity was further proclaimed by the immense bottles, three in a row +(the Carboys, Mr. Ransome called them), holding the magic liquids, a +blue, a red, and a yellow, wide-bellied at the base, and with pyramids +for stoppers. Under them, dividing the window pane, a narrow gold band +with black lettering advertised three distinct mineral waters. + +A yellow-ochre blind now screened the lower half of that window. Drawn +down unevenly and tilted at the bottom corner, it suffered a vague +glimpse of objects that from his earliest years had never ceased to +offend Ranny's sense of the beautiful and fit. + +He had not as yet considered very deeply the problems of his life. +Otherwise, in returning every night to his father's house, it must have +struck him that he was not what you might call a free man. For his +father's house had no door except the shop door, and it was the +peculiarity of that shop door that it did not admit of any latch key. +Every night young Ransome had to ring, and it was usually Mercier, with +his abominable smile, who let him in. + +To-night the door was opened cautiously on the chain and somebody +whispered, "Is that you, Ranny?" + +The chain was slipped, and he entered. + +A small bead of gas burned on a bracket somewhere behind the counter. +The light slid, pale as water, over the glass and mahogany of the +show-cases, wherein white objects appeared as confused and disconnected +patches. The darkness effaced every object in the shop that was not +white, with the queer effect that rows upon rows of white jars showed as +if hanging on it unsupported by their shelves. Very close, turned up to +him out of the darkness, was Ranny's mother's face. He kissed it. + +"Where's that Mercier?" said Ranny's mother. + +"What? Isn't he back yet?" + +"No," said Ranny's mother. "And your father's got the Headache." + +By a tender and most pardonable confusion between the symptoms and its +cause Ranny's mother had hit upon a phrase that made it possible for +them to discuss his father's affliction without the smallest, most +shadowy reference to its essential nature. For Ranny's mother, such +reference would have been the last profanity, a sacrilege committed +against the divinities of the hearth and of the marriage bed. But for +that phrase Mr. Ransome's weakness must have been passed in silence as +the unspeakable, incredible, unthinkable thing it was. + +At the phrase, more frequent in his mother's mouth than ever, Ranny drew +in his lips for a whistle; but instead of whistling he said, "Poor old +Humming-bird." + +"It's one of His bad ones," said Ranny's mother. + +He raised the flap of the counter, and they went through. He turned up +the gas so that the outlines of things asserted themselves and the +labels on the white jars gave out their secret gold. On one of these +labels, Hydrarg. Amm., which had no meaning for him, Ranny fixed a +fascinated gaze, thus avoiding the revelations of his mother's face. + +For Ranny's mother's face showed that she had been crying. + +Plump, and yet not large, her figure and her face were formed for gaiety +and charm. Her little nose was uptilted like Ranny's; but something that +was not gaiety, but pathos, had dragged down and made tremulous the +corners of a mouth that had once been tilted too--a flowerlike mouth, of +the same tender texture as her face, a face that was once one wide-open, +innocent pink flower. Now it was washed out and burnt with the courses +of her tears. Worry had fretted her soft forehead into lines and twisted +her eyebrows in an expression as of permanent surprise at life's +handiwork. And under them her dim-blue eyes, red-lidded, looked out with +the same sorrow and dismay. There was nothing left of her beauty but +her exuberant light-brown hair, which she dressed high on her head with +a twist and a topknot piteously reminiscent of gaiety and charm. + +She laid her hand on the knob of the left-hand inner door. + +"He's in the dispensin'-room," she said. + +Ranny turned round. His features tilted slightly, compelled by something +preposterous in the vision she had evoked. + +"Whatever game is he playin' there?" + +A faint flicker passed over his mother's face, as if it pleased her that +he could talk in that way. + +"Prescription," she said, and paused between her words to let it sink +into him. "Makin' it up, he is. Old Mr. Beesley's heart mixture." + +"My Hat!" said Ranny. He was impressed by the gravity of the situation. + +There were all sorts of things, such as toothbrushes, patent medicines, +babies' comforters, that Ranny's father with a Headache, or Ranny +himself or his mother could be trusted to dispense at a moment's notice. +But the drug strophanthus, prescribed for old Mr. Beesley, was not one +of them. It was tricky stuff. He knew all about it; Mercier had told +him. Whether it was to do Mr. Beesley good or not would depend on the +precise degree and kind of Ranny's father's Headache. + +"I've never known your father's Headache so bad as it is to-night," said +Ranny's mother. "As for makin' up prescriptions, sufferin' as He is, +He's not fit for it. He's not fit for it, Ranny." + +That was as near as she could go. + +"Of course he isn't." + +(They had to keep it up together.) + +But Ranny's mother felt that she had gone too far. + +"He ought to be in His bed--" + +"Of course he ought," said Ranny, tenderly. + +"And He would be if it wasn't for that Mercier." + +Thus subtly did she intimate that it was not his father but Mercier +whose behavior was reprehensible. + +"P'r'aps you'll go to him, Ranny?" + +"Hadn't we better wait for Mercier?" + +(Old Mr. Beesley's mixture was a case for Mercier.) + +"Him? Goodness knows when he'll be in. And it's not likely that y'r +father'll have him interferin' with him. They're sendin' at ten past +eleven, and it's five past now." + +Thus and thus only did she suggest the necessity for immediate action. +Also her fear lest Mercier should find Mr. Ransome out. As if Mercier +had not found him out long ago; as if he hadn't warned Ranny, time and +again, of what might happen. + +"All right, I'll go." + + * * * * * + +He went by the right-hand door at the back of the shop, and down a short +and exceedingly narrow passage, lined with shallow shelves for the +storage of drugs. + +Another door at the end of the passage led straight into the +dispensing-room outside, a long shed of corrugated iron run up against +the garden wall and lined with honey-colored pine. Under a wide stretch +of window was a work table. At one end of this table was a slab of +white marble; at the other a porcelain sink fitted with taps and sprays +for hot and cold water. From the far end of the room where the stove was +came a smothered roar of gas flames. On the broken inner wall were +shelves fitted with drawers of all sizes, each with its label, and above +them other shelves with row after row of jars. Near the stove, more +shelves with more and more jars, with phials, kettles, pannikins, and +pipkins. Everywhere else shelves of medicine bottles, innumerable +medicine bottles of all sorts and sizes, giving to the honey-colored +walls a decorative glimmer of sea-blue and sea-green. + +All this was brilliantly illuminated with gas that burned on every +bracket. + +To Ransome's senses it was as if the faint, the delicate colors of the +place gave a more frightful grossness and pungency to its smell. Dying +asafetida struggled still with gas fumes, and was pierced by another +odor, a sharp and bitter odor that he knew. + +At the long table, under the hanging gaselier, in shirt sleeves and +apron, Mr. Ransome stood. The light fell full on his sallow baldness and +its ring of iron-gray hair; on his sallow, sickly face; on his little +long, peaked nose with its peevish nostrils; even on his thin and +irritable mouth, unhidden by the scanty, close-trimmed iron-gray +mustache and beard. He was weedy to the last degree. + +Ranny came near and gazed inscrutably at this miracle of physical +unfitness. Under his gaze the pitiful and insignificant figure bore +itself as with a majesty of rectitude. + +Mr. Ransome had before him a prescription, a medicine bottle, a large +bottle of distilled water, two measuring-glasses, and a smaller bottle +half full of a pale-amber liquid. He had been standing motionless, +staring at these objects with a peculiar and intent solemnity. Now, as +if challenged and challenging, he drew the smaller measuring-glass +toward him with one hand. He held it to the light and moved his finger +nail slowly along the middle measuring line. Then with two hands that +trembled he poured into it a part of the infusion. The liquid went +tink-tinkling in a succession of little jerks. He held it to the light; +it rose a good inch above the line he had marked. He shook his head at +it slowly, with an air of admonition and reproof, and poured it back +into the bottle. + +This process he repeated seven times, always with the same solemn +intentness, the same reproving and admonitory air. + +At his seventh failure he turned with the dignity of a man overmastered +by outrageous circumstance. + +"Mercier not in?" he asked, sternly. (You would have said it was his son +Randall that he admonished and reproved.) + +"Not yet," said Ranny. And as he said it he possessed himself very +gently of the measuring-glass and bottle. (Mr. Ransome affected not to +notice this man[oe]uver.) + +"What is it?" + +"Tincture of strophanthus, sodæ bicarb., and spirits of chloroform. Just +you mind how you handle it." + +"Right-O!" said Ranny. + +The chemist's small, iron-gray eyes were fixed on him with severity and +resentment. + +"How much?" said Ranny. + +"Up to three." Mr. Ransome's head was steadier than his hand. + +Ranny poured the dose. + +"Ac-acqua distillata--to eight ounces," said Mr. Ransome, disjointedly, +but with an extreme incision. + +Ranny poured again, and decanted the medicine into its bottle through a +funnel, corked it, tied on the capsule, labeled, addressed, wrapped, and +sealed it. The long-drawn, subtle corners of Ranny's eyes and mouth were +lifted in that irrepressible smile of his, while Mr. Ransome asserted +his pharmaceutical dignity by acrimonious comment. "_Now_ then! You +might have club feet instead of hands. Tha's right--mess the +sealin'-wax, waste the string, spoil anything you haven't got to pay +for. That'll do." + +Mr. Ransome took the parcel from his son's hand, turned it round and +round under the gaslight, laid it down, and dismissed it with a flick as +of contempt for his incompetence. At that Ranny gave way and giggled. + +Ten minutes later he and his mother stood in the doorway of the back +parlor and watched the master's superb and solitary ascent to his +bedroom on the first floor back. It was then that Ranny; still smiling, +delivered his innermost opinion. + +"Queer old Humming-bird. Ain't he, Mar?" + +His mother shook her head at him. "Oh, Ranny," she said, "you shouldn't +speak so disrespectful of your father." + +But she kissed him for it, all the same. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +That was how they kept it up together. + +Not that Mrs. Ransome was conscious of keeping it up, of ministering to +an illusion as monstrous as it was absurd. She had married Mr. Ransome, +believing with a final and absolute conviction in his wisdom and his +goodness. What she was keeping up had kept up for twenty-two years, and +would keep up forever, was the attitude of her undying youth. It was its +triumph over life itself. + +In her youth the draper's daughter had been dazzled by Mr. Ransome, by +his attainments, his position, his distinction. Fulleymore Ransome had +about him the small refinement of the suburban shopkeeper, made finer by +the intellectual processes that had turned him out a Pharmaceutical +Chemist. + +In her world of Wandsworth High Street his grave, fastidious figure had +stood for everything that was superior. He was superior still. He had +never offered his Headache as a spectacle to the public eye. Born in +secrecy and solitude, it remained unseen outside the sacred circle of +his home. Even there he had contrived to create around it an atmosphere +of mystery. So that it was open to Mrs. Ransome to regard each Headache +as an accident, a thing apart, solitary and miraculous in its +occurrence. Faced with the incredible fact, she found a certain +gratification in the thought that Mr. Ransome's position enabled him to +order the best spirit wholesale, and with a professional impunity. So +inviolate was his privacy that not even the wine and spirit merchant +next door could gage the amount of his expenditure in this item. + +Thus, in Mrs. Ransome's eyes, the worst Headache he had ever had could +not impair his innermost integrity. Her vision of him was inspired by an +innocence and sincerity that were of the substance of her soul. And in +this optimism she had brought up her son. + +Ranny, with his venturesomeness, had carried it a step further. For +Ranny, not only did Mr. Ransome's inebriety conceal itself under the +name of Headache, but in those hours when the Headache cast its +intolerable gloom over the household Ranny persisted--from his childhood +he had persisted--in regarding his father, perversely, as the source and +fount of joy. + +It was in this happy light he saw him on Sunday morning, when Mrs. +Ransome came into the back parlor, where he was hiding his paper, _The +Pink 'Un_, behind him under the sofa cushions. She was wearing her new +slaty-gray gown with the lace collar, and a head-dress that combined the +decorum of the bonnet with the levity and fascination of the hat. Black +it was, with a spray of damask roses and their leaves, that spring +upward from Mrs. Ransome's left ear. + +"Your father's goin' to church," she said. + +Ranny sat up among his cushions and said: "Oh, Lord! That Humming-bird's +a fair treat." + +He took it as a supreme instance of his father's humor. + +But that was not the way Mrs. Ransome meant that he should take it. +Ranny's admiration implied that the Humming-bird was carrying it off, +successfully, if you like, but still carrying it. Whereas what she +desired him to see was that there was nothing to be carried off. +Obviously there could not be, when Mr. Ransome was prepared to go to +church. + +For the going to church of Mr. Ransome was itself a ritual, a high +religious ceremony. Hitherto he had kept himself pure for it, abstaining +from all Headache overnight. It was this habitual consecration of Mr. +Ransome that made his last lapse so remarkable and so important, while +it revealed it as fortuitous. Ranny had missed the deep logic of his +mother's statement. Mr. Ransome was sidesman at the Parish Church, and +at no time was the Headache compatible with being sidesman. + +Nothing had ever interfered with the slow pageant of Mr. Ransome's +progress toward church. Outside in the passage he was lingering over his +preparations: the adjustment of his tie, the brushing of his tall hat, +the drawing on of the dogskin gloves he wore in his office. It was not +easy for Mr. Ransome to exceed the professional dignity of his frock +coat and gray trousers, and yet every Sunday, by some miracle, he did +exceed it. Each minute irreproachable detail of his dress accentuated, +reiterated, the suggestion of his perpetual sobriety. + +Still, there remained the memory of last night. Mrs. Ransome did not +evade it; on the contrary, she used it to demonstrate the indomitable +power of Mr. Ransome's will. + +"_I_ say he ought to be layin' down," she said. "But there--He won't. +You know what He is since He's been sidesman. It's my belief He'd rise +up off his deathbed to hand that plate. It's his duty to go, and go He +will if He drops. That's your father all over." + +"That's Him," Ranny assented. + +His mother looked him in the face. It was the look, familiar to Ranny on +a Sunday morning, that, while it reinstated Ranny's father in his +rectitude, contrived subtly, insidiously, to put Ranny in the wrong. + +"You're going, too," his mother said. + +Well, no, he wasn't exactly going. Not, that was to say, to any church +in Wandsworth. (He had, in fact, a pressing engagement to meet young +Tyser at the first easterly signpost on Putney Common, and cycle with +him to Richmond.) + +"It's only a spin," said Ranny, though the look on his mother's face was +enough to tell him that a spin, on a Sunday, was dissipation, and he, +recklessly, iniquitously spinning, a prodigal most unsuitably descended +from an upright father. + +And then (this happened nearly every Sunday) Ranny set himself to charm +away that look from his mother's face. First of all he said she was a +tip-topper, a howling swell, and asked her where _she_ expected to go to +in that hat, nippin' in and cuttin' all the girls out, and she a married +woman and a mother; and whether it wouldn't be fairer all around, and +much more proper, if she was to wear something in the nature of a veil? +Then he buttoned up her gloves over her little fat wrists and kissed her +in several places where the veil ought to have been; and when he had +informed her that "the Humming-bird was a regular toff," and had +dismissed them both with his blessing, standing on the doorstep of the +shop, he wheeled his bicycle out into the street, mounted it, and +followed at the pace of a walking funeral until his parents had +disappeared into the Parish Church. + +Then Ranny, in his joy, set up a prolonged ringing of his bicycle bell, +as it were the cry of his young soul, a shrill song of triumph and +liberation and delight. And in his own vivid phrase, he "let her rip." + +Of course he was a prodigal, a wastrel, a spendthrift. Going the pace, +he was, with a vengeance, like a razzling-dazzling, devil-may-care young +dog. + +A prodigal driven by the lust of speed, dissipating his divine energies +in this fierce whirling of the wheels; scattering his youth to the sun +and his strength to the wind in the fury of riotous "biking." A +drunkard, mad-drunk, blind-drunk with the draught of his onrush. + +That was Ranny on a Sunday morning. + + * * * * * + +He returned, at one o'clock, to a dinner of roast mutton and apple tart. +Conversation was sustained, for Mercier's benefit, at the extreme pitch +of politeness and precision. It seemed to Ranny that at Sunday dinner +his father reached, socially, a very high level. It seemed so to Mrs. +Ransome as she bloomed and flushed in a brief return of her beauty above +the mutton and the tart. She bloomed and flushed every time that Mr. +Ransome did anything that proved his goodness and his wisdom. Sunday was +the day in which she most believed in him, the day set apart for her +worship of him. + +By what blindfolded pieties, what subterfuges, what evasions she had +achieved her own private superstition was unknown, even to herself. It +was by courage and the magic of personality--some evocation of her lost +gaiety and charm--but above all by courage that she had contrived to +impose it upon other people. + +The cult of Mr. Ransome reached its height at four o'clock on this +Sunday afternoon, when Ranny's Uncle John Randall (Junior) and Aunt +Randall dropped in to tea. Both Mr. and Mrs. Randall believed in Mr. +Ransome with the fervent, immovable faith of innocence that has once for +all taken an idea into its head. Long ago they had taken it into their +heads that Mr. Ransome was a wise and good man. They had taken it on +hearsay, on conjecture, on perpetual suggestion conveyed by Mrs. +Ransome, and on the grounds--absolutely incontrovertible--that they had +never heard a word to the contrary. Never, until the other day, when +that young Mercier came to Wandsworth. And, as Mrs. Randall said, +everybody knew what he was. Whatever it was that Mr. Randall had heard +from young Mercier and told to Mrs. Randall, the two had agreed to hold +their tongues about it, for Emmy's sake, and not to pass it on. Wild +horses, Mrs. Randall said, wouldn't drag it out of her. + +Not that they believed or could believe such a thing of Mr. Ransome, who +had been known in Wandsworth for five-and-twenty years before that young +Mercier was so much as born. And by holding their tongues about it and +not passing it on they had succeeded in dismissing from their minds, for +long intervals at a time, the story they had heard about Mr. Ransome. +"For, mind you," said Mr. Randall, "if it got about it would ruin him. +Ruin him it would. As much as if it was true." + +Long afterward when she thought of that Sunday, and how beautifully +they'd spoken of Mr. Ransome; that Sunday when they had had tea upstairs +in the best parlor on the front; that Sunday that had been half pleasure +and half pain; that strange and ominous Sunday when poor Ranny had +broken out and been so wild; long afterward, when she thought of it, +Mrs. Ransome found that tears were in her eyes. + +She had no idea then that they had heard anything. Family affection was +what you looked for from the Randalls, and on Sundays they showed it by +a frequent dropping in to tea. + +John Randall, the draper, was a fine man. A tall, erect, full-fronted +man, a superb figure in a frock coat. A man with a florid, handsome +face, clean-shaved for the greater salience of his big mustache (dark, +grizzled like his hair). A man with handsome eyes--prominent, slightly +bloodshot, generous eyes. He might have passed for a soldier but for +something that detracted, something that Ranny noticed. But even Ranny +hesitated to call it flabbiness in so fine a man. + +Mr. Randall had married a woman who had been even finer than himself. +And she was still fine, with her black hair dressed in a prominent +pompadour, and her figure curbed by the tightness of her Sunday gown. +Under her polished hair Mrs. Randall's face shone with a blond pallor. +It had grown up gradually round her features, and they, becoming more +and more insignificant, were now merged in its general expression of +good will. Ranny noted with wonder this increasing simplification of +his Aunt Randall's face. + +She entered as if under stress, towing her large husband through the +doorway, and in and out among the furniture. + +The room that received them was full of furniture, walnut wood, +mid-Victorian in design, upholstered in rep, which had faded from +crimson to an agreeable old rose. Rep curtains over Nottingham lace hung +from the two windows. There was a davenport between them, and, opposite, +a cabinet with a looking-glass back in three arches. It was Mr. +Ransome's social distinction that he had inherited this walnut-wood +furniture. Modernity was represented by a brand-new overmantle in +stained wood and beveled glass, with little shelves displaying Japanese +vases. The wall paper turned this front parlor into a bower of gilt +roses (slightly tarnished on a grayish ground). + +And as Mrs. Ransome sat at the head of the oval table in the center you +would never have known that she was the woman with red eyes, the +furtive, whispering woman who had opened the door to her son Randall +last night. She sat in a most correct and upright attitude, she looked +at John Randall and his wife, and smiled and flushed with gladness and +with pride. It took so little to make her glad and proud. She was glad +that Bessie was wearing the black and white which was so becoming to +her. She was glad that there was honey as well as jam for tea, and that +she had not cut the cake before they came. She was proud of her teapot, +and of the appearance of her room. She was proud of Mr. Ransome's +appearance at the table (where he sat austerely), and of her brother, +John Randall, who looked so like a military man. + +And John Randall talked; he talked; it was what he had come for. He had +a right to talk. He was a member of the Borough Council, an important +man, a man (it was said of him) with "ideas." He was a Liberal; and so, +for that matter, was Mr. Ransome. Both were of the good, safe middle +class, and took the good, safe, middle line. + +They sat there; the Nottingham lace curtains veiled them from the gazes +of the street, but their voices, raised in discussion, could be most +distinctly heard; for the window was a little open, letting in the +golden afternoon. They sat and drank tea and abused the Tory Government. +Not any one Tory Government, but all Tory Governments. Mr. Ransome said +that all Tory Governments were bad. Mr. Randall, aiming at precision, +said he wouldn't say they were bad so much as stupid, cowardly, and +dishonest. Stupid, because they were incapable of the ideas the Liberals +had. Cowardly, because they let the Liberals do all the fighting for +ideas. Dishonest, because they stole the ideas, purloined 'em, carried +them out, and sneaked the credit. + +And when Ranny asked if it mattered who got the credit provided they +_were_ carried out, Mr. Randall replied solemnly that it did matter, my +boy. It mattered a great deal. Credit was everything, the nation's +confidence was everything. A Government lived on credit and on nothing +else. And his father told him that he hadn't understood what his uncle +had been saying. + +"If anybody asks _me_--" said Mr. Ransome. He interrupted himself to +stare terribly at Mrs. Ransome, who was sending a signal to her son and +a whisper, "Have a little slice of gingercake, Ran dear." + +"If anybody asks me _my_ objection to a Tory Government, I'll put it for +'em," said Mr. Ransome, "in a nutshell." + +"Let's have it, Fulleymore," said Mr. Randall. + +And Mr. Ransome let him have it--in a nutshell. + +"With a Tory Government you always, sooner or later, have a war. And +who," said Mr. Ransome, "_wants_ war?" + +Mr. Randall bowed and made a motion of his hand toward his +brother-in-law, a complicated gesture which implied destruction of all +Tory Governments, homage to Mr. Ransome, and dismissal of the subject as +definitively settled by him. + +Mrs. Ransome seized the moment to raise her eyebrows and the teapot +toward Mrs. Randall, and to whisper again, surreptitiously, "Jest +another little drain of tea?" + +Then Ranny, who had tilted his chair most dangerously backward, was +heard saying something. A bit of scrap, now and then, with other nations +was, in Ranny's opinion, a jolly good thing. Kept you from gettin' +Flabby. Kept you Fit. + +Mr. Randall, in a large, forbearing manner, dealt with Ranny. He wanted +to know whether he, Ranny, thought that the world was one almighty Poly. +Gym.? + +And Mr. Ransome answered: "That's precisely what he does think. Made for +his amusement, the world is." + +Ranny was young, and so they all treated him as if he were neither good +nor wise. + +And Ranny, desperately tilted backward, looked at them all with a smile +that almost confirmed his father's view of his philosophy. He was +working up for his great outbreak. He could feel the laughter struggling +in his throat. + +"I don't say," said Mr. Ransome, ignoring his son's folly, "that I'm +complaining of this Boer War in especial. If anything"--he weighed it, +determined, in his rectitude, to be just even to the war--"if anything +we sold more of some things." + +"Now what," said Mrs. Randall, "do you sell most of in time of war?" + +"Sleepin' draughts, heart mixture, nerve tonic, stomach mixture, and so +forth." + +"And he can tell you," said Mr. Randall, "to a month's bookin' what +meddycine he'll sell." + +"What's more," said the chemist, with a sinister intonation, "I can tell +who'll want 'em." + +"Can you reelly now?" said Mrs. Randall. "Why, Fulleymore, you should +have been a doctor. Shouldn't he, Emmy?" + +Mrs. Ransome laughed softly in her pride. "He couldn't be much more than +He is. Why, He doctors half the poor people in Wandsworth. They all come +to Him, whether it's toothache or bronchitis or the influenza, or a +housemaid with a whitlow on her finger, and He prescribes for all. If +all the doctors in Wandsworth died to-morrow some of us would be no +worse off." + +"Many's the doctor's bill he's saved me," said Mr. Randall. + +"Yes, but it's a tryin' life for Him, sufferin' as He is in 'is own +'ealth. Never knowin' when the night bell won't ring, and He have to get +up out of his warm bed. He doesn't spare Himself, I can tell you." + +And on they went for another quarter of an hour, boldly asserting, +delicately hinting, subtly suggesting that Mr. Ransome was a good man; +as if, Ranny reflected, anybody had ever said he wasn't. Mr. Ransome +withdrew himself to his armchair by the fireplace, and the hymn of +praise went on; it flowed round him where he sat morose and remote; and +Ranny, in the window seat, was silent, listening with an inscrutable +intentness to the three voices that ran on. He marveled at the way they +kept it up. When his mother's light soprano broke, breathless for a +moment, on a top note, Mrs. Randall's rich, guttural contralto came to +its support, Mr. Randall supplying a running accompaniment of bass. And +now they burst, all three of them, into anecdote and reminiscence, +illustrating what they were all agreed about, that Mr. Ransome was a +good man. + +Nobody asked Ranny to join in; nobody knew, nobody cared what he was +thinking, least of all Mr. Ransome. + +He was thinking that he had asked Fred Booty in to tea, and that he had +forgotten to say anything about it to his mother, and that Fred was +late, and that his father wouldn't like it. + + * * * * * + +He didn't. He didn't like it at all. He didn't like Fred Booty to begin +with, and when the impudent young monkey arrived after the others had +gone, and had to have fresh tea made for him, thus accentuating and +prolonging the unpleasantly, the intolerably festive hour, Mr. Ransome +felt that he had been tried to the utmost, and that courtesy and +forbearance had gone far enough for one Sunday. So he refused to speak +when he was spoken to. He turned his back on his family and on Booty. He +impressed them with his absolute and perfect disapproval. + +For, as the Headache worked in Mr. Ransome, all young and gay and +innocent things became abominable to him. Especially young things with +spirits and appetites like his son Randall and Fred Booty. This +afternoon they inspired him with a peculiar loathing and disgust. So did +the malignant cheerfulness maintained by his wife. Escape no doubt was +open to him. He might have left the room and sat by himself in the back +parlor. But he spared them this humiliation. Outraged as he was, he +would not go to the extreme length of forsaking them. He was a good man; +and, as a good man, he would not be separated from his family, though he +loathed it. So he hung about the room where they were; he brooded over +it; he filled it with the spirit of the Headache. Young Booty became so +infected, so poisoned with this presence that his nervous system +suffered, and he all but choked over his tea. Young Booty, with his +humor and his wit, the joy of Poly. Ramblers, sat in silence, miserably +blushing, crumbling with agitated fingers the cake he dared not eat, and +all the time trying not to look at Ranny. + +For if he looked at Ranny he would be done for; he would not be able to +contain himself, beholding how Ranny stuck it, and what he made of it, +that intolerable, that incredible Sunday afternoon; how he saw it +through; how he got back on it and found in it his own. For, as Mr. +Ransome went from gloom to gloom, Ranny's spirit soared, indomitable, +and his merriment rose in him, wave on wave. + +What he could make of it Booty saw in an instant when Mr. Ransome left +the room at the summons of the shop-bell. Ranny, with a smile of +positive affection, watched him as he went. + +"Queer old percher, ain't he?" Ranny said. + +Then he let himself go, addressing himself to Booty. + +"The old Porcupine may seem to you a trifle melancholy and morose. You +can't see what's goin' on in his mind. You've no ideer of the glee he +bottles up inside himself. Fair bubblin' and sparklin' in him, it is. +Some day he'll bust out with it. I shouldn't be surprised if, at any +moment now, he was to break out into song." + +Booty, very hot and uncomfortable under Mrs. Ransome's eyes, affected to +reprove him. "You dry up, you young rotter. Jolly lot of bottlin' up +there is about you." + +But there was that in Ranny which seemed as if it would never dry up. He +hopped a chair seven times running, out of pure light-heartedness. The +sound of the hopping brought Mr. Ransome in a fury from the shop below. +He stood in the doorway, absurd as to his stature, but tremendous in the +expression of the gloom that was his soul. + +"What's goin' on here?" he asked, in a voice that would have thundered +if it could. + +"It's me," said Ranny. "Practisin'." + +"I won't 'ave it then. I'll 'ave none of this leapin' and jumpin' over +the shop on a Sunday afternoon. Pandemonium it is. 'Aven't you got all +the week for your silly monkey tricks? I won't 'ave this room used, +Mother, if he can't behave himself in it of a Sunday." + +And he slammed the door on himself. + +"On Sunday evenin'," said his son, imperturbably, as if there had been +no interruption, "eight-thirty to eleven, at his residence, High Street, +Wandsworth, Mr. Fulleymore Ransome will give an Entertainment. Humorous +Impersonations: Mr. F. Ransome. Step Dancin': Mr. F. Ransome. Ladies are +requested to remove their hats. Song: _Put Me Among the Girls_, Mr. F. +Ransome--" + +"For shame, Ranny," said his mother, behind her pocket handkerchief. + +"--There will be a short interval for refreshment, when festivities will +conclude with a performance on the French Horn: Mr. F. Ransome." + +His mother laughed as she always did (relieved that he could take it +that way); but this time, through all her laughter, he could see that +there was something wrong. + +And in the evening, when he had returned from seeing Booty home, she +told him what it was. They were alone together in the front parlor. + +"Ranny," she said, suddenly; "if I were you I wouldn't bring strangers +in for a bit while your father's sufferin' as he is." + +"Oh, I say, Mother--" + +Ranny was disconcerted, for he had been going to ask her if he might +bring Winny Dymond in some day. + +"Well," she said, "it isn't as if He was one that could get away by +Himself, like. He's always in and out." + +"Yes. The old Hedgehog scuttles about pretty ubiquitous, don't he?" + +That was all he said. + +But though he took it like that, he knew his mother's heart; he knew +what it had cost her to give him that pitiful hint. He was balancing +himself on the arm of her chair now, and hanging over her like a lover. + +He had always been more like a lover to her than a son. Mr. Ransome's +transports (if he could be said to have transports) of affection were +violent, with long intermissions and most brief. Ranny had ways, soft +words, cajoleries, caresses that charmed her in her secret desolation. +Balancing himself on the arm of her chair, he had his face hidden in the +nape of her neck, where he affected ecstasy and the sniffing in of +fragrance, as if his mother were a flower. + +"What do you _do_?" said Ranny. "Do you bury yourself in violets all +night, or what?" + +"Violets indeed! Get along with you!" + +"Violets aren't in it with your neck, Mother--nor roses neither. What +did God Almighty think he was making when he made you?" + +"Don't you dare to speak so," said his mother, smiling secretly. + +"Lord bless you! _He_ don't mind," said Ranny. "He's not like Par." + +And he plunged into her neck again and burrowed there. + +"Ranny, if you knew how you worried me, you wouldn't do it. You reelly +wouldn't. I don't know what'll come to you, goin' on so reckless." + +"It's because I love you," said Ranny, half stifled with his burrowing. +"You fair drive me mad. I could eat you, Mother, and thrive on it." + +"Get along with you! There! You're spoiling all my Sunday lace." + +Ranny emerged, and his mother looked at him. + +"Such a sight as you are. If you could see yourself," she said. + +She raised her hand and stroked, not without tenderness, his rumpled +hair. + +"P'r'aps--If you had a sweetheart, Ran, you'd leave off makin' a fool of +your old mother." + +"I wouldn't leave off kissin' her," said he. + +And then, suddenly, it struck him that he had never kissed Winny. He +hadn't even thought of it. He saw her fugitive, swift-darting, +rebellious rather than reluctant under his embrace; and at the thought +he blushed, suddenly, all over. + +His mother was unaware that his kisses had become dreamy, tentative, +foreboding. She said to herself: "When his time comes there'll be no +holding him. But he isn't one that'll be in a hurry, Ranny isn't." + +She took comfort from that thought. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Ranny had received his first intimation that he was not a free man. And +it had come upon him with something of a shock. He had made his burst +for freedom five years ago, when he refused to be a Pharmaceutical +Chemist in his father's shop, because he could not stand his father's +ubiquity. And yet he was not free to leave his father's house; for he +did not see how, as things were going, he could leave his mother. He was +not free to ask his friends there either; not, that was to say, friends +who were strangers to his father and the Headache. Above all, he was not +free to ask Winny Dymond. He had thought he was, but his mother had made +him see that he wasn't, because of his father's Headache; that he really +ought not to expose the poor old Humming-bird to the rude criticism of +people who did not know how good he was. That was what his mother, bless +her! had been trying to make him see. And if it came to exposing, if +this was to be a fair sample of their Sundays, if the Humming-bird was +going to take the cake for queerness, what right had he to expose little +Winny? + +And would she stand it if he did? She might come once, perhaps, but not +again. The Humming-bird would be a bit too much for her. + +Then how on earth, Ranny asked himself, was he going to get any further +with a girl like Winny? His acquaintance with her was bound to be a +furtive and a secret thing. He loathed anything furtive, and he hated +secrecy. And Winny would loathe and hate them, too. And she might turn +on him and ask him why she was to be made love to in the streets when +his mother had a house and he lived in it? + +It was the first time that this idea of making love had come to him. Of +course he had always supposed that he would marry some day; but as for +making love, it was his mother who had put into his head that +exquisitely agitating idea. + +To make love to little Winny and to marry her, if (and that was not by +any means so certain) she would have him--no idea could well have +agitated Ranny more. It blunted the fine razorlike edge of his appetite +for Sunday supper. It obscured his interest in _The Pink 'Un_, which he +had unearthed from under the sofa cushion in the back parlor, whither he +had withdrawn himself to think of it. And thinking of it took away the +best part of his Sunday night's sleep. + +For, after all, it was impossible; and the more you thought of it the +more impossible it was. He couldn't marry. He simply couldn't afford it +on a salary of eight pounds a month, which was a little under a hundred +a year. He couldn't even afford it on his rise. Fellows did. But he +considered it was a beastly shame of them; yes, a beastly shame it was +to go and tie a girl to you when you couldn't keep her properly, to say +nothing of letting her in for having kids you couldn't keep at all. +Ranny had very fixed and firm opinions about marrying; for he had seen +fellows doing it, rushing bald-headed into this tremendous business, +for no reason but that they had got so gone on some girl they couldn't +stick it without her. Ranny, in his decency, considered that that wasn't +a reason; that they ought to stick it; that they ought to think of the +girl, and that of all the beastly things you could do to her, this was +the beastliest, because it tied her. + +He had more than ever decided that it was so, as he lay in his attic +sleepless on his narrow iron bedstead, staring up at the steep slope of +the white-washed ceiling that leaned over him, pressed on him, and +threatened him; watching it glimmer and darken and glimmer again to the +dawn. He had put away from him the almost tangible vision of Winny lying +there, pretty as she would be, in her little white nightgown, and her +hair tossed over his pillow, perhaps, and he vowed that for Winny's sake +he would never do that thing. + +As for the feeling he had unmistakably begun to have for Winny, he would +have to put that away, too, until he could afford to produce it. + +It might also be wiser, for his own sake, to give up seeing her until he +could afford it; but to this pitch of abnegation Ranny, for all his +decency, couldn't rise. + +Besides, he had to see her. He had to see her home. + + * * * * * + +And so he took his feeling and put it away, together with a certain +sachet, scented with violets, and having a pattern of violets on a +white-satin ground, and the word Violet going slantwise across it in +embroidery. He had bought it (from his mother) in the shop, to keep (he +said) in his drawer among his handkerchiefs. And in his drawer, among +his handkerchiefs, he kept it, wrapped tenderly in tissue paper. He +tried hard to forget that he had really bought it to give to Winny on +her birthday. He tried hard to forget his feeling, wrapped up and put +away with it. But he couldn't forget it; because every day his +handkerchiefs, impregnated with the scent of violets, gave out a whiff +that reminded him, and his feeling was inextricably entangled with that +whiff. + +It was with him as he worked in his mahogany pen at Woolridge's. All day +a faint odor of violets clung to him and spread itself subtly about the +counting-house, and the fellows noticed it and sniffed. And, oh, how +they chaffed him. "Um-m-m. You been rolling in a bed of violets, Ranny?" +And "Oo-ooh, what price violets?" And "You might tell us her name, old +chappie, if you _won't_ give the address." Till his life was a burden to +him. + +So to end the nuisance he took that sachet wrapped in tissue paper, and +put it in the round, japanned tin box where he kept his collars, and let +his collars run loose about the drawer. He shut the lid down tight on +the smell and took the box and hid it in the cupboard where his boots +were, where the smell couldn't possibly get out, and where the very next +day his mother found it and received some enlightenment as to Ranny's +state of mind. But, like a wise woman, she kept it to herself. + +And the smell departed gradually from the region of Ranny's breast +pocket, and he had peace in his pen. His fellow-clerks suspected him of +a casual encounter and no more. A matter too trivial for remark. + +The counting-house at Woolridge's was an immense long room under the +roof, lit by a row of windows on each side and a skylight in the middle. +The door gave on a passage that ran the whole length of the room, +dividing it in two. Right and left the space was partitioned off into +pens more or less open. On Ransome's right, as he entered, was the pen +for the women typists. On his left the petty cashier's pen, overlooking +the women. Next came the ledger clerks, then the statement clerks; and +facing these the long desk of the checking staff. At the back of the +room, right and left, were the pens of the very youngest clerks, who +made invoices. From their high desks they could see the bald spot on the +assistant secretary's head. He, the highest power in that hierarchy, had +a special pen provided for him behind the ledger and the statement +clerks; a little innermost sanctuary approached by a short passage. +Surrounded entirely by glass, he could overlook the whole of his +dominion, from the boys at the bottom to the gray-headed cashier and the +women typists at the top. + +And in between, scattered and in rows, the tops of men's heads: heads +dark and fair and grizzled, all bowed over the long desks, all +diminished and obscured in their effect by the heavy mahogany of their +pens, by the shining brass trellis-work that screened them, by the +emerald green of the hanging lampshades, by the blond lights and clear +shadows of the walls, and by the everlasting streaming, drifting, and +shifting of the white paper that they handled. + +The whole place was full of sounds: the hard clicking of the +typewriters, and under it the eternal rustling of the white papers, the +scratching of pens, the thud of ledgers on desks, the hiss of their +turning leaves, and the sharp smacking and slamming as they closed. + +And, in the middle of that stir and motion made by hands, all those tops +of heads were still, as if they took no part in it; through the +intensity of their absorption they were detached. Every now and then one +of them would lift and hold up a face among those tops of heads, and it +was like the sudden uncanny insurgence of an alien life. + +That stillness was abhorrent to young Ransome. So was the bowing of his +head, the cramping of his limbs, and his sense of imprisonment in his +pen. + +And all his life he would go on sitting there in that intolerable +constraint. He had no hope beyond exchanging a larger pen at the bottom +of the room for a smaller one at the top. He had begun at the very +bottom as an invoice clerk at a pound a week. He was now a statement +clerk at eight pounds a month. Working up through all his grades, he +would become a ledger clerk at twelve pounds a month. He might stick at +that forever, but if he had luck he might become a petty cashier at +sixteen pounds. That couldn't happen before he was thirty, if then. He +was bound to get his rise in the autumn. But that was no good. It +wouldn't be safe, not really safe, to marry until he had become a petty +cashier. To end in the petty cashier's narrow pen by the door, that was +the goal and summit of his ambition. + + * * * * * + +Day in day out he worked now with desperate assiduity. He bowed his +young head; he cramped his glorious limbs; he steeped his very soul in +statements of account for furniture. Furniture bought with hideous +continuity by lucky devils, opulent beasts, beasts that wallowed +inconsiderately; worst of all by beasts, abominable beasts, who couldn't +afford it and were yet about to marry and to set up house. Woolridge's +offered a shameless encouragement to these. It lured them on; it laid +out its nets for them and caught and tangled them and flung them to +their ruin. All over London and the provinces Woolridge's posters were +displayed; flaunting yet insidious posters where a young man and a young +woman with innocent, idiotic faces were seen gazing, fascinated, into +Woolridge's windows. Woolridge's artist had a wild humor that gave the +show away by exaggerating the innocence and idiocy of Woolridge's +victims. It appealed to Ransome by the audacity with which it had defied +Woolridge's to see its point. Woolridge's itself was a perpetual +tempting and solicitation. Ranny wondered how in those days he ever +resisted its appeal to him to be a man and risk it and make a home for +Winny. + + * * * * * + +And as the months went on he kept himself fitter than ever. He did +dumb-bell practice in his bedroom. He sprinted like mad. He rowed hard +on the river. He was so fit that in June (just before stock-taking) he +entered for the Wandsworth Athletic Sports, and won the silver cup +against Fred Booty in the Hurdle Race. He was more than ever punctual at +the Poly. Gym. + +And sometimes, on a Sunday afternoon, he would take Winny for a bicycle +ride into the country. He liked pushing her machine up all the hills; +still more he liked to help her in her first fierce charging of them, +with a strong hand at the back of her waist. That was nothing to the joy +of scorching on the level with linked hands. And it was best of all when +they rested, sitting side by side under a birch tree on the Common, or +lying in the long grass of the fields. + +Thus on a Sunday afternoon in June they found themselves alone in a +corner of a meadow in Southfields. All day Ransome had been overcome by +a certain melancholy which Winny for some reason affected to ignore. + +They had been silent for a perceptible time, Ransome lying on his back +while Winny, seated beside him, gathered what daisies and buttercups +were within her reach. And as he watched her sidelong, it struck him all +at once that Winny's life was worse even than his own. Winny was clever, +and she had a berth as book-keeper in Starker's, one of the smaller +drapers' shops in Oxford Street, near Woolridge's. Her position was as +good as his, yet she only earned five pounds a month to his eight. And +he hated to think of Winny working, anyway. + +"Winny," he said, suddenly, "do you like book-keeping?" + +"Of course I do," said Winny. She didn't, but she was not going to say +so lest he should think that she was discontented. + +"They--are they decent to you at Starker's?" + +"Of course they are. I would like," said Winny, in her grandest manner, +"to see anybody trying it on with _me_." + +"Oh, well, I suppose it's all right if you like it. But I +thought--perhaps--you didn't." + +"You'd no business to think." + +"Can't help it. Born thinkin'." + +"Well--it shows how much you know. I mean to enjoy life," said Winny. +"And I do enjoy it." + +Ranny, lying on his back with his face turned up to the sky, said that +that was a jolly sight more than he did; that for his part he thought it +a pretty rotten show. + +Winny stared, for this utterance was most unlike him. + +"My goodness! What ever in the world's wrong with you?" + +Everything, he answered, gloomily, was wrong. + +"What an idea!" said Winny. + +It _was_ an idea, he said, if it was nothing else. At any rate, it was +his idea. And Winny wanted to know what made him have it. + +"Oh, I dunno. There are things a fellow wants he hasn't got." + +"What sort of things?" + +"All sorts." + +"Well--don't think about them. Think," said Winny, "of the things you +_have_ got." + +"What things?" + +"Why," said Winny, counting them off on her fingers, "you've got a +father--and a mother--and new tires to your bike. Good boots" (she had +stuck buttercups in their laces) "and a most beautiful purple tie." (She +held another buttercup under his chin.) + +"It _is_ a tidy tie," Ranny admitted, smiling because of the buttercups. +"But me hat's a bit rocky." + +"Quite a good hat," said Winny, looking at it with her little head on +one side. "And you've won the silver cup for the Wandsworth Hurdle Race. +What more do you want?" + +"It's what a fellow hasn't got he wants." + +"Well, what haven't you got, then?" + +"Prospects," said Ranny. "I've no prospects. Not for years and years." + +"No," said Winny, with decision. "And didn't ought to have. Not at your +age." + +She had no sympathy for him and no understanding of his case. + +Ranny sat up, stared about him, and sighed profoundly. + +And because he could think of nothing else to say he suggested that it +was time to go. + +Winny sprang to her feet with a swiftness that implied that if it was to +go he wanted, she was more than ready to oblige him. As she mounted her +bicycle, the shut firmness of her mouth, the straightness of her back, +and the grip of her little hands on the handle bars were eloquent of her +determination to be gone. And her face, he noticed, was pinker than he +ever remembered having seen it. + +And he wondered what it was he had said. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +It was after that evening that he observed a change in her, a change +that he could neither account for nor define. It seemed to him that she +was trying to avoid him, and that he was no longer agreeably affected by +her behavior, as he had been in the beginning by her fugitive, evasive +ways. Then she had, indeed, led him a dance, but he had thoroughly +enjoyed the fun of it. Now the dancing and the fun were all over. At +least, so he was left to gather from her manner; for the strangeness of +it was that she said nothing now. There was about her a terrible +stillness and reserve, and in her little face, once so tender, the +suggestion of a possible hardness. + +He was not aware that the stillness and reserve were in himself, nor +that the hardness was in his own face as it set in his indomitable +determination to stick it, and not to do the beastly thing, nor yet that +there were moments when that stillness and that set look terrified +Winny. Neither was he aware that Winny, under all her terror, had an +instinct that divined him and understood. + +And as the months went on he saw less and less of her. Though he was +punctual at their corner in Oxford Street, he was always too late to +find Winny there. He gave that up, and began to haunt the door in +Starker's iron shutter at closing-time. He had found out that girl +clerks, what with chattering and putting on their hats and things, were +always a good ten minutes later than the men. He had seen fellows +(fellows from Woolridge's, some of them) hanging round the shutters of +the big draperies to meet the girls. By making a dash for it from +Woolridge's he could reach Starker's just in time to catch Winny as she +came out, delicately stepping through the little door in the great iron +shutter. + +Evening after evening he was there and never caught her. She was off +before he could get through the door in his own shutter. + +Then (it was one evening in August) he saw her. He was not making a dash +for it; he was strolling casually and without hope in the direction of +Starker's, and he saw her walking away, arm in arm with another girl, a +girl he had never seen before. He would have overtaken them but that the +presence of the girl deterred him. + +He followed, losing them in the crowd, recovering, losing them again; +then they turned northward up a side street and were gone. He noticed +that the strange girl was taller than Winny by the head and shoulders, +and that she went lazily, deliberately, with sudden lingerings, and +always with a curious swinging movement of her hips. He had been close +upon Winny at the corner as they turned, so close that he could have +touched her. He thought she had seen him, but he could not be sure. He +was also aware of a large eye slued round toward him in a pretty profile +that lifted itself, deep-chinned, above Winny's head. Their behavior +agitated him, but he forbore to track them further. Decency told him +that that would be dishonorable. + +The next evening and the next he watched the door in the iron shutter, +and was too late for Winny. But the third evening he saw her standing by +the door and talking to the same strange girl. The girl had her back to +him, but Winny faced him. She was not aware of him at first; but, at the +signal that he gave, she turned sharply and went from him, drawing the +girl with her, arm in arm. + +They disappeared northward up the same side street as before. + +That was on a Friday. On Sunday he called at St. Ann's Terrace and saw +Maudie Hollis, who told him that Winny had gone up Hampstead way. No, +not for good, but with a friend. She had been very much taken up lately +with a friend. + +"You know what she is when she's taken up," said Maudie. + +He sighed unaware, and Maudie answered his sigh. + +"It isn't a gentleman friend." + +"No?" It was wonderful the indifference Ranny packed into that little +word. + +"Catch _her_!" said Maudie. + +She smiled at him as he turned away, and in the middle of his own misery +it struck him that poor Maudie would have to wait many years before +Booty could afford to marry her, and that already her proud beauty was a +little sharpened and a little dimmed by waiting. + +On Monday he refrained from hanging round the door in Starker's iron +shutter. But on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday he was at his post, and +remained there till the door was shut almost in his face. + +On Friday he was late, and he could see even in the distance the shut +door. + +But somebody was there, somebody was standing close up against the +shutter; somebody who moved forward a step as he came, somebody who had +been waiting for him. It was not Winny. It was the tall girl. + +He raised his hat in answer to the movement that was her signal, and +would have passed on, but she stopped him. She stood almost in front of +him, so that he should not pass. And the biggest and darkest blue eyes +he had ever seen arrested him with a strange bending on him of black +brows. + +The strange girl was saying something to him, in a voice full and yet +low, a voice with a sort of thick throb in it, and in its thickness a +sweet and poignant quality. + +"Please," it was saying, "excuse me, you're Mr. Ransome, aren't +you--Winny Dymond's friend?" + +With a "Yes" that strangled itself and became inarticulate, he admitted +that he was Mr. Ransome. + +The girl lowered her eyelids (deep white eyelids they were, and hung +with black fringes, marvelously thick and long); she lowered them as if +her own behavior and his had made her shy. + +"I'm Winny's friend, too," she said. "That's why I'm here." + +And with that she looked him in the face with eyes that shot at him a +clear blue out of their darkness. Her eyes, as he expressed it +afterward, were "stunners," and they were "queer"; they were the +"queerest" thing about her. That was his word for their +half-fascinating, half-stupefying quality. + +"Are you waiting for her?" he asked. + +"No. It's no good waiting for her. She's gone." + +"Gone?" + +"Gone home." + +He rallied. "Then what are you waiting for?" + +"I was waiting for you," she said, "to tell you that it's no good." + +He had moved a little way out of the stream of people, so that he was +now placed with his back against the shutter, and she with her shoulder +to the stream. As she stood thus a man jostled her, more to attract her +attention than to move her from his path. She gave a little gasp and +shrank back with a movement that brought her nearer to Ransome and to +his side. And as she moved there came from her, from her clothes, and +from her hair, a faint odor of violets, familiar yet wonderful. + +"You don't mind my speaking to you?" she said. + +"No," said he, "but let's get out of this first." + +He put his hand lightly on her arm to steer her through the stream. +There was something about her--it may have been in her voice, or in the +way she looked at him--something helpless that implored and entreated +and appealed to his young manhood for protection. Her arm yielded to his +touch, yet with a slight pressure that made him aware that its tissue +was of an incredible softness. Somehow, for the moment while this touch +and pressure lasted, he found it impossible to look at her. Some +instinct held his eyes from her, as if he had been afraid. + +They moved on slowly, aimlessly it seemed to Ransome; yet steering he +was steered, northward, up the side street where he had seen her +disappear with Winny. It was quiet there. He no longer touched her. He +could look at her now. + +He looked. And what he saw was a girl well grown and of incomparable +softness. She could not have been much more than twenty, but her body +was already rounded to the full flower of its youth. This body was +neither tall nor slender nor particularly graceful. Yet it carried +itself with an effect of tallness and slenderness and grace. + +In the same way she impressed him as being well dressed. Yet she only +wore a little plain black gown cut rather low, with a broad lace collar. +There was a black velvet band round her waist and another on her wide +black hat. And yet another and a narrower band of black velvet round her +full white neck. + +The face above that neck was not beautiful, for her little straight nose +was a shade too blunt, her upper lip a shade too long and too flat; her +large mouth, red and sullen-sweet, a shade too unfinished at the edges. +There was, moreover, a hint of fullness about the jaw and chin. But the +color and the texture of this face made almost imperceptible its flaws +of structure. It was as if it had erred only through an excess of +softness that made the flesh of it plastic to its blood, to the subtle +flame that transfused the white of it, flushing and burning to rose-red. +A flame that even in soaring knew its place; for it sank before it could +diminish the amazing blueness of her eyes; and it had left her forehead +and her eyelids to the whiteness that gave accent to eyebrows and +eyelashes black as her black hair. + +That was how this girl's face, that was not beautiful, contrived to give +an impression of strange beauty, fascinating and stupefying as her +voice. + +Her voice had begun again. + +"It really isn't any good," it said. + +"What isn't?" + +"Your hanging about like this. It won't help you. It won't, really. You +don't know Winny." + +"I say, did she ask you to tell me that?" + +"Not she! 'Tisn't likely. And if she did, you don't suppose I'd let on. +I'm giving you the straight tip. I'm telling you what I know about her. +I'm her friend, else I couldn't do it." + +"But--why?" + +"Don't ask me--how do I know? I suppose I couldn't stand seeing you +waiting outside there, night after night, all for nothing." + +She drew herself up, so that she seemed to be looking down at him; she +seemed, with all her youth, to be older than he, to be no longer +childlike and innocent and helpless. And her voice, her incomparable +voice, had an edge to it; it was the voice of maturity, of experience, +of the wisdom of the world. + +"You can take it from me," said this voice, "that it doesn't do a man a +bit of good to go on hanging about a girl and worrying her when she +doesn't want him." + +"You mean--she doesn't like me?" + +"Like you? As far as I know she likes you well enough." + +"Then--for the life of me I can't see why--" + +"Liking a man isn't wanting him. And you're not going the way to make +Winny want you." + +"Oh--" + +He had drawn up in the middle of the pavement just to consider whether, +after all, there wasn't something in it. + +"You're--you're not offended?" Her voice implored now and pleaded. + +"That's all right." + +"Well--if you're sure you're not--would you mind seeing me home?" + +"Certainly. With pleasure." + + * * * * * + +She was all helpless again and childlike, and he liked her that way +best. + +"I don't like the streets," she explained. "I'm afraid of them. I mean +I'm afraid of the people in them. They stare at me something awful. So +horribly rude, isn't it, to stare?" + +"Rude?" said Ransome. "It's disgustin'." + +"As if there was something peculiar about me. Do _you_ see anything +peculiar about me? Anything, I mean, to make them stare?" + +He was silent. + +"_Do_ you?" she insisted, poignantly. + +They were advancing headlong toward intimacy and its embarrassments. + +"Well, no," he said, "if you ask me--no, I don't. Except that, don't you +know, you're--" + +"I'm what?" + +"Well--" + +"Oh!" (She became more poignant than ever.) "You _do_, then--" + +"No, I don't--on my honor I--I only meant that--well, you _are_ a bit +out of the way, you know." + +Her large gaze interrogated him. + +"Out of the way all round, I should fancy. Something rather wonderful." + +"Something--rather--wonderful--" she repeated, drowsily. + +"Strikes me so--that's all." + +"Strange?" + +"Sort of--" + +"It _is_ strange that we should be talking this way--when you think-- +Why, you don't even know my name." + +"No more I do," said Ransome. + +"My name is Violet. Violet Usher. Do you like it?" + +"Very much," said Ransome. + +He did not know if this was "cock-a-tree"; but if it was he found +himself enjoying it. + +"And yours is Randall. Mr. Randall Ransome, aren't you?" + +"I say, you know; how did you get hold of that?" + +"Why--Winny told me." + +In the strangeness of it all he had forgotten Winny. + +"Then she told you wrong. Now I think of it, Winny doesn't know my real +name. My real name would take your breath away." + +"Tell it me." + +"Well--if you will have it--stand well back and hold your hat on. Don't +let it catch you full in the face. John--Randall--Fulleymore--Ransome. +Now you know me." + +She smiled enchantingly. "Not quite. But I know something about you +Winny doesn't know. That's strange, isn't it?" + +It was, if you came to think of it. + +They had crossed the Euston Road now, and Miss Usher turned presently up +another side street going north. She stopped at a door in a long row of +dingy houses. + +"This is me," she said, "I've got a room here. It was awfully good of +you to bring me." + +"Not at all," he murmured. + +"And you're sure you didn't mind my speaking to you like that? I +wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been Winny's friend." + +"Of course not." + +She was not sure whether he were answering her question or assenting to +her statement. + +"And now," she said, "you're going home?" + +"I suppose so." But he remained rooted to the doorstep, digging into a +crevice in it with his stick. + +From the upper step she watched him intently. + +"And we sha'n't see each other again." + +_He_ was not sure whether it was a statement or a question. + +"Sha'n't we?" He said it submissively, as if she really knew. + +She was opening the door now and letting herself in. Miss Usher had a +latch key. + +"Where?" said Miss Usher, softly, but with incision. She had turned now +and was standing on her threshold. + +"Oh--anywhere--" + +"Anywhere's nowhere." Miss Usher was smiling at him, but as she smiled +she stepped back and shut the door in his excited face. + +He turned away, more stupefied than ever. + +For the first time in his life he had encountered mystery. And he had no +name for it. + +But he had made a note of her street, and of the number of her door. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +That night Ransome was more than ever the prey of thought, if you could +call it thought, that mad racing and careering of his brain which +followed his encounter with Miss Usher. The stupefaction which had been +her first effect had given way to a peculiar excitement and activity of +mind. When he said to himself that Miss Usher had behaved queerly, he +meant that she had acted with a fine defiance of convention. And she had +carried it off. She had compelled him to accept her with her mystery as +a thing long known. She had pushed the barriers aside, and in a moment +she had established intimacy. + +For only intimacy could have excused her interference with his innermost +affairs. She had given him an amount of warning and advice that he would +not have tolerated from his own mother. And she had used some charm that +made it impossible for him to resent it. What could well be queerer than +that he should be told by a girl he did not know that his case was +hopeless, that he must give up running after Winny Dymond, that he was +only persecuting a girl who didn't care for him. Ransome had no doubt +that she had spoken out of some secret and mystic knowledge of her +friend. + +He supposed that women understood each other. + +And after all what had she done that was so extraordinary? She had only +put into words--sensible words--his own misgivings, his own profound +distrust of the event. + +What _was_ extraordinary, if he could have analyzed it, was the calmness +that mingled with his disturbance. Calmness with regard to Winny and to +the issue taken out of his hands and decided for him; calmness, and yet +a pain, a distinct pain that he was not subtle enough to recognize as +remorse for a disloyalty. And, under it all, that nameless, inexplicable +excitement, as if for the first time in the affairs of sex, he had a +sense of mystery and of adventure. + +He did not ask himself how it was that Winny had not stirred that sense +in him. He did not refer it definitely to Violet Usher. It had moved in +the air about her; but it remained when she was gone. + + * * * * * + +So far was he from referring it to Miss Usher that when it died down he +made no attempt to revive it by following the adventure. He was +restrained by some obscure instinct of self-preservation, also by the +absurd persistence with which in thought he returned again and again to +Winny Dymond. That recurrent tenderness for Winny, a girl who had no +sort of tenderness for him, was a thing he did not mean to encourage +more than he could help. Still, it kept him from running after any other +girl. He was not in love with Violet Usher, and so, gradually, her magic +lost its hold upon his memory. + + * * * * * + +Autumn came, and with it another Grand Display at the Polytechnic +Gymnasium, the grandest he had yet known. As if it had been some great +civic function, it was attended by the Mayor of Marylebone in his robes. +To be sure, the Mayor, who was "going on" that night, left some time +before the performance of Mr. J. R. F. Ransome on the Horizontal Bar. + +But Ranny was not aware of the disappearance of the Mayor. He was not +perfectly aware of his own amazing evolutions on the horizontal bar. He +was not perfectly aware of anything but the face and eyes of Violet +Usher fixed on him from the side gallery above. The gallery was crowded +with other faces and with other eyes, all fixed on him; but he was not +aware of them. The gallery was for him a solitude pervaded by the +presence of Violet Usher. + +She was seated in the front row directly opposite him; her arms were +laid along the balustrade, and she leaned out over them, bending her +dark brows toward him, immovable and intent. He did not know whether she +was alone there. To all appearance she was alone, for her face remained +fixed above her arms, and it was as if her eyes never once looked away +from him. + +And under their gaze an exultation seized him and a fierce desire, not +only to exceed and to excel all other performers on the horizontal bar, +but to go beyond himself; beyond his ordinary punctual precision; beyond +the mere easy swing and temperate rhythm. Instead of the old +good-natured rivalry, it was as if he struggled and did battle in some +supreme and terrible fight. Each movement that he made fired his blood; +from the first flinging of his lithe body upward, and the sliding of its +taut muscles on the bar, to the frenzy of his revolving, triumphal, +glorious to behold. Each muscle and each nerve had its own peculiar +ecstasy. + +And when he dropped from the high bar to the floor he stood tingling and +trembling and breathless from the queer violence with which his heart +threw itself about. So utterly had he gone beyond himself. And he knew +that his demonstration had not been quite so triumphal, so glorious as +he had thought it. There had been far too much hurry and excitement +about it. And Booty told him he was all right, but perhaps not quite up +to his usual form. + +It was with the air of a conqueror that Ranny pushed his way through the +packed line of spectators in the gallery. It was with a crushed and +nervous air, as of some great artist, conscious of his aim and of his +failure, that he presented himself to Violet Usher, sliding slantwise +into the place she made for him. + +It was as if she had known that he would come to her. They shook hands +awkwardly. And with the stirring of her body there came from her that +faint warm odor of violets. + +"I didn't expect to see you here," he said, at last. + +"Winny brought me; else I shouldn't have come." + +She was very precise in making Winny responsible for her appearance. He +gathered that that was her idea of propriety. + +"Well--anyhow--it's a bit of all right," he said. Then they sat silent +for a while. + +And the girl's face turned to Ranny with a flying look; and it was as if +she had touched him with her eyes, lightly and shyly, and was gone. Then +her eyes began slowly to look him up and down, up and down, from his +bare neck and arms, white against the thin crimson binding of his +"zephyr," from his shoulders and from his chest where the lines and +bosses of the muscles showed under the light gauze, and from his crimson +belt, down the firm long slopes to his knees; and it was as if her eyes +brushed him, palpably, with soft feather strokes. They rested on his +face; and it was as if they held him between two ardent hands. And over +her own face as she looked at him there went a little wave of change. +Her rich color stirred and deepened; her lips parted for the quick +passage of her breath; and her blue eyes looked gray as if veiled in a +light vapor. + +Ranny was seized with an overpowering, a terrible consciousness of +himself and of his evolutions on the horizontal bar. + +"Well," he said, as if in apology, "you've seen me figuring queerly." + +"Oh, it's all right for men," she said. "Besides, I've seen _you_ +before." + +"Why, you weren't here last time?" + +"No. Not here." + +"Where, then? Where on earth can you have seen me?" + +She bent her brows at him in that way she had, under the brim of her +wide hat. "I saw you at Wandsworth--at the Sports--running in that race. +When you won the cup." + +"Oh, Lord," said Ranny, expressing his innermost confusion. + +"Well, I'm sure you ran beautifully." + +"Oh, yes, I _ran_ all right." + +"And you jumped!" + +"Anybody can jump," said Ranny. + +"Can they?" + +"Oh, Lord, yes. You should see Fred Booty." + +"I did see him. You won the cup off him." + +She drew herself up, in that other way she had, as if challenged. + +"And he'll win it off me next year. You bet. Look--here they are." + +Some instinct, risen he knew not whence, compelled him to divert her +gaze. + +From below in the great hall came the sound of the rhythmic padding and +tramping of feet. The Young Ladies of the Polytechnic were marching in. +Right and left they wheeled, and right and left ranged themselves in two +long lines under the galleries. Now they were marking time with the +stiff rise and fall of black stockings under the short tunics. Facing +them, at the head of her rank, was Winny Dymond, very upright and +earnest. And with each movement of her hips the crimson sash of +leadership swung in rhythm at her side. + +Miss Usher turned to him. "Is Winny with them?" + +"Rather. There she is. Right opposite. Jolly she looks, doesn't she?" + +Miss Usher looked at Winny. The bent black brows bent lower, and a large +blue eye slued round into her profile, darting a sudden light at him. + +"Don't ask _me_," she said, "I'm sure _I_ don't know." And she turned +her shoulder on him and sat thus averted, gazing at her own hands folded +in her lap. + +Ransome leaned out over the balustrade and watched Winny. And for a +moment, as he watched her, he felt again the old sense of tenderness and +absurdity, mingled, this time, with that mysterious pain. + +A barbell struck on the floor. A feminine voice gave the sharp word of +command, and the Young Ladies formed up for their performance on the +parallel bars. + +Miss Usher still sat averted. + +"Look," he said, at last, "it's Winny's turn." + +She turned slowly, reluctantly almost, and looked. + +Winny Dymond, shy, but grave and earnest, was going through her little +preliminary byplay at the bars. Then, with her startling suddenness, she +rushed at them, and swung herself, it seemed to Ransome, with an +increased abandonment, a wilder rhythm and motion; and when she raised +her body like an arch, far-stretching and wide-planted, it seemed to him +that it rose higher and stretched farther and wider than before, that +there was, in fact, something preposterous in her attitude. For as Miss +Usher looked at Winny she drew herself up and her red mouth stiffened. + +Ranny's tension relaxed when Winny flung herself from side to side again +and over, and lighted on her feet in the little curtseying posture, +perfunctory and pathetic. + +He clapped his hands. "'Jove! That's good!" He was smiling tenderly. + +He turned to Miss Usher, eager and delighted. "Well--what'd you think of +it?" + +The eyes he gazed into were remote and cold. Miss Usher did not answer +him. And he gathered from her silence that she disapproved profoundly of +the performance. He wondered why. + +"Oh, come," he said. "She's the best we've got. There's not one of those +girls that can touch her on the bars. Look at them." + +"I don't want to look at them. I didn't think it would be like that. I'm +not used to it. I've never been to a Gymnasium in my life before." + +"You ought to come. You should join us, Miss Usher. Why don't you?" + +"Thank you, Mr. Ransome, I'd rather not. I don't see myself!" + +He didn't see her either. Some of his innocence had gone. She had taken +it away from him. He was beginning to understand how Winny's performance +had struck her. It was magnificent, but it was not a thing that could be +done by a nice woman, by a woman who respected herself and her own +womanhood and her own beauty; not a thing that could be done by Violet +Usher. He was not sure that in her view it was consistent with +propriety, with reticence, with a perfect purity. And he began to wonder +whether his own view of it had not been a little shameless. + +He rushed, for sheer decency, into a stuttering defense. + +"Well, but--well, but--but it's all right, don't you know?" + +"It's all right for men. They're different. But--" + +"Not right for women?" + +"If you reelly want to know--no. I don't think it is. It isn't pretty, +for one thing." + +"Oh, I say--how about Winny?" + +"Winny's different. It doesn't seem to matter so much for her." + +"Why not--for her?" + +"Well--she's a queer creature anyhow." + +"How d'you mean--queer?" + +"Well--more like a boy, somehow, than a girl. She doesn't care. She'll +do anything. And she's plucky. If she's taken a thing into her head +she'll go through with it whatever you say." + +"Yes, she's got pluck," he assented. "_And_ cheek." + +"Mind you, she's as good as gold, with all her queerness. But it _is_ +queer, Mr. Ransome, if you're a woman, not to care what you do, or what +you look like doing it. And she's so innocent, she doesn't reelly know. +She couldn't do it if she did. All the same, I wish she wouldn't." + +She seemed to brood over it in beautiful distress. + +"It's a pity that the boys encourage them. Boys don't mind, of course. +But _men_ don't like it." + +And with every word of her strange, magical voice there went from him +some shred of innocence and illusion. It was, of course, his innocence, +his ignorance that had made him tolerant of a Grand Display, that had +filled him with admiration for the Young Ladies of the Polytechnic +Gymnasium, and that had attracted him to Winny Dymond. Everything he had +thought and felt about Winny was illusion. It was illusion, that sense +she gave him of tenderness and of absurdity. Gymnastics were all very +well in their way. But nice women, the women that men cared about, women +like Violet Usher, did not make of their bodies a spectacle in Grand +Displays. Little Winny, whatever she did, was all right, of course; but +now he came to think of it, he began to wish, like Violet Usher, that +she wouldn't do it. It was as a boy and her comrade that he had admired +her. It was as a man that he criticized her now, looking at her through +Violet Usher's eyes. And it was as a boy that he had cared, and as a man +that he had ceased to care. + +In one night Ranny had suddenly grown up. + +Of course, it might have been different if she had cared for _him_. + +"What does it mean, the Combined Maze? What is it?" + +Miss Usher was studying her programme. + +The Combined Maze? That wasn't so easy to explain. But Ranny explained +it. It was, he said, a maze, because you ran it winding in and out like, +and combined, because men and women ran in it all mixed up together. +They made patterns accordin' as they ran, and the patterns were the plan +of the maze. You didn't see the plan. You didn't know it, unless you +were leader. You just followed. + +"I see. Men and women together." + +"Men and women together." + +"Are you running in it?" + +"Yes." + +"Does Winny run in it?" + +"Rather. We run together. You'll see how it's done." + +Miss Usher thought she saw. + + * * * * * + +And they ran in it together, Ransome with Winny before him, turning from +him, parting from him, flying from him, and returning to him again. +Always with the same soft pad of her feet, the same swaying of her +sturdy, slender body, the same rising and falling on her shoulders of +her childish door-knocker plat. + +Winny was a child; that was all that could be said of her; and he, he +was a man, grown up suddenly in a single night. + +He ran, perfunctorily, through all the foolish turnings and windings of +the maze. He put his hands on Winny's waist to guide her when, in her +excitement, she went wrong. He linked his arm with hers when they ran +locked, shoulder to shoulder, in the Great Wheel; but it was as if he +held and caught, and was locked together with a child. Winny's charm was +gone; and with it gone the sense of tenderness and absurdity; gone the +magic and the madness of the running. For in Ranny's heart there was +another magic and another madness. And it was as if Life itself had +caught him and locked him with a woman in the whirling of its Great +Wheel. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +He haunted that door in the shutter more than ever in the hope of seeing +Violet Usher. Not that he wanted to haunt it. It was as if, set his feet +southward as he would, they were turned back irresistibly and drawn +eastward in the direction of the door. + +There was nothing furtive and secret in his haunting. He had a right to +hang about Starker's, for he knew Miss Usher now. He had been formally +introduced to her by Winny as they left the Polytechnic together, on the +night of the Grand Display. Winny, preoccupied with her own performance +on the parallel bars, had remained unaware of their communion in the +gallery, and Violet Usher had evidently judged it best to say nothing +about their previous interviews. + +The introducing, of course, made all the difference in the world; for +Ransome, reckless as he was, respected the conventions where women were +concerned. He had seen too much of the secret and furtive ways of other +fellows, and he knew what their hanging about meant. It meant in nine +cases out of ten that they wanted kicking badly. And Ranny would have +told you gravely that, in his experience, it was the "swells" who wanted +kicking most of all. The "fellows," the shop assistants, and the young +clerks, like himself, were fairly decent, but sometimes they wanted +kicking, too, and in any case the "flabby" way they fooled about with +girls, and their "silly goats' talk" outraged Ranny. It made a girl +cheap, and kept other fellows off her. It didn't give her her chance. It +wasn't cricket. + +He was prepared to kick, personally, any fellow he found making Winny +Dymond or Violet Usher cheap. + +Not that Winny lent herself to cheapness, but about Violet he was not +quite sure. And if you had asked why not, he would have told you it was +because she was so different. By which he meant so dangerously, so +disastrously feminine and innocent and pretty. He knew now (she had +"jolly well shown him") that Winny could take care of herself; but +Violet, no; she was too impulsive, too helpless, too confiding. To think +of her waiting for him like that--for a fellow she'd never met +before--in Oxford Street at closing-time! How did she know that he +wasn't a blackguard? Supposing it had been some other fellow? Ranny's +muscles quivered as he thought of Violet's innocence and Violet's +danger. + +All this was luminously clear to Ranny. + +But when he asked himself why, and to what end he himself desired to +cultivate her acquaintance, it was there that obscurity set in. One +thing he was sure about. He did not intend to marry her. If he couldn't +afford to marry Winny he most certainly could not afford to marry +Violet, not for years and years, so many years that you might just as +well say never, and have done with it. Violet was not the sort of girl +you could ask to wait for you years and years. His youth was not too +sanguine to divine in her the makings of a more expensive woman than +even a petty cashier could afford. + +To be sure, Ranny did not enter into any sordid calculations, neither +did he think the thing out in so many words; for in this matter of +Violet Usher he was incapable of any sustained and connected thought. It +came to him--the utter hopelessness of it--in glimpses and by flashes, +as he sat at his high desk in the counting-house. + +But no flashes came to him with the question, Why, then, did he keep on +running after Violet Usher? He ran because he couldn't help it; because +of the sheer excitement of the running; because he was venturesome, and +because of the very mystery and danger of the adventure. + +But, though he hung round Starker's evening after evening, from the +middle to the very end of October, he never once caught sight of Violet +Usher. Winny he caught, as often as not, now that he had given up trying +to catch her; sometimes he caught her at Starker's, sometimes at their +old corner by the Gymnasium; and whenever he caught her he walked home +with her. If Winny did not positively seek capture, she no longer +positively evaded it. She was no longer afraid of him, recognizing, no +doubt, that he wanted nothing of her, that he would never worry her +again. It was as if she had given him his lesson, and was content now +that he had learned it. + +One night, early in November, as they were going over Wandsworth Bridge, +the question that had been burning in him suddenly flared up. + +"What has become of your friend Miss Usher?" + +"Nothing," said Winny, "has become of her. She's gone home. Her father +sent for her." + +"What ever for?" + +"To look after her. She never should have left home." + +Then she told him what she knew of Violet, bit by bit, as he drew it out +of her. She was very fond of Violet. Violet had pretty ways that made +you fond of her. Everybody was fond of Violet. Only her people--they'd +been a bit too harsh and strict with her, Winny fancied. Not that she +knew anything but what Violet had told her. + +Where was her home? + +In the country. Down in Hertfordshire. Her father was a farmer, a small +farmer. The trouble was that Violet couldn't bear the country. She +wouldn't stay a day in it if she could help it. She was all for life. +She'd been about a year in town. No, Winny hadn't known her for a year. +Only for a few months really, since she came to Starker's. She'd been in +several situations before that. She was assistant at the ribbon counter +at Starker's. The clerks didn't have anything to do with the shop girls +as a rule: but Winny thought the custom silly and stuck up. Anyhow, +she'd taken a fancy to Violet, seeing her go in and out. And Violet +needed a deal of looking after. She was like a child. A spoiled child +with little ways. Winny had tried her best to take care of her, but she +couldn't be taking care of her all the time. She was glad she had gone +home, though she was so fond of her. But she was afraid she wouldn't +stay long. + +"You think," said Ransome, "she'll come back?" + +"I shouldn't be surprised if she turned up any day." + +"And you'll take care of her?" + +"Yes, I shall take care of her." + +He looked at her, and for a moment it revived, it stirred in his heart, +that odd mingled sense of absurdity and tenderness. + + * * * * * + +She would come back, he told himself; she would come back. Meanwhile he +could call his soul his own, to say nothing of his body. Under all the +shock of it Ransome felt a certain relief in realizing that Violet Usher +had gone. It was as if some danger, half discerned, had been hanging +over him and had gone with her. + +But winter and spring passed, and she did not come back. They passed +monotonously, like all the springs and winters he had known. He had got +his rise at Michaelmas; but he was free from the obsession of the +matrimonial idea and all that he now looked forward to was an indefinite +extension of the Athletic Life. + +In June of nineteen-four he entered for the Wandsworth Athletic Sports. +He hoped to win the silver cup for the Hurdle Race, against Fred Booty, +as he had done last year. + +Wandsworth was sure of its J. R. F. Ransome. Putney and Wimbledon, +competing, were not sending any better men than they had sent last year. +And this year, as Booty owned, Ransome was "a fair masterpiece," a young +miracle of fitness. His admirable form, hitherto equal to young Booty's, +was improved by strenuous training, and at his worst he had what Booty +hadn't, a fire and a spirit, a power, utterly incalculable, of sudden +uprush and outburst, like the loosening of a secret energy. When he +flagged it would rise in him and sting him to the spurt. But, while it +made him the darling of the crowd, it was apt to upset the betting of +experts at the last minute. + +There is a level field not far from Wandsworth which is let for football +matches and athletic sports. Railings and broken hedges and a few elm +trees belt the field. All round the space marked out for the contest, a +ring of ropes held back the straining crowd; and all round, within the +ring, went the course for the mile-flat race. Down one side of the +field, facing the Grand Stand, was the course for the jumping, for the +hundred yards' flat race, and for the hurdle race, which was the last +event. On this side, where the crowd was thickest, the rope was +supplemented by a wooden barrier. + +The starting-post was on the right near the entrance to the field; the +winning-post on the left directly opposite the Grand Stand. Those who +could not buy tickets for the Grand Stand had to secure front places at +the barrier if they wished to see anything. + +Here, then, there was a tight-packed line of men and women, youths and +girls, with an excited child here and there squeezed in among them, or +squatting at their feet under the barrier. Here were young Tyser and +Buist and Wauchope of the Polytechnic, who had come to cheer. And here, +by the winning-post, well in the front, having been there since the +gates were open, were Maudie Hollis and Winny Dymond, in flower-wreathed +hats and clean white frocks. Behind, conspicuous in their seats on the +Grand Stand as became them, were Mr. and Mrs. Randall, and with them was +Ranny's mother. + +For all these persons there was but one event--the Hurdle Race. For all +of them, expectant, concentrated on the imminence of the Final Heat, +there was but one distraction, and that was the remarkable behavior of a +young woman who had arrived too late for a satisfactory place among the +crowd. + +She had wriggled and struggled through the rear, with such success that +her way to the front row was obstructed only by the bodies of two small +children. They were firmly wedged, yet not so firmly but that a +determined young woman could detach them by exerting adequate pressure. +This she did; and having loosened the little creatures from their +foot-hold, she partly lifted, partly shoved them behind her and slipped +into their places at the barrier. This high-handed act roused the +resentment of a young man, the parent or guardian of the children. He +wanted to know what she thought she was doing, shoving there, and told +her that the kids had as much right to see the blooming show as she had, +and he'd trouble her to give 'em back the place she'd taken. And it was +then that the young woman revealed herself as remarkable. For she turned +and bent upon that young man a pair of black brows with blue eyes +smiling under them, and said to him in a vivid voice that penetrated to +the Grand Stand, "Excuse me, but I _do_ so want to see." And the young +man, instead of making the obvious retort, took off his hat and begged +her pardon and gave her more room than she had taken. + +"Well," said Mr. Randall (for he had been observing her for some time +with sidelong appreciation), "some people have a way with them." + +"Some people have impudence," said Mrs. Randall. + +"And if it was you or me, Bessie," Mrs. Ransome said, "it wouldn't have +been made so easy for us." + +"I see you wanting to shove anybody, Emmy," said her brother. + +"If I did, I shouldn't begin with little innocent children. I should +shove some one of my own size." + +Then they were silent and paid no more attention to the young woman and +her ways. + +For far down at the end of the course the racers, the winners of the +first four heats, were being ranged for the start, four abreast; the two +young men from Putney and Wimbledon on the inside of the course, Fred +Booty in the middle, and Ransome outside. Booty knew that, starting even +with his rival, he hadn't much of a chance. As for the young men from +Putney and Wimbledon, they would be nowhere. + +Of those four young bodies, Ransome's was by far the finest. Even Booty, +with his wild slenderness and faunlike grace, could not be compared with +Ransome, so well knit, so perfect in every limb was he. Beside him the +two young men from Putney and Wimbledon were distinctly weedy. He stood +poised, with head uplifted, his keen mouth tight shut, his nostrils +dilated, his eyes gazing forward, intent on the signal for the start. +His brown hair, soaked in the sweat of the first heat and then +sun-dried, was crisped and curled about his head. Under his white gauze +"zephyr" and black running-drawers the charged muscles quivered. His +whole body was a quivering vehicle for the leashed soul of speed. + +The pistol-shot was fired. They let themselves go. From far up the +course by the winning-post, where Winny leaned out over the barrier, it +was as if at the first row of hurdles four bodies leaped into the air +like one and wriggled there. At the sixth row, well in sight, two +bodies, Booty and Ransome, soared clean and dropped together. Putney and +Wimbledon rose wriggling close behind their drop. At the seventh row +Ransome was in front, divided from Booty by an almost imperceptible +interval. Putney and Wimbledon were several yards behind. At the eighth +and the ninth hurdles he rose gloriously and alone; Booty dropped with a +dull thud a yard behind him. Putney and Wimbledon were nowhere. Nobody +looked at them as they went lolloping, unevenly, dejectedly, over their +seventh hurdle. + +And now Booty was catching up, but the race was Ransome's. He knew it. +Booty knew it. The field knew it. + +Ranny's mother knew it. Little shivers went up and down her back; there +was a painful constriction in her throat, and tears of excitement in her +eyes; her hand was clenched convulsively over her pocket handkerchief +which had rolled itself into a ball. She had been holding herself in; +for she knew that these symptoms would increase when she saw Ranny, her +boy, come running. + +Below, at the barrier, there were hoarse cries, shrill cries, deep +shouting. "Go it, Ransome! Go it, old Wandsworth! Wandsworth wins!" +Tyser and Buist and Wauchope were yelling "Stick it, Ranny! Stick it!" +"Stick it!" "Stick--it!" The last voice, which was Wauchope's, died away +in a groan. + +Somebody was leaning over the barrier, on a line with the last hurdles. +Somebody stretched out an arm and shook a little white handkerchief at +him as he came on. Somebody caught his eyes and struck him with a blue +flash under black brows. She struck and fixed him as he ran to his last +leap. + +He looked at her and started and stood staggering with checked speed. +And as he staggered Booty rose slenderly and dropped and rushed on to +the tape-line at the winning-posts. The white tape fluttered across him +as he breasted it. Booty had won the race. + +They cheered him; they were bound to cheer the winner. But at the +barrier and from the Grand Stand there burst forth a more frantic uproar +of applause as Ransome recovered himself and took his last hurdle at a +stand. + +It was all very well to cheer him; but he was beaten, beaten in the race +that was his. + + * * * * * + +He staggered out of the course. Hanging his head, and heedless of his +friends, and of Booty's hand on his bent shoulder, he went and hid +himself in the dressing-tent. + +And there in the dressing-tent, his faunlike face more sanguine than +ever in his passion, Booty burst out like a young lunatic. He swore most +horribly. He swore at the umpire. He swore at Ransome. He swore at +everybody all round. The more Ranny congratulated him, the more he swore +at him. He called Ranny a blanky young fool, and asked him what the +blank he did it for. He said it was a blanky shame, and that if anybody +tried to give _him_ a blanky cup, he'd throw it at 'em. Even when they'd +calmed him down a bit, he still swore that he'd give Ranny the cup, for +Ranny'd given him the race. He explained to them in his hoarsest tones +that it stood to reason he could never have got in with the pace Ranny'd +got on him. It wasn't fair, he said. It was a fluke, a blanky fluke. + +And round him Tyser and Buist and Wauchope clamored in the tent and +agreed with him, declaring that it wasn't fair. Of course it was a +fluke, a blanky fluke. + +And Ranny, though he told Booty to dry up and stow it; though he put it +to Tyser and Buist and Wauchope that it wasn't any blanky fluke, that it +couldn't well be fairer, seeing how he'd funked it at the finish, Ranny +knew in his heart that somewhere there was something queer about it. He +couldn't think why on earth he'd funked it. + + * * * * * + +That night, in her little room in St. Ann's Terrace, Winny lay awake and +cried. + +Violet Usher had come back. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +It was from the next day, Sunday, that he dated it--what happened. It +followed as a sequel to the events of Sunday. + +For Ransome was convinced that it never could have happened if he had +not gone with Wauchope on Sunday evening to that Service for Men. He +used to say that if you traced it back far enough, poor old Wauchope was +at the bottom of it. It was poor old Wauchope who had "rushed" him for +the Service (in calling him poor old Wauchope, he recognized him as the +unknowing and unwilling thing of Destiny). Thus it had its root and rise +in the extraordinary state of Wauchope's soul. + +Wauchope had realized that he _had_ a soul, and was beginning to take an +interest in it. That, of course, was not the way he put it when he +approached Ransome on Saturday night after the Sports Dinner at the +"Golden Eagle." All he said was that he was "in for it." Been let in by +a curate johnnie who'd rushed him for a Service for Men to-morrow night +at Clapham. Wauchope wasn't going because he wanted to, but because the +curate was such a decent chap he didn't like to disappoint him. He ran a +Young Men's Club in St. Matthias's, Clapham, and Wauchope helped him by +looking in now and then for a knock-up with the gloves. The curate was +handy with the gloves himself. A bit cumbrous, but fancied himself as a +featherweight, in a skipping, dodging, dance-all-round-you, +land-you-one-presently sort of style. Well, the curate johnnie had been +handing round printed invitations for this Service. "All Welcome," don't +you know? "Come, and bring a Friend." Wauchope had promised, Honor +Bright, he'd come and bring a friend. And Ransome, in a weak moment, had +consented to be brought. + +The Service would be at eight, and would last, say, till nine. Half past +nine was the very earliest hour he could fix for his appointment with +Miss Usher. + +For he had seen her. She had risen up before him, to his amazement, on +that Sunday evening, as he turned out of his own door on his way to +supper with Wauchope at Clapham. He had walked with her for five +minutes, wheeling his bicycle in the gutter, while they settled how and +where they were to meet. + +She was living in Wandsworth, lodging in St. Ann's Terrace, near to +Winny Dymond, so that Winny could take care of her. She had got another +situation at Starker's, in the millinery department. + +He proposed that he should meet her at closing-time to-morrow, and she +smiled at him and said she didn't mind; but Winny would be there (he had +forgotten Winny). Then he suggested next Saturday afternoon or Sunday +about three; and she said she really couldn't say. Saturday and Sunday +were such a long way off, and things might be different now that she was +in the millinery. And she smiled again, and in such a manner that he had +a vision, a horrible vision, of other fellows crowding round her on +Saturdays and Sundays. He more than suspected that this was +"cock-a-tree"; but it made him desperate, so that he said, "Well--how +about to-night?" + +Well--_to-night_ she'd promised Winny she'd be good and go to church. + +If he had been madder, if he'd been more set on it, he would have gone +off with her that minute; he would have persuaded her to give up church; +he himself would have broken his promise to old Wauchope. But he did +none of these things, and his abstention was the sign and measure of his +coolness, of his sanity. He only said, as any cool and sane young man +might say: How about after church? And if he called when he got back +from Clapham? He wouldn't be a minute later than half past nine. + +And Violet had said: Oh, well--she didn't know about calling. You see, +she only had one room. And he had reckoned with that difficulty; for +Winny Dymond only had one room which she shared with Maudie. By calling, +he'd meant, of course, on the doorstep, to take her for a walk. + +But Violet, for some reason, didn't care about the doorstep. She'd +rather, if he didn't mind, that he met her somewhere out of doors. + +And so they had been drawn into an assignation at the old elm tree by +the Causeway on Wandsworth Plain. + +Thus, if it had done nothing else to him, the Service for Men could be +held responsible for throwing that meeting with Violet much too late. + +Still, he had no misgivings. It was June; and in June nine o'clock was +still daytime. And when he went to the Service he hadn't any idea what +it would do to him. + +No more, of course, had poor old Wauchope. Wauchope was grateful and +apologetic; before they got there he said he didn't know what he might +be letting Ransome in for. The curate johnnie was bossing the Service, +but he understood they'd engaged another joker for the Address. What he, +Wauchope, funked, personally, more than anything was the Address. And +Ransome, generously, declared that whatever it was like, he'd stick it. +He'd stand by Wauchope to the finish, like a man. + + * * * * * + +They left their bicycles in Wauchope's rooms, and walked the few hundred +yards to St. Matthias's Mission Church. + +St. Matthias's Mission Church was a brand-new yellow-brick building in +the latest Gothic, with a red-tiled roof, where a shrill little bell +swung tinkling under the arch in the high west gable. + +Inside, cream distempered walls with brown stencilings; in the roof, +bare beams of pitch pine, stained and varnished; north and south, clear +glass windows shedding a greenish light; one brilliant stained-glass +window above the altar at the east end. + +Up and down the aisles between the open pews of pitch pine went the +workers of the Mission, marshaling the men into their seats. By the west +door, Wauchope's friend, the cumbrous curate, who fancied himself as a +featherweight, stood smiling and shaking hands with each man as he came, +and thanking him for coming, thus carrying out the idea that it was an +entertainment. He had his largest smile, his closest grip for Wauchope +and for Ransome, for they were men after his own heart. Ransome observed +the curate critically, and without committing himself irretrievably to +an opinion, he owned that he looked fit enough. There was not about him +any sign that you could see of flabbiness or weediness. He was evidently +a decent johnnie, and for all that happened afterward Ransome forbore to +hold him personally responsible. + +The service, conducted by the curate, was extremely brief. Everything +was left out that could be left, to make room for hymns wherever it was +possible to place a hymn. The Psalms were chanted, and the curate +intoned the Prayers in a voice that was not his natural voice, but +something far more poignant and impressive. + +There were no boys in the choir, and the singing, that lacked their +purifying and clarifying treble, had a strange effect, somber yet +disturbing. It acted on Ranny like an incantation. + +Of course, if he had known what it was going to do to him, he would have +kept away. + +For though there was nothing in his flesh and blood and muscle that +suggested an inebriate father, yet in his profounder and obscurer being +he was Fulleymore Ransome's son. The secret instability that made +Fulleymore Ransome drink had had its effect on Ranny's nervous system. +His nerves, though he was not aware of it, were finely woven and highly +strung. He had a tendency to be carried away and to be excited, exalted, +and upset. Since Saturday afternoon Ranny had remained more or less in a +state of tension induced by the hurdle race, by the shock of seeing +Violet Usher, and by the dinner at the "Golden Eagle." And, coming +straight from Violet, he had entered St. Matthias's Mission Church keyed +up to his highest pitch. So that the Service for Men which subdued +Wauchope and made him humble and ashamed and sent him away trying to be +a better man, that very same Service worked Ranny up to a point when +anything became possible to him. + +First of all, then, the intoning and the chanting acted on him exactly +like an incantation. Ranny's will, the spiritual part of him, was lulled +to sleep by the rhythmic voices, and as his sense of decency had no +reason whatever to expect an outrage, it was also off its guard, +quiescent, passive to the charm. The rest of Ranny was exposed, +piteously, to the rhythm that swelled, that accentuated, accelerated the +vibration of his inner tumult. + +Then the obvious safety-valve was closed to him. A sense of strangeness +and of sudden shyness prevented him from joining as he should have +joined in the Service. Ranny could not take it out all at once in +singing. That silence and passivity of his left him open at every pore +to the invasion of the powers of sound. These young, intensely vibrant +bass and tenor voices sang all round him, they sang at him and into him +and through him. There was a young man close behind him with a tenor +voice that pierced him like a pain. There was Wauchope at his right ear +thundering in a tremendous barytone. + +First of all it was a trumpet call that shook him. + +/P + "Sold-ier-ers o-of Christ! a-arise, + And put your armor on," +P/ + +sang Wauchope. The sound of that singing made Ransome feel noble; and +there is nothing more insidiously destructive than feeling noble. + +And then, later on, it was a strange and a more poignant cry that melted +him, so that his very soul dissolved in tenderness and yearning. + +/P + "Jesu, Lover o-of my soul," +P/ + +sang the young man with the tenor. + +/P + "Let me to Thy bosom fly, + While the gathering wa-ters roll. + While the tempest sti-ill is high." +P/ + +(Ranny felt them about him, the waters and the tempest.) + +/P + "Other refuge ha-ave I none, + Hangs my helpless soul on Thee; + Leave--ah! leave me no-ot alone, + Still support and co-omfort me." +P/ + +And as the infinite pathos and pleading of the tenor voice played on +him, Ranny sank, lost and shelterless and alone, till at the word "Life" +he rose again and exulted, he rose above himself, even to the point of +singing. + +/P + "Thou of Life the fountain art, + Freely let me take of Thee; + Spring Thou up with-in my heart;" +P/ + +sang Ranny. + +/P + "Rise to all eternity." +P/ + +There was something about that hymn, and his own sudden crying out in +it, that made him peculiarly susceptible to the influences of the +Address. When the preacher rose in the pulpit, when he looked about him +with ardent and earnest eyes in a face ravaged by emotion, when his wide +and somewhat loose and mobile lips gave out the text, Ranny had an +obscure foreknowledge of what would happen to him. + +For he was not altogether virgin to the experience he was undergoing. It +belonged to certain moods of his childhood and his adolescence when more +than once, in Wandsworth Parish Church, he had been stirred mysteriously +by the tender music of the Evening Service, and by the singing of +certain hymns. There were layers upon layers of emotion sunk beyond +memory in Ranny's soul. So that what happened to him now had the +profound and vehement, though secret, force of a revival. The submerged +feelings rose in him; they were swollen, intensified, dominated beyond +recognition by the virile and unspiritual passion that leaped up and ran +together with them and made them one. It gave them an obscure but superb +sanction and significance. + +For that incantation not only called up the past; with a still greater +magic and mystery it evoked the future. It was a prophecy, a premonition +of the things to be. It cried upon the secret, unseen powers of life. It +brought down destiny. + +"'Know ye not that your bodies,'" said the preacher--and he leaned out +and looked to the young men on the right--"'your bodies'"--and he looked +to the young men on the left--"'are the temples, of the Holy +Ghost'"--and he looked straightforward and paused as if he saw invisible +things. + +He may have drawn a bow at a venture, but he seemed to have singled out +Ranny from among all those young men. He leaned over his pulpit, and +fixed his kindled and penetrating eyes on Ranny. He adjured Ranny to +remember that Sin which he had never committed; he implored him to +recall the shame which he had never felt, and at the same time to purge +himself of that unholy memory, and put away from him the sensual +thoughts that had never occurred to him and the abominable intentions +that he had never had. + +Then, with a subtle and plastic inflection of his voice, like the poise +of wings descending, he dropped from that almost inspired height of +emotion, and became shrewd and practical, thoroughly informed and +competent, a physician with a flair for the secret of disease, a surgeon +of the Soul, relentless in his handling of the knife, a man of the world +who spoke to them of what he knew, in all sincerity, as man to man. And +then he soared again, flapping his great wings that fanned emotion to a +flame. + +And through it all the young curate who had brought them there sat +folded more and more within his surplice, and became more and more red +as to his face, more and more dubious as to his eyes. He was like some +young captain, wise though intrepid, who sees his brave battalions +routed through the false move of his general. + +The magic worked. A man behind Ransome was heard breathing heavily. The +gentle drowsiness habitually expressed by Wauchope's broad and somewhat +flattened features was intensified to stupefaction. His head had sunk +slightly forward, but he looked up, lowering at the preacher with his +little innocent eyes, half sullen, half afraid. + +Wauchope was merely uncomfortable. He suffered on the surface. But Ranny +was disturbed profoundly, shaken, excited, and most curiously uplifted. + +He and Wauchope compared notes afterward on the preacher, whom they +called "that imported josser." They thought he rather fancied himself at +that particular job, and supposed that he was some sort of a "pro" who +had spoiled his "form" by overdoing it, and had lost the confidence of +his backers. They agreed that if Wauchope's friend the curate had given +them a straight talk it would have been much straighter. As it was, +nothing could have been more devious, more mysterious and serpentine +than the discourse that turned and wound and wormed its way into the +last obscurities and secrecies of Ranny's being. + +In the Mission Church of St. Matthias's Ranny underwent illumination. It +was as if all that was dark and passionate in him had been interpreted +for him by the preacher. Interpreted, it became in some perverse way +justified. Over and above that innermost sanction and recognition it had +the seal outside it of men's acknowledgment, it took its place among the +existent, the normal, the expected. Ranny was not alone in his passion +and confusion. He was companioned, here and now, in the great +enlightenment. + +But even Ranny could not have foretold the full extent of his reaction +to that sinuous and evocative Address. + +Meanwhile, so carried away was Ranny that he joined Wauchope in a +furious singing of the final hymn, "Onward, Christian so-o-oldier-ers!" + +He had felt noble; he had felt tender; now he was triumphant. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Wauchope, who hadn't a nerve in his composition, recovered soon after he +got into the open air. But in Ransome, without intermission, the magic +of that incantation worked. + +The symptoms of its working were a frightful haste, anxiety, and fear. +He left Wauchope without any explanation, and rode off to his +appointment at a dangerous speed and with a furious ringing of his bell. +He was afraid that if he were late by five seconds Violet Usher would be +gone. It was incredible to him that she should be there. It was +incredible that it should have come to this, that he should be flying in +haste and anxiety and fear unspeakable to meet her at the elm tree by +the Causeway on Wandsworth Plain. The whole adventure was incredible. + +Yet there could not be a better place for it than Wandsworth Plain, a +three-cornered patch of bare ground, bounded on one side by the river +Wandle, and on the other by a row of brown cottages and two little old +inns, with steep tiled roofs and naked walls, "The Bell" and "The +Crane." They were pure eighteenth century, and they give to Wandsworth +Plain its lonely and deserted air as of a little riverside hamlet +overlooked by time and the Borough Council. On a Sunday evening in +summer they stand as if in perpetual peace, without rivalry, without +regret, very bright and clean and simple, one washed yellow and the +other chalk-white. The river runs under brown walls, shaded on one side +by espalier limes, on the other over-hung with elder bushes in flower. +Lower down, on the banks, are willows and alders, and the wild hemlock +grows there, lifting up its great white whorls. Beyond the farther wall +and the limes there is a vast yard, stacked with timber; beyond the +banks a dock; and beyond all, on the great River, unseen, a distance of +crowded warehouses and gray wharves. + +The elm tree, muffled in green, leans out over the stream as the +lightning bowed it long ago, propped by wooden stays, mutilated to the +merest torso of a tree. A sacred thing, the elm tree is inclosed and +guarded by a wooden railing as in a shrine. + +Ransome was ten minutes too early, and it was impossible that she should +be there. Yet there she was, in her white dress, leaning up against the +wooden railing, as if swept and then left there in her detachment, so +inaccessible, so isolated was she, so unaware or so disdainful of the +couples, the young devotees of passion, who had made the elm tree their +meeting-place. She was there too soon, yet about her there was no air of +haste, but rather of brooding and delay. You would have said of her in +her stillness that she could afford to wait, she was so certain of her +end. + +She scarcely stirred from her place to greet Ransome as he came. He +leaned up against the railing close beside her. + +"I'm sorry," he said. "I tore like mad. Did you think I was never +coming?" + +She smiled with a curious smile. + +"No," she said. "I knew that you would come." + +And they stayed there. (Some instinct had impelled him to call at the +shop, and leave his bicycle with Mercier. A bicycle was an encumbrance, +a thing inappropriate to the adventure.) They stayed while the couples, +the young devotees of passion, stood locked in each other's arms, or +moved away, slowly, like creatures in an enchantment, linked together, +and passed into the dusk. And in the end his hand sought and found hers, +secretly, behind the shelter of her gown, and they too passed, hand in +hand and slowly, like creatures in an enchantment; they were drawn into +the dusk, beyond the barrier at the Causeway, to the footpath by the +river. + +When they returned to the elm tree it was all dark and secret there. +They stood as those others had stood, creatures of the enchantment, +locked, with hands on shoulders and faces looking close and seeing each +other's eyes large and strange in the darkness. + +Over Wandsworth Plain came the sound of the Parish Church clock striking +ten. + +When they reached St. Ann's Terrace the little brown house where Violet +lodged was shut up, asleep behind drawn blinds. + +Violet could let herself in. She had a key. At least, she thought she +had. She could have been almost sure she had brought it. But no, it was +not in her purse, nor yet in her pocket. She turned the pocket inside +out and shook it, and there was no key. Oh, dear, she was afraid she had +lost it, or else--perhaps--she hadn't brought it after all. She was that +careless. She thought she must have left it in her room on the +dressing-table. + +They knocked three times, and nobody answered. Nobody was there. They +had all gone out early in the evening, and evidently they had not come +back. Sometimes, Violet said, they weren't back till eleven or past it. + +Well, she didn't want to stand out there much longer. She wondered how +she was ever going to get in. + +They looked at each other and laughed at their helplessness. There is +always something funny about being locked out. Ranny said, "What a +lark!" + +Then he thought of the window. + +It was low. He stepped on to the ledge, and stood there. He slipped the +latch with the blade of his pocket knife. He raised the sash and dropped +into the room. He groped about in it till he found his way into the +passage and opened the door and let Violet in. + +She said she was all right now. Her candle would be left there for her, +on the shelf. But it wasn't, and Violet didn't like the dark. She was +afraid of it. So Ranny lit a match. He lit several matches and lighted +her all the way up the narrow staircase to the door of her little +bedroom at the back. She took the matches from him and went in to look +for the candle, leaving the door ajar and Ranny standing outside it on +the mat. + +He heard her soft feet moving about the room; he heard the spurt of the +matches, and her little smothered cry of impatience as they went out one +by one. It seemed ages to Ranny as he waited. + +At last she found the candle and lit it and set it down somewhere where +it was hidden behind the door. + +And then she came to him with her eyes all shining in the dusk. + +She filled the half-opened doorway; and round and about her and in the +room beyond there hung, indescribable but perceptible, palpable almost +as a touch, the thick scent of her hair. And they stood together on the +threshold as they had stood by the elm tree in the dark. + +She closed her eyes, and his hold tightened. She called his name +thickly, "Ranny!" and suddenly it was as if his very nerves and the +strength of his knees dissolved and flowed like water, and drawing he +was drawn over the threshold. + + * * * * * + +"Don't worry about it, Ranny. It had got to be." + +She said it, clinging to him with soft hands, as he parted from her. For +a moment she was moved beyond herself by his compunction, his passion of +tenderness for the helpless thing she seemed. + +What would have surprised him if he could have thought about it was +that, above it all, above the tenderness and the compunction, he still +felt that triumphant sense of sanction and completion, of acquiescence +in an end foreappointed and foreseen. + +But before he could think about it he was overtaken by an astounding, an +incredible drowsiness. + +He dragged himself home to his attic and his bed, where, astoundingly, +incredibly, he slept. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +It was about nine o'clock of another Sunday evening a week later. + +Winny Dymond was sitting on the edge of Violet's bed in the little back +room in St. Ann's Terrace. Violet, in a white petticoat and camisole, +overcome by the heat, lay stretched at length, like a drowsy animal, in +the hollow of the bed where she had flung herself. Her head, tilted +back, lay in the clasp of her hands. Her breasts, drawn upward by the +raised arms, left her all slender to the waist. The soft-folded, finely +indented crook of her elbows made a white frame for her flushed face. +She was looking at Winny with eyes narrowed to the slits of the sleepy, +half-shut lids. + +In a thick, sweet voice, a voice too drowsy for anything beyond the bare +statement of the fact, she had been telling Winny that she was engaged +to be married to Mr. Ransome. + +Now she was looking at Winny (all her intelligence narrowed to that +thread-fine glint of half-shut eyes), looking to see how Winny would +take it. + +Winny took it with that blankness that leaves the brain naked to all +irrelevant impressions, and with a silence that made all her pulses +loud. She heard the rattle and roar of a distant tram and the clock +striking the hour in the room below. She saw the soiled lining and the +ugly warp of Violet's shoes kicked off and overturned beside the bed. +Beyond the shoes, a stain that had faded rose and became vivid on the +carpet. Then a film came over Winny's eyes, and on the far border of the +field of vision, somewhere toward the top of her head, a yellow chest of +drawers with white handles grew dim and quivered and danced like the +yellow and white specter of a chest of drawers. + +"I suppose you're surprised," said Violet. + +"No, I'm not. Not at all." + +And she wasn't. But she was amazed at her own calmness. + +"I knew it," she said. + +"Knew it?" + +"Yes." + +Of course she had known it. If she hadn't, how could she have endured it +now? + +"When did you know?" + +"Last week. When you came back." + +That was not true. She had known it before last week. She had known it +as long as she had known Violet. And she had known that because of it +Violet would come back. + +She hadn't blamed Violet for coming back. Even now, as she sat on +Violet's bed and was tortured by those lights under Violet's eyelids, +even now she didn't blame her. And if she turned her shoulder it was not +because she minded Violet looking at her (she was past minding that), +but because she was afraid to look at Violet. She didn't want to see her +lying there. It was almost as if she were afraid of hating her. + +Behind her Violet was stirring. She had drawn up her outstretched limbs +and raised herself on the pillows. Winny felt her behind her, restless +and alert. + +Then she spoke again. + +"You needn't mind, Winny. It's got to be." + +"Mind? What makes you think I'm minding?" + +"The way you sit there with your mouth shut, saying nothing." + +"There's nothing to say. I'm not surprised. You've not told me anything +I didn't know." + +"Well, any one would think you didn't approve of it. Why can't you get +up and say you hope we'll be happy, or something?" + +"Of course, I hope you'll be happy. I want you to be happy." + +(Of course she did.) + +"Look here"--Violet was sitting up now--"_was_ there anything between +you and him?" + +Winny rose straight and turned and looked at her. + +"You've no business to ask that," she said. + +"Yes I have." She rose slowly, twisted herself, slid her foot to the +floor, and stood up facing Winny. "If I'm going to marry him I've a +right to know. Not that it'll make a scrap of difference." + +"Who told you there was anything between us?" + +"Nobody told me. I mean--_was_ there--before I came?" + +"There was never anything--never. Any one who tells you anything +different's telling you a lie. I'm not saying we weren't friends--" + +Violet smiled. + +"I'm not saying you were anything else. You can go on being friends. _I_ +sha'n't care. Only don't you go saying I came between you--that's all." + +At that Winny fired. + +"As if I'd do any such a thing! I don't know what can have put it into +your head." + +Violet laughed. + +"You should see _your face_," she said. "Why--any one could tell you +were gone on him. They've only got to look at you." + +There are some insults, some insolences that cannot be answered. + +"You can believe that," said Winny, "if you like--if it makes you any +happier. But your believing it won't make it true." + +She walked slowly, in her small dignity, to the chair where she had +thrown down her hat. She took up the hat and put it on, deliberately, +with a high bravery, before the glass. + +Then she turned to her friend and smiled at her. + +"It's all right," she said, "though you mightn't think it. Good-by." + +Whereupon Violet rushed at her and kissed her. + +"It isn't your fault, and it isn't mine, Winky," she whispered. "It's +got to be, I tell you." + +She drew herself from the embrace, erect and rosy, in a sudden passion +that had in it both triumph and despair. + +"Wild horses couldn't have torn him and me apart." + + * * * * * + +And Winny didn't blame her; even in the pain of the night that followed, +when she lay awake in the bed she shared with Maudie Hollis, stifling +her sobs lest she should waken Maudie, clutching the edge of the +mattress where she had writhed out of Maudie's reach. For at the first +sound of crying the proud beauty had turned to her friend and put her +arms about her, and held her in a desolate and desolating embrace. + +"Don't cry, Winny; don't cry, dear. It isn't worth it," had been +Maudie's consolation. For, though Winny hadn't said a word to her, she +knew. And she had followed it up by declaring that she hated that Violet +Usher; and she hated Ransome; she hated everybody who made little Winky, +little darling Winky, cry. + +But Winky didn't hate them. It had to be. Nothing could be more +beautiful in its simplicity than her acceptance of the event. + +And she didn't blame them. She didn't blame anybody. She had brought it +on herself. The thing was as good as done last summer, when she had +stopped Ranny making love to her. She had stopped it on purpose. She +knew he couldn't afford to marry her, not for years and years; she knew +he had been trying to tell her so; and it didn't seem fair, somehow, to +let him get worked up all for nothing. That was how girls drove men mad. +She considered that she was there to take care of Ranny, and she had +seen, in her wisdom, that to keep Ranny well in hand would be less hard +on him than to let him lose his head. + +Violet hadn't seen it, that was all. + +Besides, Violet was different. She had ways with her which made it no +wonder if Ranny lost his head. In Winny's opinion the man didn't live +who could resist Violet and her ways. She got round you somehow. She had +got round Winny last year when she had come imploring her to take her to +the Grand Display at the Polytechnic Gymnasium, teasing her and +threatening that if she didn't take her she'd go off to the Empire by +herself. She had spoken as if going to the Empire was a preposterous and +unheard-of thing. Winny didn't know that Violet had gone there more than +once, not by herself, but with the foreman of her department. + +And she had had to take her, and that, of course, had done it. Though +she had been afraid of this thing and had foreknown it from the +beginning, she had taken her; though she had been afraid ever since she +had seen Violet's face and watched her ways. So afraid was she that she +had tried to keep Ranny from ever seeing Violet. Time and again she had +hurried her away when she had seen Ranny coming, while the fear in her +heart told her that those two were bound to meet. She had lived from +hand to mouth on her precarious happiness, contented if she could stave +off the evil day. + +And it was all worse than useless. Violet had been aware that she was +being hurried away when Ranny came in sight, and it had made her the +more set. As for Winny's hope that Violet would forget all about Ranny +when some other man appeared, it was futile as long as she took care of +Violet. Taking care of Violet meant keeping her as far as possible out +of the way of other men--so that there again! It seemed as if she had +arranged it so that Ranny should be the only one. For Winny had divined +her friend's disastrous temperament even while she maintained hotly that +there was no harm in her. And she had almost quarreled with Maudie +because the proud beauty had said, "Well, you'll see." + +Winny knew nothing about Violet and the foreman. + +And with the same innocence she never doubted that when Violet and +Ransome met that night at the Polytechnic it was for the first time. + + * * * * * + +And so she stitched with a good will at a white muslin blouse for +Violet's wedding present, and folded it herself and put it away in the +yellow chest of drawers with the rest of Violet's wedding things. It lay +there, all snowy white, with a violet-scented sachet on the top of it, a +sachet (Winny had found it in the drawer) with a pattern of violets on a +white satin ground and the name "Violet" sprawling all across it in +embroidery. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Ransome had barely risen from that sleep of exhaustion when he realized +the disastrous character of the night's adventure. He was no longer +uplifted by any sense of sanction and of satisfaction. Of the pride of +life there remained in him only sufficient to prevent him from regarding +his behavior as in any sense a shame and a disaster to his own youth. +Otherwise his mood was entirely penitential. He could not look at the +thing as it affected himself. However it might be for him, he had +wronged Violet, and that was calamity enough for any man to face. +According to all his instincts and traditions, he had wronged her. + +Of course, he was going to marry her. He was going to marry her at once; +as soon as ever they could get their banns put up. It never occurred to +him that delay could, in such a case, be possible. + +For, from the very moment of that morning after, in Ranny's heart there +was an awful and a sacred fear, a fear of fatherhood. It was the first +thing he thought of as soon as he could think at all. + +He wanted to put Violet right at once, before a suspicion of that +possibility should have crossed her mind. It would have seemed to him +abominable to risk it, to wait on, as fellows did, on the off-chance of +a reprieve, till she came to him, poor child, with her whispered tale. +That, to Ranny's mind, was where the shame came in; not in the fact, +but in the compulsion of the fact. It was intolerable that any man +should have the right to say of his own wife that he had been forced to +marry her. Hence his desperate haste. + +Violet couldn't understand it. She didn't want to be married all at +once. She said there was no hurry; that he couldn't afford it; that +there was no rime nor reason in it; let them go on as they were a bit; +let them wait and see. + +In all this Ranny saw only a tenderness and a desire to spare him. But +he stood firm. He was not concerned with reasons and with rimes; he +wouldn't wait, he wouldn't see; and (this astonished Violet and secretly +enraged her) he absolutely refused to go on as they were. + +For his fear was always before him. + +It was no doubt to that refusal of his that he owed Violet's consent. + +His family were appalled at the news of Ranny's engagement. It was so +unexpected, so unlike him; and how it had happened Ranny's mother +couldn't think. She knew all his comings and goings for the last year. +His temperance and discretion had given her a sense of imperishable +security. She had made up her mind that Ranny wasn't one to be in a +hurry; and now she had been right only in her prophecy that when his +time came there would be no holding him. + +And there _was_ no holding him. + +They had all tried it. They had all been at him; his Uncle Randall and +his Aunt Randall, and his mother and his father. For the first time in +his life Mr. Ransome was roused to take an interest in his son, to +acknowledge him as an adult, capable of formidably adult things. And +though they all told him that he was too young to know his own mind, +that he was doing foolish, and behaving silly, under the show of +disapproval and disparagement it was clear that they respected him, that +they realized his manhood, and that he was somehow important to them as +he had never been important in his life before. + +What was more, rage as they would at it, they were impressed by Ranny's +firmness, his unalterable and imperturbable determination to marry, and +to marry the unknown Violet Usher. + +And on the main issue they gave way. They owned that it was natural that +the boy should want to marry; they saw that he would have to marry some +day; and his mother went so far as to say she wanted him to marry and to +settle down. What they did not understand, and most certainly did not +approve of, what they did their best to talk him out of, was the awful +hurry he was in. There wasn't any hurry, they said, there shouldn't be, +when he was so young. He couldn't afford to marry now, but he could +afford it very well in two years' time. Why, he was only twenty-three, +and in two years' time he'd have got his next rise, and he'd have saved +more money. + +"If you'd wait, Ranny," said his mother, "but the two years." And his +father and his uncle said he _must_ wait. + +But Ranny wouldn't. He wouldn't wait six months. No, and he wouldn't +wait three months and look about him. He wouldn't have waited three +weeks if it hadn't been for the banns. It was no use their talking. + +They knew it. It had been no use their talking seven years ago, when +Ranny had refused to become a Pharmaceutical Chemist, and had given no +reasons, because the only reason he could give was that life would be +intolerable if spent in the perpetual presence of his father. And he +didn't give them any reasons now. + +Before the Ransomes and the Randalls knew where they were the banns had +been put up in Wandsworth Parish Church and in the Parish Church of +Elstree, in Hertfordshire, and Violet had been twice to tea. + +He had looked for opposition down at Elstree, in Hertfordshire, fierce +and insurmountable opposition from Mr. Usher, that father who had been +so harsh to Violet. It was incredible that Violet's father would allow +him to marry her; it was incredible that her mother would allow it. He +would just have to marry her in spite of them. + +But, as it happened, the attitude of Mr. and Mrs. Usher surpassed +probability. Not only were they willing that he should marry Violet, +they desired that he should marry her at once. The sooner the better, +Mr. Usher said. If young Ransome could marry her to-morrow he'd be best +pleased. It was almost as if Mr. Usher knew. But, of course, he didn't, +he couldn't possibly know. He would have scouted the proposition +altogether if he hadn't had three other younger girls at home. It +wasn't, Ranny reflected, as if Violet was the only one. So far from +putting obstacles in Ranny's way, Mr. Usher positively smoothed it. +Understanding that the young man was not, as you might call it, rolling, +he said there wasn't much that they could do, but if at any time a +hamper of butter and eggs and fruit and vegetables should come in +handy, they'd send it along and welcome; he shouldn't even wonder if, in +case of necessity, they could rise to a flitch of bacon or a joint of +pork. Ranny was exquisitely grateful; though, as for the necessity, he +didn't see himself depending on his father-in-law for his food supplies. +He had no foreboding of the importance that hamper from Hertfordshire +was to assume in the drama of his after life. For the actual hour it +stood simply as the measure of Mr. Usher's approval and good will. + +He was much moved when at parting Mrs. Usher pressed him by the hand and +asked him to be gentle with her girl. There was no harm, Mrs. Usher +said, in poor Vi. She was a bit wilful and wildlike; all for life was +Violet--but there, she'd be as good as gold when she had a home and a +kind husband and children of her own. "Mark my words," said Mrs. Usher, +"once the babies come she'll settle down." + +And Ranny marked her words. + +This unqualified backing that he got from Violet's parents went far to +sustain Ransome in the conflict with his own. He could, indeed, have +embraced Mr. and Mrs. Usher when, in consequence of one Sunday +afternoon's communion with these excellent people, his mother declared +herself more reconciled than she had been to the idea of Ranny's +marrying. Between Ranny's mother and Mrs. Usher there was established in +one Sunday afternoon the peculiar sympathy and intimacy of parents who +live supremely in their children. With her rosy, full-blown, robust +benevolence, Mrs. Usher was a powerful pleader. She put it to Mrs. +Ransome that nothing mattered so long as the young people were happy. +If in the pursuit of happiness the young people failed in the first year +or two to make ends meet, surely among them all they could be given a +helping hand. She was sure that Mr. Usher would do anything he could, in +reason. The comfortable woman declared that she had taken a fancy such +as never was to Ranny, so had Mr. Usher, and he wasn't, she could assure +you, one to take a fancy every day. She had never had a boy (and it +wasn't for not wanting), but if she _had_ had one she'd have wished him +to be just such another as Ranny. Ranny, she was certain, was that +clever he'd be sure to get along. To which argument Mrs. Ransome had to +yield. For she was confronted with a dilemma, having either to agree +with Mrs. Usher or to maintain that her Ranny was not clever enough to +get along. So that before Sunday evening she found herself partaking in +the large-hearted tolerance and optimism of Violet's parents, and +forcing her view upon Uncle and Aunt Randall. + +Only Mr. Ransome held out. He refused to be worked upon by argument. To +Ranny's amazement, the old Humming-bird bore himself in those days of +stress, not with that peculiar savage obduracy that distinguished his +more insignificant hostilities, but with a certain sad and fine +insistence. It was as if for the first time in his life he was aware +that he cared for his son Randall and was afraid of losing him. The +Humming-bird could hardly have suffered more if the issue had been +Randall's death and not his marriage. But when the thing was settled, +all he said was, "I don't like it, Mother, I don't like it." + +How profoundly it had disturbed him was shown in this, that for the +three weeks before Ranny's wedding-day he remained completely sober. + + * * * * * + +So precipitate, so venturesome was Ranny, that in a month from that +memorable Sunday he found himself married and established in a house. A +house that in twenty years' time would become his own. + +That was incredible, if you like. Cowardly caution and niggardly +prudence had suggested rooms; two low-rented, unfurnished rooms such as +could be found almost anywhere in Wandsworth; whereas a house in +Wandsworth was impossible even if you sank as low as Jew's Row or Warple +Way. For the first two days of his engagement Ranny had devoted every +moment of his leisure to the drawing up and balancing of imaginary +household accounts; with the result that he wondered how he ever could +have regarded marriage as a formidable affair. Why, in the seven years +since he had begun to earn money he had been steadily putting money by. +Five pounds a year in the first three years, then ten, then twenty, and +a whole fifty in the year and a half since he had got his rise. With the +interest on his savings and his salary, his present income was not less +than a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year. + +In the night watches he grappled like a man with the financial problem. +Scheme after scheme did Ranny throw on the paper from his seething +brain. In the fifth--no, the thoroughly revised and definitive seventh, +he made out that, by a trifling reduction in his personal expenditure, +housekeeping on the two-room system would leave him with a considerable +margin. (In the first rough draft--even in the second--he had allowed +absurdly too much for food and clothing.) But, mind you, that margin +existed solely and strictly on the two-room system. + +And here Ranny's difficulties began; for neither Violet nor her parents +would hear of their living in two rooms. Violet, who had lived in one +room, said that living in two rooms was horrible, and Mrs. Usher said +that Violet was right. It was better for all parties to begin as you +meant to go on. Begin in hugger-mugger and you may end in it. But if he +gave Violet a home of her own that _was_ a home at the very start, she'd +soon settle down in it. He needn't worry about the hard work it meant. +The only thing that would keep Violet steadylike was downright hard +work. No; she didn't mean anything cruel. They could have a char once a +fortnight for a scrub-down and the heavy washing. + +And Ranny began all over again and made out another set of accounts on +the house basis and allowing for the char. + +Impossible; even in Jew's Row or Warple Way. Skimp as he would in +personal expenditure, on the house basis the two ends of Ranny's income +simply _wouldn't_ meet. + +All the same, he began looking for the house. The idea of the house, the +desire for the house worked in his brain like a passion; the more +impossible it was, the more ungovernable, the more irresistible he found +it. + +And, as he wandered forth on that adventure, seeking for a house, one +Saturday afternoon, accompanied by Violet, Ranny fell into the hands of +the Speculative Builder. + +Not very far from Wandsworth, in the green pasturelands of Southfields, +that great magician was already casting into bricks and mortar his +tremendous dream--the city of dreams, the Paradise of Little Clerks. + +As yet he had called into being only a few streets of his city, +stretching eastward and southward into the green plain. About it, +southward and eastward, there lay acres of naked earth upturned, torn +and tamed to his hand. Beyond were the fields with their tall elms, +unbroken, virgin, mournful in their last beauty, as they waited for the +ax and pick. + +He had done terrible things to the green earth, that speculative +builder, but you could not say of him that he had shut out the sky. The +city ran very low upon the ground in street after street of diminutive +two-storied houses. Each house was joined on to the next, porch to porch +and bow window to bow window, alternating in an endless series, a +machine-made pattern that repeated; a pattern monotonous and yet +fantastic in its mingling of purple, white, and red. Each had the same +little mat of grass laid before each bow window, the same little +red-tiled path from gate to front door, the same front door decorated +with elaborate paneling and panes of colored glass, the same little +machine-made iron gate, the same low red wall and iron railing and +privet hedge; so indistinguishably, so maddeningly alike were all these +diminutive houses. Each roof had the same purple slates, each roof tree +the same red earthwork edging it like a lace; the same red tiles roofed +each porch and faced each gable and the space between the stories. Only +when your eyes became accustomed to the endless running pattern could +you trace it clearly, grasp the detail, note that every two bow windows +were separated by one rain pipe, every two porches sustained by one +pillar, one diminutive magnificent purple pillar, simulating porphyry +and crowned with a rich Corinthian capital in freestone, the outline of +each porch being picked out and made clear and decisive with woodwork +painted white. Then, and not till then, did you see that the +all-important detail was the porphyry pillar, for it was as if every two +houses sprang from it as two flowers from one stem. + +Inside, each little house had the same narrow passage and steep stairs; +each had the same small room at the front and one still smaller at the +back; the same little scullery behind the same back door at the end of +the passage that led off into the garden; and upstairs the same bathroom +over the scullery, the same bedrooms back and front, and the same tiny +dressing-room with its little window looking out over the porch. + +"Quite enough, if we can run to it," Violet said. + +Violet, hitherto somewhat indifferent to the adventure, was caught by +the redness and whiteness, the brandnewness and compactness of the +little houses; she was seduced beyond prudence by the sham porphyry +pillar. + +"Quite enough. More than we want, really," said Ranny. + +But that was before they had seen the Agent and the Prospectus. + +They went to the Agent, not because they could afford to take a house, +but just for curiosity, just to say they'd been, just to supply Ranny +with that information that he craved for, now that the passion of the +house hunt was upon him. + +"No good going," said Violet. "The rent will be something awful--why, +that pillar alone--" + +And Ranny, too, said he was afraid the rent wouldn't be any joke. + +But that was precisely what the rent was--a joke. A joke so good that +Ranny took for granted it couldn't possibly be true. Ranny chaffed the +Agent; he told him he was trying to get at him; he said you didn't find +houses with bathrooms and gardens back and front, going for thirteen +shillings a week, not in this country. + +And the Agent, who was very busy and preoccupied with making notes in a +large notebook at his table, mumbled all among his notes that that was +right. Of course you didn't find 'em unless you knew where to look for +'em. And that was not because a good 'ouse couldn't be made to pay for +thirteen shillings a week, if there was capital and enterprise at the +back of the Company that built 'em. This here Estate was the only estate +in England--or anywhere--where you could pick up a house, a house built +in an up-to-date style with all the modern improvements, for thirteen +shillings a week. + +And Ranny with a fine shrewdness posed him. "Yes, but what about rates +and taxes?" + +They were included. + +And as the Agent said it calmly, casually almost, making notes in his +notebook all the time, Ranny conceived a ridiculous suspicion. He fixed +him with a stare that brought him up out of his notebook. + +"Included? _What's_ included?" + +"District rate," said the Agent, "poor rate, water rate, the whole bag +of tricks for thirteen shillings." + +That took Ranny's breath away. As for Violet, she said instantly that +they must have the house. + +"Of course you must 'ave it," said the Agent. He might have been an +indulgent father. "Why not? Only thirteen shillings. And I can make you +better terms than that." + +It was then that he produced the Prospectus. + +By this time, as if stirred by Violet's beauty, he had thrown off the +mask of indifference; he was eager and alert. + +They spent twenty minutes over that Prospectus, from which it appeared +that the profit of the Estate Company, otherwise obscure, came from what +the Agent called the "ramifications" of the scheme, from the miles and +miles of houses they could afford to build. Whereas Ranny's profit was +patent, it came in on the spot, and it would come in sooner, of course, +if he could afford to purchase outright. + +"For how much?" + +"Two hundred and fifty." + +But there Ranny put his foot down. He said with decision that it +couldn't be done, an answer for which the Agent seemed prepared. + +Well, then--he could give him better terms again. Could he rise to +twenty-five? + +Ranny deliberated and thought he could. + +Well, then--only twenty-five down, and the balance weekly. + +The balance? It sounded formidable, but it worked out at exactly +tenpence a week less than the rent asked for (twelve and twopence +instead of thirteen shillings), and in twenty years' time--and he'd be a +young man still then--the house would be his, Ranny's, as surely as if +he had purchased it outright for two hundred and fifty pounds. + +It was astounding. Such a scheme could only have been dreamed of in the +Paradise of Little Clerks. + +And yet--and yet--it was impossible. + +Ranny said he didn't want to be saddled with a house. How did he know +whether he'd want that particular house in twenty years' time? + +Then he could let or sell, the Agent said. It was an investment for his +money. It was property. Property that was going up and up. Even +supposing--what was laughable--that he failed to sell--he would be +paying for his property--paying for house and land--less weekly than if +he rented it. Ordinarily you paid your rent out of income or +investments. He would be investing every time he paid his rent. People +made these difficulties because they hadn't grasped our system--or for +other reasons. Maybe (the Agent fired at him a glance of divination) he +was calculating the expense of furnishing? + +He was. + +Nothing simpler. Why--you furnished on the hire-purchase system. + +"Not much," said Ranny. He knew all about the hire-purchase system. + +So he backed out of it. He backed out of his Paradise, out of his dream. +But to save his face he said he would think it over and let the Agent +know on Monday. + +And the Agent smiled. He said he could take his time. There was no +hurry. The house wouldn't run away. And he gave Ranny a copy of the +Prospectus with a beautiful picture of the house on it. + +All the way home Violet reproached him. It was a shame, she said, that +he couldn't afford the furniture. There was nothing in the world she +wanted so much as that beautiful little house. She hung on his arm and +pleaded. Would he ever be able to afford the furniture? And Ranny said +he thought he could afford it in two years. Meanwhile the house wouldn't +run away. It would wait two years. + +And as if it had been waiting for him, motionless, from all eternity, +the house, with its allurements and solicitations, caught him before six +o'clock on the evening of that very day. + +Ranny's mother, as if she had known what the house was after, played +into its hands. Attracted by the Prospectus and the picture, she walked +over to Southfields directly after tea. She looked at the house and fell +in love with it at first sight. It had taken her no time to grasp the +system. You couldn't get a house like that in Wandsworth, not for fifty +or fifty-five, not counting rates and taxes. It was a sin, she said, to +throw away the chance. As for furnishing, she had seen to that. In fact, +Ranny without knowing it had seen to it himself. For the last five years +he had kept his father's books, conceiving that herein he was fulfilling +an essentially unproductive filial duty. And all the time his mother, +with a fine sense of justice, had been putting by for him the +remuneration that he should have had. Out of his seven years' weekly +payments for board and lodging she had saved no less than a hundred +pounds. Thus she had removed the one insurmountable obstacle from +Ranny's path. + +It might have been better for Ranny if she hadn't. Because, on any +scheme, on the lowest scale of expenditure, with the most dexterous +manipulation of accounts, the house left him without a margin. But who +would think of margins when he knew that he would grow steadily year by +year into a landlord, the owner of house property, and _that_, if you +would believe it, for less rent than if he didn't own it? So miraculous +was the power of twenty-five pounds down. + +As if he thought the house could, after all, run away from him, he +bicycled to Southfields with a letter for the Agent, closing with his +offer that very night. + +And by a special appointment with the Agent, made as a concession to his +peculiar circumstances, he and Violet went over before ten o'clock on +Sunday morning to choose the house. + +For after all they hadn't chosen it yet. + +It was difficult to choose among the houses where all were exactly +alike; but you could choose among the streets, for some were planted +with young limes and some with plane trees, and one, Acacia Avenue, with +acacias. Ransome liked the strange tufted acacias. "Puts me in mind of +palm trees," he said. And finally his fancy and Violet's was taken by +one house, Number Forty-seven Acacia Avenue, for it stood just opposite +a young tree with a particularly luxuriant tuft. It was really as if the +tree belonged to Number Forty-seven. + +Then they discovered that, outwardly uniform, these little houses had a +subtle variety within. All, or nearly all, had different wall papers. In +Number Forty-seven there were pink roses in the front sitting-room and +blue roses in the back, and, upstairs, quiet, graceful patterns of love +knots or trellis work. The love knots, blue with little pink rosebuds, +in the front room (_their_ room) caught them. They were agreed in favor +of Number Forty-seven. + +Then--it was on the following Saturday--they quarreled. The Agent had +written inquiring whether Mr. Ransome wished to give his residence a +distinctive name. He didn't wish it. But Violet did. She wished to give +his residence the distinctive and distinguished name of Granville. She +said she couldn't abide a number, while Ranny said he couldn't stand a +name. Especially a silly name like Granville. He said that if he lived +in a house called Granville it would make him feel a silly ass. And +Violet said he was a silly ass already to feel like that about it. + +Then Violet cried. It was the first time he had seen her cry, and it +distressed him horribly. He held out against his pity all Saturday +evening. But on Sunday morning, when he thought of Violet, he relented. +He said he'd changed his mind about that old family seat. Violet could +call it what she liked. + +She called it Granville. + +The name, in large white letters, appeared presently in the fanlight +above the door. + + * * * * * + +At Woolridge's, on Monday morning in his dinner-hour, Mr. Ransome of the +counting-house strolled with great dignity and honor through seven +distinct departments as a customer. He ear-marked, for a beginning, and +subject always to the approval of a Lady, three distinct suites of +furniture which he proposed, most certainly, to purchase outright. None +of your hire-purchase systems for Mr. Ransome. + +On Tuesday, accompanied by two ladies, he again appeared. Between two +violent blushes, and with an air which would have been light and offhand +if it could, Mr. Ransome presented to his friend, the foreman, his +mother--and Miss Usher. And as if the foreman had not sufficiently +divined her, Miss Usher's averted shoulders, burning cheeks, and lowered +eyelids made it impossible for him to forget that she was the Lady whose +approval was the ultimate condition of the deal. + +After an immensity of time, in which Mr. Ransome's dinner hour was +swallowed up and lost, Miss Usher decided finally on the suite in +stained walnut, upholstered handsomely in plush, with a pattern which +Ransome imagined to be Oriental, a pattern of indefinite design in a +yellowish drab and heavy blue upon a ground of crimson. A splendid +suite. The overmantle alone was worth the nineteen pounds nineteen +shillings he paid for it. + +The furnishing of the chamber of the love knots was arranged for, +decorously, between Mrs. Ransome and the foreman. Over every item, from +the wardrobe in honey-colored maple picked out with black, to the china +"set" with crimson reeds and warblers on it, Ranny's friend, the +foreman, communed with Ranny's mother in an intimate aside; and Ranny's +mother, in another aside of even more accentuated propriety, appealed to +flaming cheeks and lowered eyelids and a mouth that gave an almost +inarticulate assent. The eyelids refused to open on Ranny where he +stood, turning his back on the women, while he shook dubiously the +footrail of the iron double bedstead to test the joints; and the mouth +refused to speak when Ranny was heard complaining that the bedstead was +about three sizes too large for the room. Eyes and mouth recovered only +downstairs among the carpets, where they again asserted themselves by +insisting on a Kidderminster with a slender pattern of blue on a drab +ground; though Ranny's mother had advised the black and crimson. Ranny's +mother contended almost with passion that drab showed every stain. But +Violet would have that carpet and no other. + +And when by struggles and by prodigies of strength on Ranny's part, and +on the part of Woolridge's men, by every kind of physical persuasion, +and by coaxing, by strategy and guile, all that furniture from seven +distinct departments was at last squeezed into Granville--well, there +was hardly room to turn round. Granville, that would have held its own +under any treatment less severe, was overpowered by Woolridge's. + + * * * * * + +"What's wrong with it?" said poor Ranny, as they stood together one +Saturday evening and surveyed their front sitting-room. He couldn't see +anything wrong with it himself. + +They had been married that morning. Ranny had had to bring his bride +straight from her father's house to Granville. There could be no going +away for the honeymoon. Woolridge's wouldn't let Ranny go till the sales +were over. + +It was only a minute ago that he had had his arm round Violet's waist, +and that her face had pressed his. It seemed ages. And suddenly Violet +had shown sulkiness and irritation. He couldn't understand it. He +couldn't understand how she could have chosen their first hour of +solitude for finding fault with the arrangement of the room. He himself +had been distinctly pleased; proud, too, of having furnished throughout +from Woolridge's, in a style that would last, and at a double discount +which he owed to his payment in ready money, and to his connection with +the firm. + +Now he faced a young woman who had no understanding of his pride and no +pity. + +"It's _all_ wrong," said she. "And I'll tell you for why. It's too +heavy. You should have furnished in bamboo." + +"Bamboo? Sham-poo! It wouldn't last," said Ranny. + +"Who wants the silly things to last?" said Violet. + +"Come to that, you never let on it was bamboo you wanted." + +"How could _I_ know what I wanted? You rushed me so, you never gave me +time to think." + +"Oh, I say," said Ranny, "what a tiresome kiddy!" + +With that he kissed her, and between the kisses he asked her, with +delirious rapidity: "Who gave you a drawing-room suite? Who gave you a +nice house? Who let you call it Granville?" But he knew. Nobody, indeed, +knew better than Ranny how tight a squeeze it was; and what a horrible +misfit for Granville. + +Then suddenly something in the idea of Granville tickled him. + +"Whether is it," he inquired, "that the drawing-room suite is too large +for Granville? Or that Granville is too small for the drawing-room +suite?" + +"It's too small for anything. And I think you might have waited." + +"Waited?" + +"Yes. Why shouldn't we have gone on as we were?" + +He couldn't criticize her in a moment that was still so blessed; +otherwise it might have struck him that Granville was certainly too +small for Violet's voice. + +But it struck Ranny's mother as she heard it from the bedroom overhead, +where she labored, spreading with her own hands the sheets for her son's +marriage bed. + +"Why shouldn't we?" Violet's voice insisted. + +"Because we couldn't." + +He drew her to him. Her eyes closed and their faces met, flame to flame. + +"Poor little thing," he said. "Is its head hot? And is it tired?" + +"Ranny," she said, "is your mother still upstairs?" + +"She'll be gone in a minute," he whispered, thickly. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Violet's connection with Starker's ceased on the day of her marriage. +Violet herself would have continued it; she had meant to continue it; +she had fought the point passionately with Ranny; but Ranny had put his +foot down with a firmness that subdued her. She had said, "Oh, +well--just as you like. If you think you can get along without my pound +a week." And Ranny, with considerable warmth, had answered back that he +hoped to Heaven he could. And then, again and again, with infinite +patience and gentleness, he explained that the privileges of acquiring +Granville entailed duties and responsibilities incompatible with her +attendance in Starker's Millinery Saloons. He pointed out that if they +were dependent upon Granville, Granville was also dependent upon them. +Granville, she could see for herself, was helpless--pathetic he was. + +And Violet would laugh. In those first days he could always make her +laugh by playing with the personality they had created. She would come +out into the roadway on an August morning, as Ranny was going off to +Woolridge's, and they would look at the absurd little house where it +stood winking and blinking in the sun; and morning after morning Ranny +kept it up. + +"Look at him," he would say, "sittin' there behind his little railin's, +sayin' nothing, just waitin' for you to look after him." + +And Violet would own that Granville was pathetic. But she triumphed. +"You wouldn't feel about him that way," she said, "if he was only Number +Forty-seven." + +Just at first there was no doubt that Violet was fond of Granville. Just +at first it was as if she couldn't do too much for him, to keep him +spick and span, clean from top to toe, and always with a happy polish. +Just at first he was, as Ranny said, "such a pretty little chap with his +funny purple pillar, and his little peepers winkin' at you kind of +playful, half the time." For the sun shone on him all that August +honeymoon. It streamed down the Avenue between the rows of young acacias +whose green tufts with that light on them put Ranny more and more in +mind of palm trees. He was more and more in love with the brand-new +Paradise. He expressed all the charm of Southfields, of Acacia Avenue, +when he said it was "so open, and so up-to-date." It made Wandsworth +High Street look old and tortuous and grimy by comparison. + +But Ranny was more and more in love with Violet; so much in love that he +could never have expressed her charm. And yet he couldn't hide the +effect it had on him. The neighbors knew it was their honeymoon. They +smiled when they saw Ranny and Violet come out of Granville every +morning wheeling the bicycle between them; they smiled when Violet ran +beside him as he mounted; most of all they smiled when Ranny, riding +slowly, turned right round in his saddle and the two young lunatics +waved and signaled to each other as if they would never have done. + +No doubt that in those first days Violet was in love with Ranny. No +doubt that she looked after him as much as Violet could look after +anything; every bit as much as she looked after Granville. + +But the hard fact was that Granville and all his furniture required a +great deal of looking after. + +Ranny too. To begin with, he had what Violet called an awful appetite. +Which meant that a joint and a loaf went twice as fast as Violet had +calculated; so that she found herself driven to pan bread and tinned +meat in self-defense. She had found that for some reason Ranny didn't +eat so much of these. What with his walking and his "biking," and his +sitting, Ranny's activities wore through his ordinary every-day clothes +at a frightful rate. And then his zephyrs and his flannels! Ranny's +mother had always seen to them herself. She had washed them with her own +hands. Ranny's wife sent them to the laundress, not too often. So that +Ranny, the splendid, immaculate Ranny she had fallen in love with, +appeared after his marriage a shade less immaculate, less splendid than +he had been before. + +It was not, of course, that Violet couldn't wash things. For, as Ranny's +mother said to Mrs. Randall, You should see her own white blouses. There +was washing for you! Mrs. Ransome owned quite handsomely that the girl +"paid for it." By which she meant that Violet's appearance justified the +extravagant amount of time she spent on it. And it was not that +Granville demanded from her the downright hard work Mrs. Usher had +considered salutary in her case. Ransome had seen to that. He had not +agreed with Mrs. Usher. If he couldn't keep a servant, he could, and +did, engage a charwoman for all the heavy work. It was not that the +light work Violet did was unbecoming to her. On the contrary, Violet +bloomed in Granville. She had had to own that the unaccustomed exercise +was a good thing, giving a fineness and a firmness to outlines that had +been a shade too lax. It was that you can have too much of a good thing +when you have it every day; too much of light washing and light cooking, +of the lightest of light sweeping, of dusting, and the making of even +one double bed. + +Ransome did his best to spare her. He thought that she was tired of +looking after Granville, when in reality she was only bored. As for her +fits of sullenness and irritation, he had been initiated into their +mystery on his wedding-day. The sullenness, the irritation had ceased so +unmysteriously that Ranny in his matrimonial wisdom was left in no doubt +as to its cause. There was even sweetness in it, for it proved that, +however tired Violet might be of things in general, she was by no means +tired of him. + +Ransome himself was never tired in those days, and never, never bored. +Granville as Number Forty-seven might have palled upon him; Granville as +a personality assumed for him an everlasting charm. It was astonishing +how right Violet had been there. Granville, after all, hadn't made him +feel a silly ass. It kept him in a state of being tickled. It tickled +Wauchope and Fred Booty. They met him with "What price Granville?" They +called him by turns Baron Granville of Granville, and the Marquis or the +Duke of Granville. They "ragged" while Ranny lunged at them and said, +"Cheese it"; until one day Booty, suddenly serious, asked, why on earth, +old chappie, he had called it Granville? When Ranny replied +significantly, "I didn't." Then they stopped. + +But Granville tickled him only, as it were, on one side. The other side +of Ransome was insensitive. His undeveloped taste was not aware of the +architectural absurdity of Granville, with its perky gable and its sham +porphyry pillar. He could look at it, and yet think of it quite gravely +and with a secret tenderness as his home, and more than all as the home +he had given Violet, the blessed roof and walls that sheltered her. + +And all the time, in secret, it was taking hold of him, the delicious +thought of property, of possession, of Granville as a thing that in +twenty years' time would be his own. Brooding over Granville, Ranny's +brain became fertile in ideas. He was always calling out to Violet: +"Vikes! I've got _another_ idea! When he gets all dirty next year I'll +paint him green. That'll give him a distinctive character, if you like." +Or, "How would it be if I was to cover him up all over with creepers, +back and front?" Or, "Some day I'll whip off those tiles and clap him on +a balcony. He'd look O.K. if he only had a balcony over his porch." + +His porch was the one thing wrong with Granville, because it wasn't +absolutely and entirely his. The porphyry pillar for instance; he had +only half a share in it; the other half belonged to Number Forty-five; +and you couldn't rightly tell where Number Forty-five's share ended and +his began. Still it wasn't as if anybody ever wanted to swarm up the +pillar. But there was a party wall, and that was a serious thing. It +was so low that a child could clear it at a stride. And when the postman +and errand boys and tradespeople went their rounds, instead of going +down Forty-five's front walk and up Granville's, they all straddled +insolently over the party wall. Ransome said it was "like their bally +cheek," by which he meant that it was an insult to the privacy and +dignity of Granville. And he stopped it by setting a high box, planted +with a perfect little hedge of euonymus, on Granville's half of the top +of the party wall. And he and Violet hid behind the window curtains all +one Saturday afternoon, and watched "the poor johnnies being sold." + +There was no end to the fun he was getting out of Granville. Every +evening he hurried home from Woolridge's that he might put in an hour's +work in his garden before supper. He was never tired of digging and +planting and watering the long strip at the back, or of clipping the +privet hedge that screened his green mat at the front. Only Violet got +tired of seeing him doing it. More than once, when Ranny's innocent back +was turned she watched it, scowling. She was so far "gone on him" that +she couldn't bear to see him taken up with Granville. She hated the very +flowers as his hands caressed them. She hated the little tree he had +planted at the bottom of the back garden. For the little tree had kept +him out one night till nearly ten o'clock, after Violet had expressly +told him that she was going to bed at nine. + + * * * * * + +Violet was not tired; but she was tired of Granville. + +After six weeks of it she began to long secretly for Starker's +Millinery Saloons. In the saloon you walked looking beautiful through a +flowery and a feathery grove of hats. You had nothing to do but to try +hats on and to sell them, and each sale was a personal triumph for the +seller. Violet knew she could sell more hats than any other of the girls +at Starker's; she knew she had a pretty way of putting on a hat, of +turning slowly round and round in it to show the side and crown, of +standing motionless before a customer while her blue eyes made play that +advertised the irresistible fascinations of the brim. At Starker's she +went from one triumph to another. + +For gentlemen came to the Millinery Saloons, gentlemen whose looks said +plainly that they found her prettier than the ladies that they brought; +gentlemen who sometimes came again alone, who for two words would buy a +hat and give it you. At Starker's there was always a chance of something +happening. + +At Granville nothing happened, nothing ever could happen. Granville, +when it didn't keep you doing things, gave you nothing to look at, +nothing to think about, nothing to take an interest in, and nobody to +take an interest in you. It left you sitting in a lonely window looking +out into a lonely Avenue, an Avenue where nobody (nobody to speak of) +ever came. And not only did Violet long for Starker's Millinery Saloons, +she longed for Oxford Street, she longed for the adventurous setting +forth in bus or tram, with the feeling that anything might happen before +the day was over; she longed for the still more adventurous stepping out +of the little door in Starker's shutter into the amorously hovering +crowd, for the furtive looking round with eyes all bright for the +encounter; above all she longed for somebody, no matter who, to come, +somebody to meet her somewhere and take her to the Empire. + +And nobody but Ranny ever came. + +Sometimes, of course, he took her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum; but +going there with Ranny wasn't any fun. Ranny's idea of fun was not +Earl's Court or the Coliseum; it was to mount a bicycle and ride from +that lonely place, Acacia Avenue, into places that were more lonely +still. Sometimes they would have tea at a confectioner's, but what Ranny +loved best was to put bits of cake or chocolate in his pocket, and to +eat them in utter loneliness sitting in a field. In short, Ranny loved +to take her into places where there was nothing for them to do, nothing +for them to look at, and nobody to look at them. If Violet hadn't been +gone on Ranny she couldn't have endured it for a day. + + * * * * * + +Then in the late autumn the bicycle rides ceased. Violet was overtaken, +first, with a dreadful lassitude, then with a helplessness as great as +Granville's. And with it a sullenness that had no sweetness in it, for +Violet defied her fate. And now when she raised her old cry again, "I +can't see _why_ I shouldn't have gone on at Starker's like I did," +instead of saying "Somebody's got to look after Granville" Ranny +answered, "_This_ is why." + +All through the winter the charwoman came every day. And one midnight, +in the first week of March, nineteen-five, Violet's child was born. It +was a daughter. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +On that night Ransome acquired a dreadful knowledge. Granville was not a +place where you could be born with any decency. It seemed to participate +horribly in Violet's agony, to throb with her tortures and recoils, to +fill itself shuddering with her cries, such cries as Ransome had never +heard or conceived, that he would have believed impossible. They were +savage, inhuman; the cries and groans of some outraged animal; there was +menace in them and rebellion, terror, and an implacable resentment. + +And as Ransome heard them his heart was torn with pity and with remorse +too, as though Violet's agony accused him. He could not get rid of the +idea that he had wronged her; an idea that he somehow felt he would +never have had if the baby had been born a month later. He swore that +she should never be put to this torture a second time; that if God would +only spare her he would never, never quarrel with her, never say an +unkind word to her again. He couldn't exactly recall any unkind words; +so he nourished his anguish on the thought of the words he had very +nearly said, also of the words he hadn't said, and of the things he +hadn't done for her. Casting about for these, he found that he hadn't +taken her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum half as often as he might. He +had been wrapped up in himself, that's what he had been; a selfish, low +brute. He felt that there was nothing he wouldn't do for Vi, if only +God would spare her. + +But God wouldn't. He wasn't sparing her now. God had proved that he was +capable of anything. It was incredible to Ransome that Violet should +live through that night. He wouldn't believe his mother and the doctor +and the nurse when they told him that everything was as it should be. He +knew that they were lying; they must be; it wasn't possible that any +woman would go through that and live. + +All this Ransome thought as he sat in the front parlor under the little +creaking room. He _would_ sit there where he could hear every sound, +where it was almost as if he was by her bed and looking on. + +And he wouldn't believe it was all over when at midnight they came and +told him, and when he saw Violet lying in her mortal apathy, and when he +kissed her poor drawn face. He couldn't believe that Violet's face +wouldn't look like that forever, that it wouldn't keep forever its +dreadful memory, the resentment that smoldered still under its white +apathy. + + * * * * * + +For there could be no doubt that that was Violet's attitude--resentment, +as of some wrong that had been done her. He didn't wonder at it. He +resented the whole business himself. + +It was a pity, though, that she didn't take more kindly to the baby, +seeing that, after all, the poor little thing was innocent, it didn't +know what it had done. + +Ranny would not have permitted himself this reflection but that a whole +fortnight had passed and Violet had not died. Ranny's fatherhood was +perturbed by Violet's indifference to the baby. He spoke of it to the +doctor, and suggested weakness as a possible explanation. + +"Weakness?" The doctor stared at him and smiled faintly. "What +weakness?" + +"I mean," said Ranny, "after all she's gone through." + +The doctor put his hand on Ranny's shoulder. "My dear boy, if half the +women went through as little and came out of it as well--" + +Ranny flared up. + +"I like that--your trying to make out she didn't suffer. Tortures +weren't _in_ it. How'd you like--" + +But the doctor shook his head. + +"We can't alter Nature, my dear boy. But I'll tell you for your +comfort--in all my experience I've never known a woman have an easier +time." + +"D'you mean--d'you mean--she'll get over it?" + +"Get over it? She's got over it already. She's as strong as a horse." + +He turned from Ranny with a swing of his coat tails that but feebly +expressed his decision and his impatience. He paused before the closed +doorway for a final word. + +"There's no earthly reason why she shouldn't nurse that baby." + +"What's that, sir?" said Ranny, arrested. + +"She _must_ nurse it. It's better for her. It's better for the child. If +I were her husband I'd insist on it--_insist_. If she tells you she +can't do it, don't believe her." + +"I say, I didn't know there'd been any trouble of that sort." + +"That's all the trouble there's been," the doctor said. And he entered +on a brief and popular exposition of the subject, from which Ranny +gathered that Violet was flying in the face of that Providence that +Nature was. Superbly and exceptionally endowed and fitted for her end, +Violet had refused the task of nursing-mother. + +"Why?" + +The doctor shrugged his shoulders, implying that anything so abstruse as +young Mrs. Ransome's reasons was beyond him. + +He left Ranny struggling with the question: If it isn't weakness--_what_ +is it? + + * * * * * + +For Violet persisted in her strange refusal, in spite of Ranny's +remonstrances, his entreaties, his appeals. + +"It's been trouble enough," she said, "without that." + +She was sitting up in her chair before the bedroom fire. They were +alone. The nurse was downstairs at her supper. The Baby lay between them +in its cradle, wrapped in a white shawl. Ranny was watching it. + +"I should have thought," he said, at last, "you couldn't have borne to +let the little thing--" + +But she cut that short. "Little thing! It's all very well for _you_. You +haven't been through what I have; if you had, p'raps you'd feel as I +do." + +The Baby stirred in its shawl. Its eyes were still shut, but its lips +began to curl open with a queer waving, writhing movement. + +"What does it mean," said Ranny, "when it makes that funny face?" + +"How should _I_ know?" said Violet. + +Little sounds, utterly helpless and inarticulate, came now from the +cradle. + +"What nice noises it makes," said Ranny. He was stooping by the cradle, +touching the Baby's soft cheek with his finger. + +"Look at it," he said. + +But Violet would not look. + +The Baby's face puckered and grew red. Its body writhed and stiffened. +It broke into a cry that frightened him. + +"Oh, Lord!" said Ranny, "do you think I've hurt it? Hadn't you better +take it up or something?" + +But Violet did not take it up. He looked at her in astonishment. She +looked at him, and her face was sullen. + +The Baby screamed high. + +Ranny put his arm under the small warm thing and lifted it up out of its +cradle. He had some idea of laying it on its mother's lap. + +The Baby stopped screaming. + +Ranny held it, with the nape of its absurdly loose and heavy head +supported on his left wrist, and its little soft hips pressed into the +hollow of his right hand. And as he held it he was troubled with a +compassion and a tenderness unlike anything he had ever known before. +For the Baby's helplessness was unlike anything he had ever known. + +And its innocence! Why, its hand, its incredibly tiny hand, had found +his breast and was moving there for all the world as if he had been its +mother. And to Ranny's amazement, with the touch, a queer little +pricking pang went through his breast, as if a thin blood vessel had +suddenly burst there. + +"D'you see that, Vi? Its little hand? What a rum thing a baby is!" + +But even that didn't move Violet, or turn her from her purpose, though +she smiled. + + * * * * * + +From that moment Ranny's paternal instinct raised its head again. It had +been crushed for the time being in his revolt against Violet's +sufferings. But now it was indescribable, the feeling he had for his +little daughter Dorothy. (Violet, since they _had_ to call the Baby +something, had called it Dorothy.) Meanwhile, he hid his feeling. He +maintained a perverse, a dubious, a critical silence while his mother +and his mother-in-law and his Aunt Randall and the nurse overflowed in +praise which, if the Baby had understood them, must have turned its +head. + +Ranny was reassured when the other women were about him; because then +Violet did show signs of caring for the Baby, if only to keep them in +their places and remind them that it was her property and not theirs. +She would take it out of their arms, and smooth its hair and its +clothes, and kiss it significantly, scowling sullen-sweet, as if their +embraces had rumpled it and done it harm. For as long as the nurse was +there to look after it, the Baby's adorable person was kept in a +daintiness and sweetness so exquisite that it was no wonder if Ranny's +mother, in her transports, called it "Little Rose," and "Honeypot," and +"Fairy Flower"; when all that Ranny said was, "It's a mercy it's got +hair." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Just at first the miracle of the Baby drew a crowd of pilgrims from +Wandsworth to Acacia Avenue. Granville had become a shrine. + +People Ransome hardly knew and didn't care for, friends of his mother +and of his Aunt Randall, came over of a Sunday afternoon to see the +Baby. And Wauchope and Buist and Tyser of the Polytechnic came; and old +Wauchope got excited and clapped Ranny on the back and said: "Go it, +Granville! Steady does it. Here's to you and many more of them." And +Booty brought Maudie Hollis, who was not too proud and too beautiful to +go down on her knees before the Baby, while young Fred stood aloof in +awe, and grew sanguine to the roots of the hair that rose, tipping his +forehead like a monumental flame. + +As for the Humming-bird, he was amazing. He insisted on the Baby being +christened in Wandsworth Parish Church (marvelous, he was, throughout +the ceremony); and he actually appeared at Granville afterward with the +christening party. + + * * * * * + +That Sunday afternoon Ransome saw Winny Dymond for the first time since +his marriage. He saw her, he could swear that he saw her, standing with +Maudie Hollis in a seat near the door. He was certainly aware of a +little figure in a long dark coat, and of a face startlingly like +Winny's, and of eyes that could only have been hers, profound and +serious eyes, fixed upon the Baby. But when he looked for her afterward +as the christening party passed out of the church, led by Mrs. Randall +carrying the Baby, Winny was nowhere to be seen. No doubt the +christening party scared her. + +He thought of Winny several times that week. He wondered what she had +been doing with herself all those months, and why it was she hadn't come +to see them. + +And the very next Saturday, as Ransome, on his return from Woolridge's, +was wheeling his bicycle with difficulty through the little gate, the +door of Granville opened, and Winny came out. + +Ransome was so surprised that he let the bicycle go, and it went down +with a horrid clatter, hitting him a malicious blow on the ankle as it +fell. He was so surprised that, instead of saying what a man naturally +would say in the circumstances, he said, "Winky!" + +It would have been like her either to have laughed at his clumsiness or +to have flown to help him, but Winky wasn't like herself. She stood in +an improbable silence and gravity and stared at him, while her lips +moved as if she drew back her breath, and her feet as if she would have +drawn herself back, but for the door she had closed behind her; so +inspired was she with the instinct of retreat. + +Her scare (for plainly she was scared) lasted only for a second; only +till he spoke again and came forward. + +"So it's little Winky, is it? Well, I never!" He laughed for pure +pleasure. + +She smiled faintly and came off her doorstep to take the hand he held +out to her. + +"I came," she said, "to see Violet and the Baby." + +At that he smiled also, half furtively. "And have you seen them?" + +"Oh yes. I've been sitting with Violet for the last hour. I must be +going now." + +"Going? Why, what's the hurry?" + +"Well--" + +"Well--" He tried to sound the little word as she did. He remembered it, +the funny little word that summed up her evasiveness, her reluctance, +her absurdity. + +She was still standing by the doorstep, stroking the sham porphyry +pillar with her childish hand, as if she wanted to see what it was made +of. + +"It isn't _reelly_ marble," Ransome said. + +She gazed at him, wondering. "_What_ isn't?" + +"That pillar." + +"Oh--I wasn't thinking--" She took her hand away suddenly as if the +pillar had been a snake and stung her. Then she looked at it. + +"How beautiful they make them!" She paused, absolutely grave. Then, "Oh, +Ranny, you _have_ got a nice house," she said. + +"Have you seen it?" + +"No. Not _all_ of it." She spoke as if it had been a palace. + +"Come in and have a look round," said Ranny. + +"Well--" + +There was distinct yielding in her voice this time. Winny was half +caught. + +"I _do_ love looking at houses." + +He lured her in. She came over the threshold as if on some delicious yet +perilous adventure, with eyes that shone and with two little teeth that +bit down her lower lip; a way she had when she attempted anything +difficult and at the same time exciting. He showed her everything except +the room she had seen already, the room with the love knots and the +rosebuds where Violet and the Baby were. Winny admired everything with +joy and yet with reverence, from the splendid overmantel in the front +sitting-room to the hot-water tap in the bathroom. + +"My word," Winny said, "what I'd give to have a bath like that!" + +"I say," said Ransome, suddenly moved, "you take a lot more interest in +it all than Virelet does." + +"She's used to it," said Winny. "Besides, I always take an interest in +other people's houses." + +She pondered. They were both leaning out of the back bedroom window now, +looking down into the garden. + +"Think of all those little empty houses, Ranny, and the people that'll +come and live in them. It seems somehow so beautiful their coming and +finding them and getting things for them; and at the same time it seems +somehow sad." She paused. + +"I don't mean that _you're_ sad, Ranny. You know what I mean." + +He did. He had felt it too, the beauty and the sadness, but he couldn't +have put it into words. It was the sadness and the beauty of life. + +It was queer, he thought, how Winny felt as he did about most things in +life. + +But Winny's joy over the house was nothing to her joy over the garden, +the garden that Ranny had made, and over the little tree that he had +planted. It was the most beautiful and wonderful tree in the whole +world. For in her eyes everything that Ranny did and that he made was +beautiful and wonderful. It could not be otherwise: because she loved +him. + +And oh! she had the most intense appreciation of Granville, of the name +and of the personality. She took it all in. Trust Winny. + +And as they stood in the gateway at parting, he told her of the system +by which in twenty, no, in not much more than nineteen years' time +Granville would be his own. + +"Why, Ranny, it sounds almost too good to be true!" + +"I know it does. That's why sometimes I think I'll be had over it yet. I +say to myself Granville looks jolly innocent, but he'll score off me, +you bet, before he's done." + +"He _does_ look innocent," said Winny. + +He did. (And how Winny took it in!) + +"_That's_ what tickles me," said Ranny. "Sometimes, when I come home of +a evening and find him still sittin' there, cockin' his little eyes as +if he was goin' to have a game with me, it comes over me that he's up to +something, and--what do you think I do?" + +"I don't know, Ranny." She almost whispered it. + +"I burst out laughin' in his face." + +"How _can_ you?" She was treating Granville as he did, exactly as if it +was alive. + +"Well--you see how comical he is." + +"Yes. I see it." (Of course she saw it.) "Still--there's something about +him all the same." + +There was something about everything that was Ranny's, something that +touched her, something that made her love it, because she loved him. +Winny couldn't have burst out laughing in its face. + +"I'm glad I came," she said. "Because now I can see you." + +He misunderstood. "I hope you will, Winky--very often." + +"I mean--see you when you're not there." + +He looked away. Something in her voice moved him unspeakably. For one +moment he saw into the heart of her--placid, profound, and pure. + +He was going down the Avenue with her now. For in that moment he had +felt the beauty of her and the sadness. He couldn't bear to think of her +"seeing herself home," going back alone to that little room in St. Ann's +Terrace, where some day, when Maudie married, she would be left alone. +The least he could do was to walk with her a little way. + +"I say, Win," he said, presently, "why ever haven't you come before?" He +really wondered. + +There was a long silence. Then, "I don't know, Ranny," she said, simply. + +They had come to the end of Acacia Avenue before either of them spoke +again. Then Ranny conceived something brilliant. + +"What did you think of the Baby?" he said. + +She fairly shone at him, and at the same time she was earnest and very +grave. + +"Oh, Ranny," she said, "it's the most beautiful baby that ever +was--Isn't it?" + +Ranny smiled superbly. + +"They tell me so; but I dunno. _Is_ it?" + +"Of course it is." + +She had turned, parting from him at last, and she flung that at him as +she walked backward, smiling in his face. + +"Well--I must be going back to Vi," he said. + +And he went back. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +In April Ransome looked confidently for Violet to "settle down." Mrs. +Usher had assured him again and again that the next month would bring +the blessed change. + +"She'll be all right," said Mrs. Usher, "when the nurse goes and she has +you and Baby to herself." + +And at first it seemed as though Violet's mother knew what she was +talking about. + +April put an end to their separation. April, like a second honeymoon, +made them again bride and bridegroom to each other. Nature, whom Ranny +had blasphemed and upbraided, triumphed and was justified in Violet's +beauty, that bloomed again and yet was changed to something almost fine, +almost clear; as if its coarse strain had been purged from it by +maternity. Something fine and clear in Ranny responded to the change. + +And, as in their first honeymoon, Violet's irritation ceased. She was +sullen-sweet, with a kind of brooding magic in her ways. She drew him +with eyes whose glamour was tenderness under lowering brows; she bound +him with arms that, for all their incredible softness, had a vehemence +that held him as if it would never let him go; and in the cleaving of +her mouth to his there was a savage will that pressed as if it would +have crushed between them all memory and premonition. This was somewhat +disastrous to fineness and clearness, and Ransome's no doubt would have +perished but for the persistence with which he held Violet sacred as the +mother of his child. + +Her attitude to the child was still incomprehensible to him, but he was +beginning to accept it, perceiving that it had some obscure foundation +in her temperament. There were moments when he fell back on his old +superstition (exploded by the doctor) and told himself that Violet was +one of those who suffer profoundly from the shock of childbirth. And in +that case she would get over it in time. + + * * * * * + +But time went on, and Violet showed no signs of getting over it, no +signs, at any rate, of settling down. On the contrary, before very long +she slipped into her old slack ways. With all her fierce vitality it was +as if she had no strength to turn her hand to anything. The charwoman +came every week. (That was no more than Ransome was prepared for.) + +The charwoman worked heavily against odds, doing all she knew. And yet, +in the searching light of summer, it was plain, as Ransome pointed out, +that Granville was undergoing a slow deterioration. + +First of all, the woodwork cracked and the paint came off in blisters, +and the dirt that got into the seams and holes and places stayed there. +Granville was visited with a plague of fine dust. It settled on +everything; it penetrated; it worked its way in everywhere. Violet, +going round languidly with a silly feather brush, made no headway +against the pest. + +"For Heaven's sake get it out," said Ransome, "or we shall all be +swallowed up in it and die." + +"Get it out yourself, if you can," said Violet. "You'll soon see how you +like my job." + +She was developing more and more a power of acrimonious and unanswerable +retort. + +"Can't you let it be, Ranny?" (He had found the feather brush.) + +"No. It's spoiling all my O.K. cuffs and collars." + +"I can't help your cuffs and collars. What do you suppose it's doing to +mine?" + +Ransome went on flourishing the feather brush. Presently he began to +cough and sneeze. + +"If you wouldn't rouse it," said Violet, "it would do less harm." + +He admitted that the dust was terrible when roused. + +So the dust got the better of them. Ransome was not the sort of man who +could go about poking his nose into cupboards and places, or flourish a +feather brush with a serious intention. He was even more incapable of +badgering a beautiful girl whom he had already wronged sufficiently, who +declared herself to be sufficiently handicapped by Baby. + +Since the Baby came he had abstained from comment on his wife's +shortcomings; though in the matter of meals, for instance, she had begun +to add unpunctuality to incompetence. Ransome would have considered +himself "pretty flabby" if he couldn't rough it. But he found himself +looking forward more and more to the days they spent at Wandsworth, +those rare but extensive Sundays that covered the hours of two square +meals, not counting tea-time. Then there was the hamper from +Hertfordshire. To be sure, in common decency, it could only be regarded +as a lucky windfall, but providentially the windfall was beginning to +occur at frequent intervals. The Ushers must have had an inkling. +Everybody who came to the house could perceive the awful deterioration +in the food. + +The next thing Ransome noticed was a faint, a very faint, but still +perceptible deterioration in himself. And by "himself" Ranny meant in +general his physique and in particular his muscles. They were not +flabby--Heaven forbid!--but they were not the superb muscles that they +had been. All last year he had attended the Gymnasium religiously once a +week, just to keep in form. This year his wife was having a bad time, +and it wasn't fair to leave her too much by herself. Instead of going to +the Polytechnic he practised with his dumb-bells in the back bedroom. +And now and then after Violet had gone to bed he sprinted. There was no +need to worry about himself. + +What Ranny worried about was the steady, slow deterioration in the Baby. + +It began in the third month of its existence. Up till then the Baby +hadn't suffered. It was naturally healthy, and even Violet owned that it +was good. By which she meant that it slept a great deal. And for a whole +month after she had it to herself she had made tremendous efforts to +keep it as the nurse had kept it. She saw (for she was not +unintelligent) that trouble taken now would save endless trouble in the +long run, in dealing with its inconceivably tender person. As for its +food, Violet had been firm about the main point, but it was no strain to +order once for all from the dairy an expensive kind of milk which Ranny +paid for. + +Only, whereas Nurse had made a Grand Toilette for Baby every other day, +insisting that the little frocks and vests and flannels should be put on +all clean together, Violet observed a longer and longer interval. On +Sundays, when Ranny's mother saw her, Baby was still a Little Rose, a +Honeypot, and a Fairy Flower. On other days, when tiresome people +dropped in unexpectedly, Violet hid everything under a clean overall +when she could lay her hands on one. + +But from Ranny she hid nothing; and presently it came upon him with a +shock that to caress and handle Baby was not the same perfect ecstasy +that it had been. It puzzled him at first; then it enraged him; and at +last he spoke to Violet. + +"Look here," he said, "if you want that child to be a Little Rose and a +Honeypot and a Fairy Flower, you'll have to keep it cleaner. That's got +to be done, d'you see, whatever's left." + +Violet sulked for twenty-four hours after that outburst, but for a whole +week afterward he noticed that Baby was distinctly cleaner. + +But whether it was clean or whether it was dirty, Ranny loved it, and +became more and more absorbed in it. + +And with Ranny's absorption Violet's irritability returned and +increased, and sullenness set in for days at a time without +intermission. + +"_This_," said Ranny, "is the _joie de veeve_." + + * * * * * + +Three more months passed. + +For Ransome every day brought a going forth and a returning, a mixing +with the world, with men and with affairs, the affairs of Woolridge's. +His married life had done one thing for him. It taught him to +appreciate his life at Woolridge's, and to discern variety where variety +had not been too apparent. There was the change from Granville to +Woolridge's, and from Woolridge's to Granville. There was the dinner +hour when he rose from his desk and went out to an A B C shop with Booty +or some other man. Sometimes the other man had ideas, views of life and +so forth, that interested Ransome; if he hadn't, at any rate he was a +man. That is to say, he didn't sulk or nag or snap at you; or nip the +words out of your mouth and twist them; he wasn't perverse; he didn't do +things that passed your comprehension, and he let you be. For Ransome +the world of men brought respite. Even at home, in that world of women, +of one woman, when things (he meant the one woman) were too much for +him, menacing his as yet invincible hilarity, he could turn his back on +them, and work in the garden or play with the Baby. Or he could leave +them for a while and mount his bicycle and ride out into the open +country. For Ransome life still had interests and surprises. + +For the Baby surprise and interest lurked in the feeblest of its +sensations; every day brought, for the Baby, excitement, discovery, and +adventure. And then, it had attached itself to Ransome. It behaved as if +it had some secret understanding with its father. Its sense of comedy, +like Ranny's, seemed imperishable. It would respond explosively to +devices so old, so stale, so worn by repetition, that the wonder was +they didn't alienate it, or disgust. The rapid approach and withdrawal +of Ranny's hand, his face suddenly hidden behind its pinafore and +exposed, still more suddenly, with a cry of "Peep-bo!" its own inspired +seizing of Ranny's hair, would move it to delirious laughter or silent +strangling frenzy. And when Ranny wasn't there, and nobody took any +notice of it, it had its own solitary and mysterious ecstasies of mirth. + +It was all very well for Ranny and the Baby. + +But for Violet it was one interminable, intolerable monotony. Always the +same tiresome things to be done for Granville and for the Baby and for +Ranny, when she did them; and when she didn't there was nothing to do +but to sit still, with no outlook, no interest, no surprise, no +possibility of variety and adventure. + +Now and then they would leave the Baby at Wandsworth with its +grandmother, and Ranny would take her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum. +But these bright hours were rare, and when they passed the gloom they +had made visible was gloomier. And brooding over it, she suffered a +sense of irremediable wrong. + +Nothing to look forward to but bedtime; the slow, soft-footed ascent to +the room with the walls of love knots and rosebuds, Ranny carrying the +Baby. Nothing to look forward to but the dark when the Baby slept and +Ranny (who _would_ hang over it till the last minute) couldn't see the +Baby any more, the dark when he would turn to her with the old passion +and the old caresses. + +And even into the darkness and into their passion there had come a +difference, subtle, estranging, and profound. Between them there +remained that sense of irremediable wrong. In Violet it roused +resentment and in Ransome a tender yet austere responsibility. For he +blamed himself for it. + +Violet blamed the Baby. + +And in those three months Winny Dymond came and went. By some fatality +she contrived to call either on a Sunday when they had all gone to +Wandsworth or on a Saturday when Ransome was not there. Once or twice in +summer, when he was kept at the counting-house during stock-taking or +the sales (for Woolridge's season of high pressure came months earlier +than Starker's), Winny had dropped in toward supper-time, when Violet +had asked her to keep her company. But she always left before Ranny +could get back, because Violet told her (as if she didn't know it) that +Ranny would be too tired to see her home. + +One Saturday evening in August he had come in about nine o'clock after a +turn on Wimbledon Common. Granville with its gate, its windows, and all +its doors flung open, had a scared, abandoned look. A strange sound came +from Granville, the sound of a low singing from upstairs, from--yes, it +was from the front bedroom. + +He went through the lower rooms and out into the garden. Nobody was +there. The Baby's cradle and pram were empty. And still from upstairs +the voice came singing. In all his knowledge of her he had never known +Violet to sing. + +He went upstairs. The door of the front bedroom was closed as if on a +mystery. He knocked and opened it tentatively, like a man who respected +mysteries. The voice had left off singing, and was saying something. It +was a voice he knew, but not Violet's voice. + +It was saying, with a lilt that was almost a song, "Upsy daisy, upsy +daisy, den!" + +There was a pause and then "Diddums!" and a sound of kissing. + +He found Winny Dymond sitting there, alone, with the Baby on her knee. +He caught her in the act of slipping a nightgown over its little naked +body, that was all rosy from its bath. The place was full of the +fragrance of soap and violet powder and clean linen. + +"Hello, Winky!" he said. "What a lark!" He stood fascinated. + +But Winky with a baby in her lap was not capable of levity. It struck +him that the Baby was serious, too. + +"Violet's just this minute gone out for a breath of air," she said. "I'm +putting Baby to bed for her. She's been very fretful all day." + +"Who? Virelet?" + +"No, Baby. (Did it then!)." + +"How's that?" (He sat perched on the footrail of the bedstead, for there +was not much room to spare, what with the wardrobe and Winny and the +bath.) + +"I don't know. But I fancy she isn't very well." + +The Baby confirmed her judgment by a cry of anguish. + +"I say, what's wrong?" + +"I think," said Winny, "it's the hot weather and the bottles." + +"The what?" + +"The bottles. They're nasty things, and you can't be too careful with +them." + +His face was inscrutable. + +"Do you think," she said, "you could find me a nice clean one somewhere? +I've got _two_ in soak." + +He smiled in spite of himself at the gravity, the importance of her +air. + +He went off to look all over the house for the nice clean one that Winny +was certain must be somewhere. In a basin by the open window of the +bedroom he found the two horrors that she had put there to soak. + +"What's wrong with these?" said he. + +For one moment it was as if Winny were indignant. + +"You put your nose to them and you'll soon see what's wrong." + +He did and saw. It was not for nothing that he had been born over a +chemist's shop in Wandsworth High Street. He had heard his father and +his mother (and Mercier even) comment on the sluts whose sluttishness +sent up the death rate of the infant population. + +He kept his back to Winny as he stood there by the window. + +"The bi--!" A bad word, a word that he would not for worlds have uttered +in a woman's presence, half formed itself on Ranny's lips. He turned. +"Well," he said, aloud, "I _am_--Let's throw the filthy things away. +They're poisonous." + +"No, I'll see to it. Just bring me another." + +"There isn't another." + +She gazed at him with eyes where incredulity struggled with terror that +responded to his fierceness. She didn't believe, and she didn't want +Ranny to believe that Violet could be so awful. + +"There _must_ be, Ranny, somewhere." + +"There isn't, I tell you." + +"Then run round to the chemist's and get _three_." + +"All right, but it's no good. The kid's been poisoned. Goodness knows +how long it's been going on." + +She looked at him, reproachfully, this time. + +"No, no; it's only the hot weather come on sudden." + +The Baby set up a sorrowful wail as if it knew better and protested +against Winny's softening of the facts. + +"Poor lamb, she's hungry. Jest you run, there's a dear." + +He ran. The chemist, a newcomer, had set up his shop very conveniently +at the corner of Acacia Avenue. + +As Ransome approached, a familiar figure emerged from the shop doorway; +it stood there for a moment as if undecided, then turned and disappeared +round the corner. + +It was Leonard Mercier. + +"What on earth," thought Ranny, "is old Jujubes doing here?" + + * * * * * + +The flying wonder of it had barely flicked his brain when it was gone. +Ranny's thoughts were where his heart was, where he was back again in an +instant, in the bedroom with Winny and the Baby. + +He prepared the child's food under Winny's directions (it was wonderful +how Winny seemed to know); and before nightfall, what with rocking and +singing, she had soothed the Baby to sleep. + +Nightfall, and Violet hadn't come back. + +"I'm glad she's got out at last," Winny said. "She's had such an awful +day." + +"You think she doesn't get out enough, then?" + +She hesitated. + +"I do. Not really _out_ because of Baby." + +They sat near, they spoke low, so as not to wake the child that slept on +Winny's knee. + +"The kid doesn't give her many awful days. It's such a jolly kid. Any +one would think she'd be happy with it." + +"She's so young, Ranny. You should think of that. She's only like a +child herself. She's got to be looked after. She doesn't know much about +babies. She hasn't had one very long, you see." + +"_You_ know, Winny. How's that? You haven't had one at all." + +"No. I haven't had one. I can't say how it is." + +He smiled. "To look at you any one would say you'd nursed a baby all +your life." + +So she had--in fancy and in dreams. + +"It comes more natural to some," she said. "All Violet wants is telling. +You should tell her, Ranny." + +"Tell her what?" + +"Well--tell her to take Baby out more. Tell her to give her a bath night +_and_ morning. Tell her little babies get ill and die if you don't keep +everything about them as clean as clean. Tell her anything you like. But +don't tell her to-night." + +"Why not?" + +"Because she's upset." + +"What's upset her?" + +"I don't know. _You'll_ upset her if you go flying out at her about +those old bottles like you did; and if you go calling her bad names. _I_ +heard you." + +Was it possible? (Why, he hadn't let it out, or, if he had, it had gone, +quite innocently, through the open window.) + +"If you're not as gentle as gentle with her you'll upset her something +awful. You've got to be as gentle with her as you are with Baby." + +So she thought he wasn't gentle, did she? She thought he bullied Violet +and upset her? Whatever could Violet have been saying about him? +Well--well--he couldn't tell her that he _had_ been as gentle with her +as he was with Baby, and that the gentler he was the more Violet was +upset. + +He didn't know that Winky was punishing him in order to punish herself +for having given Violet away. + +"All right, Winky," he said. "If you think I'm such a brute." + +"I don't think anything of the sort, Ranny. You know I don't." + +She rose with the sleeping child in her arms and carried it to its cot. +He followed her and turned back the blanket for her as she laid Baby +down. But it was Winny and not Baby that he looked at. + +And he thought, "Little Winky's grown up." + +To be sure, her hair was done differently. He missed the door-knocker +plat. + +But that was not what he meant. He had only thought of it after she had +left him. + + * * * * * + +It was past ten before Violet came back. He found her in the +sitting-room, standing in the light of the gas flame she had just lit. +Her eyes shone; her face was flushed. She panted a little as if (so he +thought) she had hurried, being late. + +"Well," he said to her, "have you had your little run?" + +She stared and flung three words at him. + +"I wanted it!" + +And still she stared. + +"Vi--" he began. + +"Well--what's the matter with you?" + +"Nothing's the matter with _me_. But I'm afraid Baby's going to be ill." + +She stood before him, her breast heaving. She drew her breath in and let +it out again in a snort of exasperation. + +"What makes you think so?" + +"Something Winny said." + +"What does she know about it?" + +He wanted to say "A jolly sight more than you do," but he stopped +himself in time. + +He began to talk gently to her. + +And Violet was horribly upset. + +Wrap it up as tenderly as he might, there was no mistaking the awfulness +of the charge he brought against her. He had as good as taxed her with +neglecting Baby. She had recourse to subterfuge; she sheltered herself +behind lies, laid on one on the top of the other, little silly +transparent lies, but such a thundering lot of them that Ranny could say +of each that it was jolly thin and of the whole that it was a bit too +thick. + +That brought her round, and he wondered whether gentleness was the best +method for Violet after all. He was disgusted, for he hated subterfuge. + +And she might just as well have owned up at once; for in a day or two +she was defenseless. The Baby was ill; and the illness was accusation +and evidence and proof positive and punishment all rolled into one; +Baby's sufferings being due to the cause that Ransome had assigned. It +had been poisoned, suddenly, from milk gone sour in the abominable +bottles, and slowly, subtly poisoned from the still more abominable +state of its Baby's Comforter. Ransome and his wife sat up three nights +running, and the doctor came twice a day. And every time, except on the +last night, when the Baby nearly died, the doctor spoke brutally to +Violet. _He_ knew that gentleness was not a bit of good. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Still, that was in August, and they could put a good half of it down to +the hot weather. + +Besides, the Baby got over it. With all its accusing and witnessing, it +was, as Ranny said, a forgiving little thing; it had never in its life +done anybody any harm. It did not hurt Violet now. + +And the hot days passed; weeks passed; months passed, and winter and +spring. The Baby had one little attack after another. It marked the +passage of the months by its calamities; and still these might be put +down to the cold weather or the stress of teething. Then, in a temperate +week of May, nineteen-six, it did something decisive. It nearly died +again of enteritis; and again it was forgiving and got over it. + +There could be no doubt that things would have been simpler if it had +been cruel enough to die. For the question was: What were they to do +now? + +Things, Ransome said, had got to be different. They couldn't go on as +they were. The anxiety and the discomfort were intolerable. Still, that +he had conceived an end to them, showed that he did not yet utterly +despair of Violet. She had been terrified by the behavior of the Baby +and by the things, the brutal things, the doctor had said to her, and +she had made another effort. Ransome's trouble was simply that he +couldn't trust her. He said to himself that she had good instincts and +good impulses if you could depend on them. But you couldn't. With all +her obstinacy she had no staying-power. He recognized in her a +lamentable and inveterate flabbiness. + +If he had known all about her he might have formed a larger estimate of +her staying-power. But he did not yet know what she was. That bad word +that he had once let out through the window had been in Ranny's simple +mind a mere figure of speech, a flowering expletive, flung to the dark, +devoid of meaning and of fitness. He did not know what Violet's impulses +and her instincts really were. He did not know that what he called her +flabbiness was the inertia in which they stored their strength, nor that +in them there remained a vigilant and indestructible soul, biding its +time, holding its own against maternity, making more and more for +self-protection, for assertion, for supremacy. He felt her mystery, but +he had never known the ultimate secret of this woman who ate at his +board and slept in his bed and had borne his child. It was with his +eternal innocence that he put it to her, What were they to do now? + +And that implacable and inscrutable soul in her was ready for him. It +prompted her to say that she couldn't do more than she did, and that if +things were to be different he must get some one else to see to them. He +must keep a servant. He should have kept one for her long ago. + +Poor Ranny protested that he'd keep twenty servants for her if he could +afford it. As it was, a charwoman every week was more than he could +manage, and she knew it. And she said, looking at him very straight, +that there was one way they could do it. They could do as other people +did. In half the houses in the Avenue they let apartments. They must +take a lodger. + +Violet had thrown out this suggestion more than once lately. And he had +put his foot down. Neither he nor Granville, he said, could stand a +lodger. A lodger would make Granville too hot by far to hold him. + +Now in their stress he owned that there was something in it. He would +think it over. + +Thinking it over, he saw more than ever how impossible it was. The +charwoman, advancing more and more, had been a fearful strain on his +resources, and the expenses of the Baby's birth had brought them to the +breaking-point. And then there had been Baby's illnesses. Before that +there was the perambulator. + +But that was worth it. He remembered how last year he had seen an +enormous poster in High Street, with the words in scarlet letters: "Are +you With or Without a Pram for Baby?" He had realized then for the first +time that he was without one. And the scarlet letters had burnt +themselves into his brain, until, for the very anguish of it, he had +gone and bought a pram and wheeled it home under cover of the darkness, +disguised in its brown-paper wrappings to heighten the surprise of it. +Violet had not been half so pleased nor yet surprised as he had +expected; but he had got his money back again and again on that pram +with the fun he'd had out of it. + +But before that again, in their first year, things had had to be done +for the house and garden. Ranny shuddered now when he thought of what +the lawn-mower alone had cost him. And that tree! And then the little +pleasures and the outings--when he totted them all up he found that he +had taken Violet to Earl's Court and the Coliseum far, far oftener than +he could have believed possible. Looking back on that first year, he +seemed to have been always taking her somewhere. She wasn't happy when +he didn't. + +No, and she hadn't been very happy when he did. He would never forget +that week they had spent at Southend last Whitsuntide, when he got his +holiday. And it had all eaten into money. Not that he grudged it; but +the fact remained. His margin was gone; half his savings were gone; his +income had suffered a permanent shrinkage of two pounds a year. + +Impossible to keep a servant without the aid of the lodger he abhorred. +But with it not only possible but easy, easy as saying how d'you do. +Except for the presence of the loathsome lodger, nothing would be +changed. The back bedroom was there all ready, eating its head off; and +for all they used the front sitting-room, they might just as well not +have had one. + +They could get somebody who would be out all day. + +He thought about it for three weeks; but before he made up his mind he +talked it over with his mother. She had come to see them late one +evening in June, and he had walked back with her. She was tired, she +said, and they had found a seat in a little three-cornered grove where +the public footpath goes to Wandsworth High Street. + +In this favorable retreat Ranny disclosed to his mother as much as he +could of his affairs. Mrs. Ransome didn't like the idea of the lodger +any more than he did, but she admitted that it was a way out of it. +"Only," she said, "if I was you I should have a lady. Some one you know +about. Some one who might look after Vi'let." + +"That's right. But Virelet would have to look after her, you see." + +"Vi'let's no more idea of looking after anybody than the cat." + +"It isn't her fault, Mother." + +"I'm not saying it's her fault. But it's a pity all the same you should +have to put up with it." + +"It's larks for me to what Vi puts up with. I shouldn't mind, if--" + +He drew back, shy before the trouble of his soul. + +"If what, Ranny?" she said, gently. + +"If she seemed to care a bit more for the kid. Sometimes I think she +actually--" + +Though he could not say it, Mrs. Ransome knew. + +"Don't you think that, Ranny. Don't you think it, my dear." + +She was playing at the old game of hiding things, and she expected him +to keep it up. She had never admitted for one moment that his father +drank; and she wasn't going to admit, or to let him admit, for a moment +that his wife was a bad mother. + +So she changed the subject. + +"That's a nice little girl I see sometimes down at your place. That +Winny Dymond. Is she a friend of Vi'let's?" + +Ranny said she was. + +"Has Vi'let known her long?" + +"I think so. I can't say exactly how long." + +"Before she was married?" + +"Yes." + +Something in his manner made her pause, pondering. + +"Did _you_ know her before you married, Ran?" + +"Ages before." + +His mother sighed. + +"I suppose," said Ranny, harking back, "some women _are_ like that." + +"Like what now?" She didn't want to go back to it. She was afraid of +what she might be driven to say. + +"Not caring much about their own kids." + +"Oh, Ranny, why do you 'arp on it?" + +"Because I don't understand it. It's just the one thing I can't +understand. What does it _mean_, Mother?" + +"Well, my dear, sometimes it means that they can't care for anything but +their 'usbands. It's 'usband, 'usband with them all the time. There's +some," she elaborated, "that care most for their 'usbands, and there's +some that care most for their children." + +(He wondered which would Winny Dymond care for most?) + +"And there's some," said Mrs. Ransome, "that care most for both, and +care different, and that's best." + +(Winny, he somehow fancied, would have been that sort.) + +"Which did _you_ care for most, Mother?" + +"You mustn't ask me that question, Ranny. I can't answer it." + +But he knew. He felt her yearning toward him even then. There was +something very artful, and at the same time very comforting, about his +mother. She had made him feel that Violet was all right, that he was all +right, that everything, in fact, was all right; that he was, indeed, +twice blest since he had a wife who loved him better than her child, and +a mother who loved him better than her husband. + +"Talking of husbands," he said, "how's the Torpichen Badger?" + +She shook her head at him in the old way; keeping it up. + +"Oh, Ranny, you mustn't call your father that." + +"Why not?" + +"It's a whisky, my dear." + +(He could have sworn there was the ghost of a smile about her soft +mouth.) + +"So it is. I forgot. Well, how's the Hedgehog?" + +For all her smile Mrs. Ransome seemed to be breaking down all of a +sudden, as if in another moment the truth would have come out of her; +but she recovered, and she kept it up. + +"He's had the Headache come on more than ever. I've never known a time +when His Headache has been so bad. Most constant it is." + +Ranny preserved a respectful silence. + +"He's worrying. That's what it is. Your father's got too much on His +mind. The business isn't doing quite so well as it did now He can't see +to things. And here's Mercier saying that he's going to leave." + +"What? Old Eno? What's he want to leave for?" + +"To better himself, I suppose. You can't blame him." + +They rose and went on their way that plunged presently into Wandsworth +High Street. + + * * * * * + +By the time he got home again Ransome had braced himself to the prospect +of the thing he hated. They might let the rooms, perhaps, for a little +while, say, till Michaelmas when he would have got his rise. Yes, +perhaps; if they could find a lady. + +But Violet wouldn't hear of a lady. Ladies gave too much trouble; they +nagged at you, and they beat you down. + +Well, then, if she liked, a gentleman. A gentleman who would be out all +day, and whose hours of occupation would coincide strictly with his own. +But he impressed it on her that no rooms were to be let in his absence +to any applicant whom he had not first inspected. + +So they settled it. + +Then, as if they had scented trouble, Mr. and Mrs. Usher came up from +Hertfordshire the very next Saturday. They looked strangely at each +other when the idea of the lodger was put before them, and Mr. Usher +took Ranny out into the garden. + +"I wouldn't do it," Mr. Usher said. "Let her work, let her work with her +'ands. A big, strapping girl like her, it won't hurt her. Why, my Missis +there could turn out your little doll-'ouse in a hour. Don't you take no +gentlemen lodgers. Don't you let her do it, Randall, my boy, or there'll +be trouble." + +The advice came too late. That very evening Violet informed her husband +that she had let the rooms. + +And while Ranny raged she assured him that it was all right. She had +done exactly what he had told her. She had let them to a friend of +his--Leonard Mercier. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +She gathered from his silence that it was all right. Not a muscle of +Ranny's face betrayed to her that it was all wrong. + +Ever since his marriage he had kept Leonard Mercier at a distance. He +had had to meet him, of course, and Violet had had to meet him, now and +again at dinner or supper in his father's house; but Ranny was not going +to let him hang round his own house if he could help it. When Jujubes +suggested dropping in on a Sunday, Ranny assured him that on Sundays +they were always out. And Mercier had met the statement with his +atrocious smile. He understood that Randall meant to keep himself to +himself. Or was it, Mercier wondered, his young wife that he meant to +keep? + +And wondering, he smiled more atrociously than ever. It pleased him, it +excited him to think that young Randall regarded him as dangerous. + +But Randall did not regard him as dangerous in the least. To Ranny, +Jujubes, in his increasing flabbiness, was too disgusting to be +dangerous. And his conversation, his silly goat's talk, was disgusting, +too. Ranny had thought that Violet would find Jujubes and his +conversation every bit as disagreeable as he did. + +Even now, while some instinct warned him of impending crisis, he still +regarded Leonard Mercier as decidedly less dangerous than disgusting. +He wasn't going to have the flabby fellow living in his house. That was +all; and it was enough. + +And in this moment that his instinct recognized as critical, he acquired +a wisdom and a guile that ages of experience might have failed to teach +him. With no perceptible pause, and in a voice utterly devoid of any +treacherous emotion, he inquired what Mercier was doing there, and +learned that Mercier was leaving Wandsworth next week, on the +thirteenth, and would be established as chief assistant in the new +chemist's shop in Acacia Avenue. + +He remembered. He remembered how last year he had seen Jujubes coming +out of the chemist's shop and looking about him. So _that_ was what he +was after! There had been no chance for him last year; but Southfields +was a rising suburb, and this summer the new chemist was able to +increase his staff. + +It was not surprising that Mercier should want to leave Wandsworth, nor +that the new chemist should desire to increase his staff, nor that these +two desires should coincide in time. Nothing, indeed, could be more +natural. But still Ranny's instinct told him that there had been a +curious persistency about old Eno. + +Well, he would have to interview old Eno, that was all. + +He waited a whole hour, to show that he was not excited; and then, +without saying a word to Violet, he whirled himself furiously down to +Wandsworth. + +The interview took place very quietly over his father's counter. He +found his quarry alone there in the shop. + +Leonard Mercier greeted him with immense urbanity. He could afford to be +urbane. He was dressed, and knew that he was dressed, with absolute +correctness in the prevailing style, a style that disguised and +restrained his increasing flabbiness, whereas, though Ranny's figure was +firm and slender, his suit was shabby. Leonard Mercier had the +prosperous appearance of a man unencumbered with a wife and family. And +unless you insisted on hard tissues he was good-looking in his own +coarse way. His face, with all its flabbiness, had its dark accent and +distinction; and these were rendered even more emphatic by the growth of +a black mustache which he had trained with care. The ends of it were +waxed and drawn finely to a point. His finger nails and his skin, his +hair and his mustache showed that the young chemist did not disdain the +use of the cosmetics that lay so ready to his hand. + +The duologue was brief. + +"Hello, old chappy. So you're going to be my new landlord?" + +"Not _much_." + +"What's that?" + +"Some error of my wife's, I fancy." + +"As _I_ understand it Mrs. Ransome's let me two rooms, and I've taken +them." + +"That's right. But you can't have 'em." + +"But I've engaged them." + +"Sorry, Jujubes. You were a trifle previous. I'm not letting any rooms +just yet." + +"Mrs. Ransome told me the contrary." + +"Then Mrs. Ransome didn't know what she was talking about." + +"Rats! When _you_ told _her_--" + +"It's immaterial," said Ranny, with great dignity, "what I told her. For +I've changed my mind. See?" + +"You can't change it. You can't play fast and loose like that. I've +engaged those rooms from a week to-day. Where am I to go to?" + +"You can go to hell if you like," said Ranny, with marked amiability. + +Up to that point Mercier had been amiable too. But when Ranny told him +where he might go to he began to look unpleasant. + +Unpleasant, not dangerous; oh no, not dangerous at all. Ranny looked at +him and thought how he would go in like a pillow if you prodded him, and +of the jelly, the jelly on the floor, he would make if you pounded. + +"You've got to account to me for this," said Mercier. "Those rooms are +let to me from the thirteenth, and on the thirteenth I come into them, +or you pay me fifteen bob for the week's rent." + +"Have you got that down in black and white?" He had not. + +"Well--if you come into those rooms on the thirteenth I shouldn't wonder +if you get it down in black and blue." + +Whereupon Mercier pretended that he was only joking. He was glad that +the counter was between him and young Randall, the silly ass. And Ranny +said it was all right and offered him (magnanimously) the fifteen +shillings, which Mercier (magnanimously) refused on the grounds that he +had been joking. Then Ranny, beholding Jujubes for the lamentably flabby +thing he was, and considering that after all he had not dealt quite +fairly with him, undertook to find him quarters equal if not superior +to Granville; where, he assured him, he would not be comfortable. And +having shaken hands with Jujubes across the barrier of the counter, he +strode out of the shop with a formidable tightening and rippling of +muscles under his thin suit. + +Mercier leaned back against the shelves of white jars and pondered. +Recovering presently, he made a minute inspection of his finger nails. +He then stroked his mustache into a tighter curl that revealed the rich +red curve of his upper lip. And as he caught the pleasing reflection of +himself in the looking-glass panel opposite he smiled with a peculiar +atrocity. + +Up till then his mood had been the petty fury of a shopman balked of his +bargain and insulted. Now, in that moment, the moment of his recovery, +another thought had occurred to Mercier. + +It accounted for his smile. + + * * * * * + +Ransome went back to Granville with his mind unalterably made up. He was +not going to let any rooms to anybody, ever. The letting of rooms was, +if you came to think of it, a desecration of the sanctity of the home +and an outrage to the dignity of Granville. When he thought of Jujubes +sprawling flabbily in the front sitting-room, strolling flabbily (as he +would stroll) in the garden, sleeping (and oh, with what frightful +flabbiness he would sleep!) in the back bedroom next his own, filling +the place (as he would) with the loathsome presence and the vision and +the memory of Flabbiness, he realized what it was to let your rooms. And +realizing it, he had no doubt that he could make Violet see the horror +and the nuisance of it. Come to that, she shrank from trouble, and +Jujubes would have been ten times more trouble than he was worth. + +In fact, Ranny, having settled the affair so entirely to his own +satisfaction, could no longer perceive any necessity for caution, and +rushed on it recklessly at supper; though experience had taught him to +avoid all unpleasant subjects at the table. The unpleasantness soaked +through into the food, as it were, and made it more unappetizing and +more deleterious than ever. Besides, Violet was apt to be irritable at +meal-times. + +"It's off, Vikes, that letting." + +He saw nothing at all unpleasant in the statement as it stood, and he +was not prepared for the manner in which she received it. + +"Off? What d'you mean?" + +"I've been down and I've seen Mercier." + +"He told you what?" + +She had raised her head. Her red mouth slackened as if with the passage +of some cry inaudible. Her eyes stared, not at her husband, but beyond +and a little above him; there was a look in them of terror and enraged +desire, as if the object of their vision were retreating, vanishing. + +But it was all vague, meaningless, incomprehensible to Ranny. He only +remembered afterward, long afterward, that on that night when he had +spoken of Mercier she had "looked queer." + +And the queerest thing was that she did not know Mercier then, or +hardly; hardly to speak to. + +He answered her question. + +"He told me he'd taken the rooms, of course." + +"And so he _did_ take them!" + +"Yes, he took them all right. But I had to tell him that he couldn't +have them." + +"But you can't act like that. You can't turn him out if he wants to +come." + +"Oh, _can't_ I? _He_ knows that. Jolly well he knows it. _He_ won't want +to come. Anyhow, he isn't coming." + +"You stopped him?" + +"Should think I did. Rather," said Ranny, cheerfully. + +She shot at him from those covering brows of hers a look that was +malignant and vindictive. It missed him clean. + +"Y--y--you----!" Whatever word she would have uttered she drew it back +with her vehement breath. "_What_ did you do that for?" + +"Why, because I don't want the fellow in the house." + +"Why--don't--you want him?" Her shaking voice crept now as if under +cover. + +"Because I don't approve of him. That's why." + +"What have you got against him?" + +"Never you mind. I don't approve of him. No more would you if you knew +anything about him. Don't you worry. You couldn't stand him, Vi, if you +had him here." + +She pushed her plate violently away from her with its untasted food, and +planted her elbows on the table. She leaned forward, her chin sunk in +her hands, the raised arms supporting this bodily collapse. +Foreshortened, flattened by its backward tilt, its full jowl strained +back, its chin thrust toward him and sharpened to a V by the pressure of +her hands, its eyes darkened and narrowed under their slant lids, her +face was hardly recognizable as the face he knew. + +But its sinister, defiant, menacing quality was lost on Ranny. He said +to himself: "She's rattled, poor girl; and she's worried. That's why she +looks so queer." + +"You haven't told me yet," she persisted, "what you've got against him." + +And Ranny replied in a voice devoid of rancor: "He's a low swine. If we +took him in I should have to build a pigsty at the bottom of the garden +for him, and I can't afford it. Granville isn't big enough for him and +me. And it wouldn't be big enough for him and you, neither. You'd be the +first to come and ask me to chuck him out." He spoke low, for he heard +the neighbors talking in the next garden. + +"Fat lot you think of _me_!" she cried. + +"It's you I _am_ thinking of." + +She rose from the table, dragging the cloth askew in her trailing, +hysterical stagger. She lurched to the French window that, thrown back +against the wall, opened onto the little garden. And she stood there, +leaning against the long window and pressing her handkerchief to her +mouth till the storm of her sobbing burst through. + +The people in the next garden stopped talking. + +"For God's sake," said Ranny, "shut that window." + +He got up and shut it himself, moving her inert bulk aside gently for +the purpose. And she stood against the wall and laid her face on it and +cried. + +And Ranny called upon the Lord in his helplessness. + +He went and put his arm round her, and she thrust him from her, and then +whimpered weakly: + +"Wh--wh--wh--why are you so unkind to me?" + +"Unkind! Oh, my Aunt Eliza!" + +"You don't care. You don't care," she moaned. "You don't care what +happens to me. I might die to-morrow, and you wouldn't care." + +"Oh, come--" he ventured. + +But Violet wouldn't come. She was off, borne from him on the rising tide +of hysteria. + +"It's true! It's true!" she cried. "Else you wouldn't use me like you +do." + +"But look here. Whatter you goin' on about? Just because I don't want +you to have anything to do with Mercier." + +She raised her flaming face at that. + +"It's a lie! It's a beastly lie! I never had anything to do with +Mercier." + +"Who said you'd had anything to do with him?" + +"You did. And I hardly know him. I've hardly seen him. I've hardly +spoken to him be--be--before." + +"I never said you had." + +"You thought it." + +"You know I didn't. How _could_ I think it?" + +"You _did_. That's why you wouldn't let him come. You won't trust me +with him." + +"Trust you with him? I should think I _would_ trust you. Him! The flabby +swine!" + +Violet's sobs sank lower. They shook her inwardly, which was terrible to +see. + +And as he looked at her he remembered yet again how in the beginning he +had wronged her. _That_ was what made her think he wouldn't trust her. +There would always be that wrong between them. + +He drew her (unresisting now) to the other side of the room and lowered +her to the couch that stood there. He looked into the teapot, where the +drained leaves were still warm. He filled it up again with boiling water +from the kettle on the gas ring, and poured out a cup and gave it her to +drink, supporting her stooping head tenderly with his hand. Her forehead +burned to his touch. + +"Poor little Vi," he said. "Poor little Vi." + +She glanced at him; slantwise, yet the look made his heart ache. + +"Then you _do_ trust me?" she muttered. + +"You _know_ I do." + +They sat there leaning against each other till the room grew dim. Then +they rose, uncertainly; and hand in hand, as it were under the old +enchantment, they went upstairs into the dark room where the Baby slept. + +To-night he did not look at it. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +That was on the eighth of June. + +He remembered, because it was a Saturday, Saturdays and Sundays being +the landmarks of his existence by which alone he measured the distances +and marked the order of events. The habit of so regarding them was +contracted in his early days at Woolridge's, when only in and by those +hours snatched from Woolridge's did he live. All other days of the week +were colored and had value according to their nearness to Saturday and +Sunday. Monday was black, Tuesday brown, Wednesday a browny gray, +Thursday a rather clearer gray (by Thursday you had broken the back of +the week), Friday distinctly rosy, and Saturday and Sunday, even when it +rained, a golden white. + +He hadn't been married a year before all the seven were shady; the +colors ran into each other till even Sundays became a kind of grayish +drab. And still he continued to date things by Saturdays and Sundays; as +he did now in his mind, exultantly, thus: "Saturday, the eighth: Jujubes +knocked out in the first round." + +Not that the dates went for very much with Ranny, to whom interesting +things so seldom happened. He remembered this one more because of his +scoring off Jujubes than because of the scene with Violet and its +sequel. He was used to scenes and sequels, and was no longer concerned +to note their correspondence and significance. So that he never noted +now that it was on and after Thursday, the thirteenth, that what he +called the Great Improvement had begun. + +He meant the improvement in Violet's appearance. He had accepted the +fact that, in all household matters, his wife was a slut and a slattern; +yet it staggered him when it first dawned on him that, in the awful +deterioration of Granville and the Baby, the standard of her own +toilette had gradually lowered. Then gradually he got inured to it. The +tousled, tumbling hair, the slipshod feet, the soiled blouse gaping at +the back, were, he reflected bitterly, in perfect harmony with +Granville, and of a piece with everything. He had ceased to censure +them; they belonged so inalienably to the drab monotone; they were so +indissolubly a part of all his life. And somehow she bloomed in spite of +them. Ranny's unconquerable soul still cried "Stick it!" as he grappled +with her shameless blouses. + +And now, suddenly, she had changed all that. She had become once more +the creature of mysterious elegance, of beauty charged with magical +reminiscence, in the trim skirt and stainless blouse, clipped by the +close belt; and with the bit of narrow black velvet ribbon round her +throat. Even in the morning she appeared once more with a clear parting +in her brushed and burnished hair. Even in the morning her soft skin was +once more sweet in its sheer cleanness. And in the evening there soaked +through and fell and hung about her that old fragrance of violets that +invariably turned his head. + +And she had bought new stockings and new shoes; openwork stockings that +showed her white feet through, and little, little shoes with immense +steel buckles. And her new mushroom with the big red roses round it +assaulted, battered, and beat into cocked hats all the other mushrooms +in the Avenue. + +But it was the stockings and the shoes that made him kiss her feet when, +on Sunday, the sixteenth, he first saw them coming down the stairs. + +"Do you like my shoes?" she said. And she stuck them out one after the +other. As she was standing four steps above him they were on a level +with his mouth; so he kissed them one after another, on the instep, just +above the buckles. + +"Do you like my dress?" + +"It's ripping." + +"Do you like my hat?" + +"It's an A 1 hat; but it's those feet that fetch me." + +He had not been so fetched for a whole year. It was a most peculiar +fetching. + +They went to church together (they had hired a little girl for the last +week to mind the toddling Baby in the mornings). It might have been for +church that she had put on that hat. It could only be for him that she +wore the shoes. All through the service Ranny's heart was singing a hymn +to the blessed little feet that had so fetched him, the blessed little +tootsy-woots in the blessed little shoes. He knelt, adoring, to the hem +of the new white dress. He bowed his head under the benediction of the +hat. + +The fact that Mercier was established in the chemist's pew opposite, and +was staring at the hat, and under it, did not interfere with his +devotions in the least. He could even afford to let old Jujubes walk +home with them, though he managed to shake him off adroitly at his shop +door. Nothing could really interfere with his devotions. For he felt +that those things, especially the shoes, were the outward and visible +signs of an inward and spiritual grace. Some grace that had descended +out of Heaven upon Violet. + +The signs would be, no doubt, expensive; they should not have been so +much as dreamed of before Michaelmas, when he would get his rise; that +splendiferous get-up would in all probability just about clean him out, +rise and all; but he tried not to look on the dark side of it. He was +not one to quench the spirit or the smoking flax. + +But, as the hours and the days went by, it was borne in upon him that +there was absolutely no connection between Violet's inward state and +that regenerated outside. This perturbed him; and it would have +perturbed him more but that he had other things to think of, and that in +any case he believed that a woman's clothes do not necessarily point to +an end beyond themselves. + +Now, if he had been less preoccupied and had paid more heed to dates, he +would have noted three things: that it was on and after the evening of +Thursday, the twentieth, that her mood of gay excitement and of +satisfaction died and gave place to restlessness, irritation, and +expectancy (a strained and racking, a dismayed and balked expectancy); +that Thursday, the twentieth, was early-closing day in Southfields; and +that consequently Leonard Mercier was at large. And having gone thus far +in observation, he must have seen that it was on and after Thursday, the +twenty-seventh (early-closing day again) that she became intolerable. + +Intolerable. There was no other word for it. The "_joie de veeve_" was +so intense that it was not to be borne. She had days of stupor now that +followed fits of fury. He didn't know which was the worse, the fury or +the stupor. + +But it was the stupor that made him burst out one night (at supper; it +was always at supper that these things happened). + +She had brought it on herself by asking what he wanted _now_ when he had +broken the frightful silence by addressing her affectionately as +"Vikey." + +"What I want," said Ranny then, "is a change. I want bracing; and bright +surroundings, and entertaining society. I shall go and live at +Brookwood." + +At last it was too much for anybody (the fury, this time). It was too +much for the charwoman, even once a fortnight, and she refused to come +again. It was too much for the little girl who minded Baby in the +mornings, and she left. Her mother said she wouldn't "have her put +upon," and complained that Mrs. Ransome had served her something +shameful. Ransome hardly liked to think how Violet could have served the +little girl. + +Before long he had an inkling. For presently a new and incredible +quality revealed itself in Violet. + +Up till now she had never been unkind to the Baby. She had neglected it; +she had been indifferent to it; but it had seemed impossible, not only +to Ransome, but to Violet herself, that she could be positively unkind. +He had charged the neglect to her ignorance, and the indifference to the +perversity of her passion for her husband. It was thus that his mother +had explained the mystery, and at moments it looked as if she might be +right. + +But now that the little thing was on its feet, padding about with a +pathetic and ridiculous uncertainty, stumbling and upsetting itself, +sitting down suddenly, and clutching at things as it overbalanced, and +dragging them with it in its fall, Violet could only think of it as a +perfect and omnipresent nuisance, a thing inspired to torment her with +its malignant and deliberate activity. And from this she went on to +think of it as grown-up at fifteen months, a mature person, infinitely +responsible. Its misfortunes, its infirmities, its innocences were +counted to it as sins. When jam spread itself over Baby's face and +buried itself in Baby's neck, and leaped forth and ran down to the +skirts of its clothing, Baby was "a nasty little thing!" and "a naughty, +naughty girl!" + +Then once, in a fit of exasperation, Violet slapped Baby's hands and +found such blessed relief in that exercise that the slapping habit grew +on her. Cries of anguish went up from Granville, till the neighbors two +doors on either side complained. + +But tiny hands, slapped till (as she said) she was tired of slapping +them, gave no scope, offered no continuous outlet to the imprisoned +spirit within. Violet, under a supreme provocation, advanced to +arm-dragging and shaking. + +She found that shaking on the whole did her most good. + +And then, one Sunday morning, Ransome caught her at it. + +He caught her, coming up softly behind her and pinning her, so that her +fingers relaxed their hold, and he swung her from him. + +"I'm not going to have that, my girl," he said. + +He was deadly quiet about it; and the deadliness and quietness subdued +her. But he kept the child away from her all day till it dropped off to +sleep at bedtime. + +After that he never knew another peaceful moment. All his life was +narrowed suddenly into the circle of one terror and one care. It was +like a nightmare while it lasted. And it tethered him tight. He couldn't +get off by himself now on Saturdays and Sundays, for he was afraid to +leave the child with Violet and Violet with the child. He came pounding +home from Woolridge's at a frantic pace, for he never knew now what +might be happening, what might have happened in his absence. + +And so on to the last days of July. + + * * * * * + +In that month Granville, so long deteriorating, was at its worst. The +paper on the walls was blistering here and there like the paint; the red +and blue roses and the rosebuds wilted, with an effect of putrefaction, +and the love knots faded. + +The front sitting-room, furnished so proudly and expensively, had been +long abandoned because of the attendance it exacted. In there you could +positively smell the dust. The pile of the plush held it and pierced +through it, as grass holds and pierces through the earth. Ranny had a +landed estate in his chairs and sofa. And the bright surfaces of +polished wood and looking-glass were blurred as if the breath of +dissolution had passed over them. Ranny's silver prize cups, standing in +a row on the little sideboard, were tarnished every one. Violet had no +pride in them. That sitting-room was not supposed to be sat in; yet +Ranny sat in it sometimes with Baby, as a refuge from the other. + +For the other was awful. It had the look, not only of being lived in, +but of having lived; of having lived hard, brutally, squalidly, and of +being worn out. A room of which Ranny said that, go into it when you +would, it looked as if it had been up all night. A stained, +bleared-eyed, knocked-kneed sinner of a room. + +And oh! the scullery, where the shining sink had grown a gray, rough +skin, a sort of fungoid coat, from the grease that clung to it, and the +gas stove, furred with rust, skulked like some obscene monster in its +corner. He was afraid, morally and physically afraid, to look at that +thing of infamy behind the back door. He tried to pretend the scullery +wasn't there. + +And in the middle of it, and through the fury and the stupor, Violet +bloomed. + +That was what he could not understand; how between her own cruelty and +that squalor she had the heart to bloom. + +He dreaded every interruption and delay that detained him at +Woolridge's, every chance encounter that kept him from that lamentable +place where he feared and yet desired to be. + +Yet it was in those last days of July that Granville, as if it had +passed through its mortal crisis, took, suddenly, a turn for the better. + +He came into his house late one evening and found peace and order there, +and the strange, pungent smell of a thorough cleaning. There was a +clean, white cloth spread in the sitting-room for supper, spoons and +forks, and the china on the dresser and the table glistened; everything +that could be made to shine was shining. From the gas stove in the +scullery there came the alluring smell of a beefsteak pie baking. It was +wonderful. And it all seemed to have been done by some divine, invisible +agency. There was nobody about; not, at any rate, at the back; and +overhead there was no sound of footsteps. + +He was gripped by a sense of mystery, almost of disaster; as if a wonder +so extreme had something ominous in it. Then he went into the front +sitting-room. + +On the plush sofa, which had been moved from its place against the wall +and drawn right across the bow of the window, Violet lay, veiled from +the street by white Nottingham lace curtains. Pure white they were; such +whiteness as was not to be seen in the newest houses in the Avenue. The +furniture had been polished till it looked like new. All in a row +Ranny's silver prize cups shone again as on the day when he bore them +from the field. The smell of dust was gone. Instead of it there came +toward him a sweet smell of violets and of woman's hair. + +On the sofa in the window Violet lay like a suburban odalisk, +voluptuous, heavy-scented. The flesh of her neck and arms showed rosy +under the thin, white muslin of her gown that clung to her in slender +folds and fell away, revealing the prone beauty of her body. The dim +light came on her through the Nottingham lace curtains, as light might +come through some Oriental lattice of fretted ivory. She bloomed, like a +heavy flower, languid, sullen-sweet, heavy-scented. + +It was Thursday, the twenty-fifth. + +Ransome looked about him and smiled. + +"I say, this is a bit of all right. Did you do it yourself, Vi?" + +Her large eyes opened on him in the pale light; dark they were with a +sensuous mockery in them. + +"Do I look as if I'd done it myself?" she said. + +She certainly didn't. + +"Did you get a woman in, then, or what?" + +She hesitated a moment. + +"Yes. I got a woman in." + +And the miracle continued; so that Ranny said that Granville was not +such a bad little fellow, after all, if you took him the right way and +humored him. + +Then he began to make discoveries. + +The first was on the Sunday morning when he went to his drawer for a +pair of clean socks. He had no hope of finding so much as one whole one. +And yet, there were all his socks sorted, and folded, and laid in a row; +and every single one of them had been made whole with exquisite darning. +The same with his shirts and vests and things; and they had been in rags +when he had last looked at them. And something had been done to his +cuffs and collars, too. + +Then there was the Baby. Her hair, that used to cling to her little head +in flat rings as her sleep had crushed it, was all brushed up and +fluffed into feathery ducks' tails that shone gold in gold. She came to +him lifting up her little clean pinafore and frock to show him. She knew +that she was fascinating. + +"It must be Mother, bless her," he said to himself. + +But it wasn't Mother; or if it was she lied about it. + +Then Violet let it out. + +It was on the night of Tuesday, the first of August, at bedtime. Ransome +was leaning over the cot where the Baby lay, tossed half naked between +sleep and waking, drowsy with dreams. She was adorable with her Little +Rose face half unfolded, and the Honeypot smell of her silken skin. + +Violet stood beside him, looking at the two, sullenly, but with a +certain unwonted tolerance. She was strange and still, as if the unquiet +spirit that had torn her was appeased. + +"I say, it's worth while keeping this kid clean, Vi. It repays you." + +"It pays Winny, I suppose. Else she wouldn't do it." + +"_Winny?_" + +"Yes. What are you staring at? She's a pretty kid," she added, as if the +admission had been wrung from her. + +"She's not been here?" said Ransome. + +"Hasn't she! She was here all morning and all day yesterday, and pretty +nearly every day last week." + +"But--how did she get off? Why--it's sale-time!" + +"She's chucked them." + +"What's she done that for?" + +"You'd better ask her." + +His instinct told him that he would do well to let it pass. He said no +more that night. + +But in the morning, over his hurried breakfast, he returned to it. + +"I don't like this about Winny," he said. "Has she got another job, or +what?" + +"She's got what she wanted." + +"What's that?" + +"A job at Johnson's." + +Johnson's was the new drapers at the other corner of Acacia Avenue, +opposite the chemist. + +"Johnson's?" Ranny could not conceal his innocent dismay. Johnson's +operations and his premises were so diminutive that for Winny--after +Starker's--the descent seemed awful. + +"Are you sure she wanted it?" + +"She must have wanted it pretty badly when she's willing to take seven +bob a week less screw. And if she'd waited till Michaelmas she'd have +got her rise." + +Ranny bent his head low over his cup. He felt his face burning with a +shame that he could not comprehend. He knew that Violet was looking at +him, and that made it worse. + +"You needn't worry," she was saying. "It isn't your fault if she makes a +fool of herself." + +"Makes a fool of herself? What do you mean?" + +The heat in his face mounted and flamed in his ears; and he knew that he +was angry. + +"_You_ ought to know," she sneered. + +He was hotter. He was intolerably hot. + +"I don't, then," he retorted. + +"You silly cuckoo, d'you mean to say you don't know she's gone on you? +Lot of pains she takes to hide it. You've only got to look at her to +know." + +At that the fire in him blazed out. He rose, bringing his fist down on +the table. + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," he said. "A low animal wouldn't +say a thing like that. When she's been so good to you! Where would you +be, I should like to know, if it hadn't been for Winny?" + +She looked at him under her lowered brows; and in her look there was +that strange tolerance, and mockery, and a feigned surprise. And with it +all a sort of triumph, as if she were rich in some secret and insolent +satisfaction and could afford her tolerance. + +"Me?" she mocked. "Do you suppose it's me she comes for?" + +"I don't know and I don't care. But as long as she does come you've got +to be decent to her. See?" + +"I _am_ decent to her. _I_ don't mind her coming. What difference does +it make to _me_?" + +"I should say it makes a thundering lot of difference, if you ask me. +Considering the work you've managed to get out of her for nothing." + +"It isn't my business. I can't help it, if she likes to come here and +work for nothing." + +"You make me sick," said Ranny. + +His eyelids stung him as if they had been cut by little, little knives +close under the eyeballs. He turned from her, shamed, as if he had +witnessed some indecency, some outrage on a beautiful innocent thing. + +Outside in the sunlight his tears dazzled him an instant and sank back +into their stinging ducts. + + * * * * * + +Yes, it had stung him. And he had got to end it, somehow, for Winny's +sake. He had no idea how to set about it. He could not let the little +thing come and do his wife's work for her, like that, on the sly, for +nothing. And yet he could not tell her not to come. + +And he asked himself again and again, "Why, why does she do it? Why? +Like that--for nothing?" + +His heart began to beat uncomfortably, trying to tell him why. But he +did not listen to it. He was angry with his heart for trying to tell him +things he did not know and did not want to know. + +No. He ought not to let her keep on coming. But what was he to do? How +could he tell her not to come? + +He went home through Wandsworth that evening and called at St. Ann's +Terrace. Winny was there. She came down to him where he waited on the +doorstep. As they stood there he could see over the low palings of the +gardens the window of the little house where he had climbed in that +night, that Sunday night, more than two years ago. + +He said he had come to ask her to spend Bank Holiday with them. They +might go for a sort of picnic to Richmond Park, and she must come back +to supper. + +That was his idea, his solution, his inspiration; that she must come; +that she must be asked, must be implored to come; but as a guest, in +high honor, and in festival. + +They settled it. And still he lingered awkwardly. + +"I say--is it true that you've left Starker's?" + +"Yes." + +"What did you do that for, Winky?" + +He did not know that he was going to ask her that; but somehow he had +to. + +She paused, but with no sign of embarrassment; looking at him with her +profound and placid eyes. It was as if she had to search for the truth +before she answered him. + +"I thought it best," she said at last. "I didn't want to stay." + +"Were you wise?" + +She smiled. + +"Yes, Ranny. I think so." + +No. There was not a trace of embarrassment about her, such embarrassment +as she would have been bound to feel if Violet had been right. She had +spoken in measured tones, as if from some very serious, secret, and +sincere conviction. + +She went on. "You see, Maudie won't want me any more. They're going to +be married when Fred gets his holiday." + +"Yes. But it isn't such a good thing for _you_, is it?" + +Her deed thus exposed, presented to her in all the high folly of it, she +seemed to flinch as if she herself were struck with the frightful +indiscretion of her descent from Starker's. + +"It's quieter. That's more what I want." + +He smiled. Pressed home, she was evasive as she had ever been. + +"Look here," he said, as if he were changing the subject. "_You've_ been +found out." + +"Found out, Ranny?" + +"Yes. What have you been about this last week? I can't have you going +and doing Vi's work for her, you know." + +"Oh _that_! That was nothing. I just put things straight a bit, and now +she's got to keep them straight." + +He sighed, and reverted. "I don't like your throwing up that good job. I +don't reelly." + +He meant to go, leaving it there, all that she had done, +unacknowledged, unexplained between them, as she would have it left. And +instead of going he stood rooted to that doorstep, and to his amazement +he heard himself saying, "I wish I could do something for you, Winny." + +And then (he took his own breath away with the abruptness of it). "Look +here--why not come and make your home with us, when Maudie's married?" + +She smiled dimly, as if she hardly saw him, as if, instead of standing +beside him on the doorstep, she were saying good-by to him from +somewhere a long way off. + +"Oh no, Ranny, that would never do." + +"Why not? There's that back room there doing nothing. We don't want it. +You'd be welcome to it if it was any good." + +She shook her head slowly. "It's very kind of you, but it wouldn't do. +It really wouldn't. I don't mean the room, Ranny--it's a dear little +room--I mean--I mean, you know----" + +Now at last she was embarrassed, helpless, shaken from her defenses by +the suddenness of his proposal. + +"All right, Winky," he said, gently. + +Then she broke down, but without self-pity, tearless, in her own +fashion. + +"Oh, Ranny, _please_ don't think I'm horrid and ungrateful." + +"That's all right," he said, feebly. + +He turned as if to go; but she recalled him. + +"There's one thing you could do," she said. + +"What's that? I'll do anything." + +"Well--You can let me come over Saturdays and Sundays sometimes and look +after Baby while you take Violet somewhere." + +He said nothing, and she went on. + +"If I were you, Ranny, I'd take her somewhere every week. I'd get her +out all I could." + +And he said again for the third time, very humbly: + +"All right." + +And as he went he called over his shoulder, "Don't forget Monday." + +As if she was likely to forget it! + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +And, after all, Monday, that is to say the day at Richmond, never came. + +On Monday morning when Violet got up she was seized with a slight +dizziness and sickness. It passed off. She declared that earthquakes +shouldn't stop her going to Richmond, and dressed herself in defiance of +all possible disturbance. Ransome took the Baby over to Wandsworth, to +his mother, to be looked after. At ten o'clock he joined Winny and +Maudie and Fred Booty at St. Ann's Terrace, where they had arranged that +Violet was to meet them. Following on her bicycle, she would be there at +ten sharp, when the five would go on to Richmond by the tram that passed +Winny's door. + +Ransome had no sooner left Granville than Violet slipped out to the +chemist's at the corner. + +Ten o'clock struck, and the quarter and the half hour, and Violet had +not appeared at St. Ann's Terrace. + +Ransome proposed that the others should go on without him; he said he +thought there must be something wrong, and that he had better go and see +what had happened. They argued about it for a while, and finally Maudie +and Fred Booty started. Winny refused flatly to go with them. She was +convinced that they would meet Violet on the road to Southfields. She +must have had a puncture, Winny said. + +But they did not meet her. + +And there was no sign of her downstairs at Granville. + +"Hark! What's that?" said Winny, listening at the foot of the stair. +"Oh, Ranny!" + +From the room above there came a low, half-stifled sound of sobbing and +groaning. + +He dashed upstairs. + +In a few minutes he returned to Winny in the front sitting-room. + +"What's the matter? Is she ill?" she said. + +"No, I don't think so. She won't tell me. She's horribly upset about +something." + +"Shall I go to her?" + +"No; better not, Winny. Look here, she won't come to Richmond. She says +we're to go without her." + +"We can't, Ranny." + +"I don't know. Upon my word, I think we may as well. She'll be more +upset if we don't go. She says she wants to be left to herself for _one_ +day." + +A sort of tremor passed over her eyes. They did not look at him; they +looked beyond him, as if somewhere they saw something that frightened +her. + +"You mustn't leave her, Ranny," she said. + +He laughed. "She doesn't want me. She's just told me so." + +"Whether she wants you or not you've got to stay with her." + +She said it sternly. + +"I say, you needn't talk like that. To hear you any one would think I +fair neglected her." + +She bit her lip. Her eyes wandered in their troubled way. She looked +like a thing held there under his eyes against its will and seeking +some way of escape. + +"I don't think you neglect her, Ranny," she said at last. + +"Well, then, what _do_ you think?" + +She turned. "I think I'm going for a little spin somewhere by myself. I +shall come back in time for dinner. Then I shall go down to Wandsworth +and fetch Baby." + +"I'll do that." + +"No, you won't. You'll stay with Violet," she said. + +"And what about your holiday?" + +"My holiday's all right. Don't you worry." + +She was out of the house and in the garden. Mechanically he wheeled her +bicycle out into the road. He was utterly submissive to her will. + +She mounted, and he ran by her side; she pressed on her pedals, +compelling him to run fast and faster; she set her mouth hard, grinning, +and forced the pace, and he ran at the top of his speed and laughed. At +the end of the Avenue she turned, waved to him gaily and was gone. + +Upstairs on her bed, in the room of the love knots, Violet lay and +writhed. She lay on her face. She had wetted her pillow with her tears; +she had flung it aside and was digging her hands into Ransome's pillow +with a tearing, disemboweling motion. Every now and then, with the +regularity of a machine, she gave out a sob and a groan that shook her. + +He found her so. + +She turned on her side as he entered, and showed him her face scarlet +and swollen with crying. + +"What have you come for?" she said. "I _told_ you to go." + +"I haven't gone. I'm not going." + +"But you've got to go. You shall go. D'you hear? I won't have you +hanging about, watching and tormenting me. What are you afraid of? What +d'you think I'm going to do?" + +She turned and raised herself on her elbow and stared about her as if at +a host of enemies surrounding her, then she sank back helpless. + +"Won't you tell me what it is, Vi?" he said, tenderly. + +He sat beside her, leaning over into her hot lair, and made as though he +would have put his hand on her shoulder. She writhed from him. + +"Why can't you let me be," she cried, "when I don't want you? I don't +want you, I tell you, and I wish you'd go away. You've done enough harm +as it is." + +He rose and went to the foot of the bed and stood there, regarding her +somberly. + +"What did you mean by that? What harm have I done you?" + +She had flung herself down again. + +"You _know_--you _know_," she moaned into the pillow. + +"My God, I wish I did!" + +Then he remembered. + +"Unless--you mean--" + +"You ought to know what I mean without my telling you." + +"Well, if I do, you needn't cast it up to me. I married you right +enough, Vi." + +"Yes, that's what you did. And that's why I hate you." + +"It seems to me a queer reason. But, come to that, what else could we +do?" + +She sat up, pulling herself together like a woman who had things to say +and meant to say them now. + +"We could have done as I wanted. We could have gone on as we were." + +"That's what you wanted, was it?" + +"You know it was. I never asked you to marry me. I asked you not to. And +you _would_--you _would_. I didn't _want_ to marry you." + +"And why didn't you want? That's what I'd like to get at?" + +"Because I knew what it would be." + +"Has it been so very bad then?" + +She sat up straighter, wringing her hands as if she wrung her words out. +"It's been awful--something awful. All the things I don't like--all the +time. And it's made me hate the sight of you. It's made me wish I'd died +before I'd seen you. And I want to get away. I want to get out of this +horrid, hateful little house. I knew I would. I knew--I knew----" + +"My God--if _I_'d known----" + +"_You_? If _you_'d known! I wish to God you had. I wish you had just! If +that would have stopped you marrying me. Oh, you _knew_ all right; only +you didn't care. You never have cared. I suppose you think it's what I'm +made for." + +"I don't follow. It may be all wrong. I'll allow it _is_ all wrong, all +the time. What I want to know is what's up now?" + +"Can't you see what's up? Can't you think?" + +He thought. And presently he saw. + +"You don't mean to say it's--it's another?" + +"Of course it is. What else have I been talking about?" + +"Are you sure, Vi?" + +He was very grave, very gentle. + +"Sure? D'you think I wouldn't make sure, when it's what I'm afraid of +all the time?" + +"Don't you want it? Have you never wanted it?" + +"Want it? Want it? I'll hate it if it comes. But it won't come. It +sha'n't come. I won't have it. I won't live and have it. I shall die +anyway." + +"Oh no, you won't," he said. + +But she flung herself back and writhed and sobbed again. He sat down and +watched with her. In silence and utter hopelessness he watched. +Presently she lay motionless, worn out. + + * * * * * + +At one o'clock Winny knocked at the door and said dinner was ready. + +Violet stirred. "What's the good of sitting staring there like a stuck +ox?" She raised herself. "Since you _are_ there you can get me that +eau-de-Cologne." + +He brought it. He bathed her hands and forehead and wiped them with his +handkerchief. + +She dragged herself downstairs and sat red-eyed through the dinner, the +materials for the picnic which Winny had unpacked and spread. + +The day wore on. Violet dragged herself to her bed again, and lay there +all afternoon while Ransome hung about the house and garden, unable to +think, unable to work, or take an interest in anything. He was oppressed +by a sense of irremediable calamity. + +At four o'clock he made tea and took it to Violet in her room. + +She sat up, weak and submissive, and drank, crying softly. + +She turned her face to him as she sank back on her pillow. "I'm sorry, +Ranny," she said; "but you shouldn't have married me. I'm not that sort. +I told you; and you see." + +He could not remember when she had ever told him. But it was clear that +he saw. For he said to himself, "They say a lot of things they don't +mean when they're like this." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +That was the first and by far the most impressive of their really great +scenes. There was no doubt about it, Violet could make scenes, and there +was no end to the scenes she made. But those that followed, like those +that had gone before, were beyond all comparison inferior. They lacked +vehemence, vividness, intensity. After that first passion of resentment +and revolt Violet declined upon sullenness and flat, monotonous +reproach. + +Ransome put it all down to her condition. He set his mouth with a hard +grin and stuck it. He told himself that he had no illusions left, that +he saw the whole enormous folly of his marriage, and that he saw it +sanely, as Violet could not see it, without passion, without revolt, +without going back for one moment on anything that he or she had done. +He saw it simply as it was, as a thing that had to be. She, being the +more deeply injured of the two, must be forgiven her inability to see it +that way. He had done her a wrong in the beginning and he had made +reparation, and it was not the reparation she had wanted. She had never +reproached him for that wrong as many women would have; on the contrary, +he remembered how, on the night when it was done, she had turned to +comfort him with her "It had got to be." She had been generous. She had +never hinted at reparation. No; she certainly had not asked him to marry +her. + +But that also had had to be. They couldn't help themselves. They had +been caught up and flung together and carried away in a maze; like the +Combined Maze at the Poly., it was, when they had to run--to run, locked +together. + +What weighed on him most for the moment was the financial problem. He +lived in daily fear of not being able to pay his way without breaking +into the rest of his small savings. His schemes, that had looked so fine +on paper, had left, even on paper, no margin for anything much beyond +rent and clothing and their weekly bills. There had been no margin at +all for Baby; Baby who, above all, ought to have been foreseen and +provided for. Baby had been paid for out of capital. So that from the +sordid financial point of view Violet's discovery was a calamity. + +It was a mercy he had got his rise at Michaelmas. But even so they were +behindhand with their bills. That, of course, would not have happened if +he hadn't had to buy a new suit that winter. Ranny had found out that +his bicycle, though it diminished his traveling expenses and kept him +fit, was simply "ruination" to his clothes. + +It was awful to be behindhand with the bills. But if they got behind +with the rent they would be done for. He would lose Granville. His rent +was not as any ordinary rent that might be allowed to run on for a week +or two in times of stress. Granville was relentless in exaction of the +weekly tribute. If payments lapsed, he lost Granville and he lost the +twenty-five pounds down he paid for it. + +And Granville, that scourged him, was itself scourged of Heaven. That +winter the frosts bound the walls too tight and the thaws loosened +them. The rain, beating through from the southwest, mildewed the back +sitting-room and the room above it. The wind made of Granville a pipe, a +whistle, a Jew's harp to play its tunes on; such tunes as set your teeth +on edge. + +Ransome said to himself bitterly that his marriage had not been his only +folly. He should have had the sense to do as Booty had done. Fred had +married soon after Michaelmas, when he too had got his rise. He and +Maudie had not looked upon houses to their destruction; they had simply +taken another room in St. Ann's Terrace where she had lived with Winny. +And she had kept her job at Starker's, and meant to keep it for another +year or so. Fred wasn't going to have any kids he couldn't provide for. +Ranny's case had been a warning to him. + +And Ranny's case was lamentable that winter, after he had paid for his +suit. They lived almost entirely now on hampers sent from Hertfordshire. +The hampers were no longer treated as mysterious windfalls; they came +regularly once a week, and were shamefully and openly allowed for in the +accounts. And regularly once a week the young Ransomes had their Sunday +dinner at Wandsworth; they reckoned it as one square meal. + +All this squeezing and pinching was to pay for a little girl to look +after Baby in the mornings. They had found another, and had contrived to +keep her. For Violet, though she went on making scenes with Ranny, was +quiet enough now when Ranny wasn't there, if only Baby was kept well out +of her way. In the autumn months and in the early winter she even had +her good days, days of passivity, days of exaltation and of rapt +brooding, days when she went as if sustained by some mysterious and +secret satisfaction, some agreeable reminiscence or anticipation. And if +Ransome never noticed that these days were generally Thursdays, it was +because Thursday (early-closing day in Southfields) had no interest or +significance for Ranny. And of all Violet's moods he found the one +simple explanation in her state. + + * * * * * + +On the whole, he observed a change for the better in his household. +Things were kept straighter. There was less dust about, and Ranny's +prize cups had never ceased to shine. His socks and vests were +punctually mended, and Baby at his homecoming was always neat and clean. +He knew that Winny had a hand in it. For Winny, established at Johnson's +at the corner, was free a good half hour before he could get back from +Oxford Street; and as often as not he found her putting Baby to bed when +Violet was out or lying down. But he did not know, he was nowhere near +knowing, half the things that Winny did for them. He didn't want to +know. All that he did know made him miserable or pleased him according +to his mood. Of course it couldn't really please him to think that Winny +worked for him for nothing; but to know that she was there, moving about +his house, loving and caring for his child as he loved and cared for it, +whether it was sick or well, clean or dirty, gave him pleasure that when +he thought about it too much became as poignant as pain. For there was +nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do for Winny to repay her. He +did not know that Winny paid herself in a thousand inimitable +sensations every time she touched the things that he had touched, or +that belonged to him; that with every stitch she put into his poor +clothes her fingers satisfied their longing, as it were, in an +attenuated, reiterated caress; that to feel the silken flesh of his +child against her flesh was for Winny to know motherhood. + +Her life had in it the wonder and beauty and mystery of religion. All +the religion that she knew was in each service that she did for Ranny in +his house. Acacia Avenue, with its tufted trees, with its rows of absurd +and pathetic and diminutive villas, was for Winny a shining walk between +heavenly mansions. She handled each one of Ranny's prize cups as if it +had been the Holy Grail. + +And religion went hand in hand with an exquisite iniquity. In all that +she did there was something unsanctioned, something that gave her the +secret and essential thrill of sin. When Winny made that beefsteak pie +for Ranny she had her first taste of fearful, delicious, illegitimate +joy. For it was not right that she should be there making beefsteak pies +for Ranny. It was Violet who should have been making beefsteak pies. But +once plunged in Winny couldn't stop. She went on till she had mended all +Ranny's clothes and sewed new Poly. ribbon on all the vests he ran in. +She loved those vests more than anything he wore. They belonged to the +old splendid Ranny who had once been hers. + +And under it all (if she had cared to justify herself), under the +mystery and the beauty and the wonder, there was the sound, practical +common sense of it all. As long as Violet was comfortable with Ranny +she would stay with him. But she would not be comfortable if she had too +many things to do; and if she became uncomfortable she would leave him; +and if she left him Ranny would be unhappy. So that the more you did for +her the more likely she was to keep straight. Keeping Violet straight +had always been Winny's job; it always would be; and she was more than +ever bound to stick to it now that it meant keeping Ranny's home +together. In Winny's eyes the breaking up of a home was the most awful +thing that could happen on this earth. In Leonard Mercier (established +so dangerously near) she recognized a possible leader of the forces of +disruption. When she left Starker's for Johnson's (where, as she put it +to herself, she could look after Violet), she had hurled her small body +into the first breach. Johnson's was invaluable as a position whence she +could reconnoiter all the movements of the enemy. + +But it was a strain upon the heart and upon the nerves; and the effect +on Winny's physique was so evident that Ranny noticed it. He noticed +that Winny was more slender and less sturdy than she used to be; her +figure, to his expert eye, suggested the hateful possibility of +flabbiness. He thought he had traced the deterioration to its source +when he asked her if she had chucked the Poly. + +She had. + +What did she do that for? Well--she didn't think she cared much for the +Poly. now. It was different somehow. At least that was the way she felt +about it. ("Same here," said Ranny.) And she couldn't keep up like she +did. The running played her out. + +He saw her, then, a tired, indifferent little figure, padding through +the circles and the patterns of the Combined Maze; padding listlessly, +wearily, with all the magic and the joy gone out of her. + +"We had grand times there together," he said then. "Do you remember the +Combined Maze?" + +She remembered. + +"Sometimes I think that life's like that--a maze, Winny. A sort of +Combined Maze--men and women--mixed up together." + +She thought so too. + + * * * * * + +Violet had got used to Winny's being there. She took it for granted, as +if it also were one of those things that had to be. She depended on it, +and owned herself dependent. When Winny was there, she said, things went +right, and when she wasn't there they went wrong. She didn't know how +they had ever got along without her. + +Ransome was surprised to see in Violet so large a heart and a mind so +open. For not only did she tolerate Winny, she clung, he could see that +she clung, to her like a child. She even tolerated what he wouldn't have +thought a woman would have stood for a single instant, the fact, the +palpable fact, that Ranny couldn't get along without her any more than +she could. + +And if they could, the Baby couldn't. Baby (she was Dorothy now and +Dossie) cried for Winny when Winny wasn't there. She would run from her +mother's voice to hide her face in Winny's skirts. Baby wasn't ever +really happy without Winny. + +That was how she had them, and she knew it, and the Baby knew it; and +the two of them simply rode roughshod over Ranny and his remonstrances. + +"What are you doing there, Winky?" he would say, when he caught her on a +Sunday morning in the bathroom, with Baby happy on a blanket at her +feet. + +"Washing Dossie's pinafores," she would sing out. + +"I wish to Goodness I could stop you." + +"But you can't. Can he, Lamby Lamb? Laugh at him, then. Laugh at Daddy." + +And the Lamby Lamb would laugh. + +He knew, and they knew, that he couldn't stop her except by doing the +work for her; and the more things he did the more things she found to do +that he couldn't do, such as washing pinafores. So he gave it up; and +gradually he too began to take it for granted that Winny should be +there. + +And she was more than ever there after April of nineteen-seven, when the +little son was born. The little son that they called Stanley Fulleymore. + +When _he_ came more and more of Ranny's savings had to go. He didn't +care. For he had gone again through deep anguish, again believing that +Violet would die, that she couldn't possibly get over it. And she _had_ +got over it; beautifully, the doctor said. He assured him that she +hadn't turned a hair. And after it she bloomed as she had never bloomed +before; she bloomed to excess; she coarsened in sheer exuberance and +rioting of health. She was built magnificently, built as they don't seem +able to build women now, built for maternity. + +"You don't think," said Ranny to the doctor, "that it really does her +any harm?" + +For she had tried to frighten him with the harm she said it did her. + +"My dear Ransome, if she had a dozen children it wouldn't do her any +harm." + +It was the same tale as before, and he couldn't understand it. For of +the flame of maternity, the flame that burned in Winny, it was evident +that Violet hadn't got a spark. If she had been indifferent to her +daughter Dorothy, she positively hated her son, Stanley Fulleymore. She +intimated that he was a calamity, and an ugly one at that. One kid, she +said, was bad enough; what did he expect that she should do with two? + +She did nothing; which was what he had expected. She trailed about the +house, glooming; she sank supine under her burden and lay forever on the +sofa. When he tried to rouse her she burst into fury and collapsed in +stupor. The furies and the stupors were worse than he had ever known. +They would have been unendurable if it had not been for Winny. + +And in the long days when Winny was not there he was always afraid of +what might happen to the children. He had safeguarded them as far as +possible. He had engaged an older and more expensive girl, who came from +nine to six, five days a week and Saturday morning. Soon after six Winny +would be free to run in and wash the Baby and put Dossie to bed. + +Shamelessly he accepted this service from her; for he was at his wits' +end. As often as not he took Violet out somewhere (to appease the +restlessness that consumed her), leaving Winny in charge of the babies. +Winny had advised it, and he had grown dependent on her judgment. He +considered that if anybody understood Violet it was Winny. + +And slowly, month by month, the breach that Winny had hurled herself +into widened. It was as if she stood in it with arms stretched wide, +holding out a desperate hand to each of them. + +Everything conspired to tear the two asunder. In summer the heat of the +small rooms became intolerable. Ransome proposed that he should sleep in +the back bedroom and leave more air for Violet and the children. + +Violet was sullen but indifferent. "If you do," she said, "you'll take +Dossie. _I_ won't have her." + +He took Dossie. The Baby was safe enough for all her dislike of it, and +for all it looked so sickly. For it slept. It slept astoundingly. It +slept all night and most of the day. There never was such a sleeper. + +He thought it was a good sign. But when he said so to Winny she looked +grave, so grave that she frightened him. + +Then suddenly the Baby left off sleeping. Instead of sleeping he cried. +He cried piteously, inveterately; he cried all night and most of the +day. He never gave them any peace at all. His crying woke little Dossie, +and she cried; it kept Ransome awake; it kept Violet awake, and she +cried, too, hopelessly, helplessly; she was crushed by the everlasting, +irremediable wrong. + +And it was then, in those miserable days, that she turned on Winny, +until Ransome turned on her. + +"It's shameful the way you treat that girl, after all she's done for +you." + +"What's she been telling you?" There was fright in Violet's eyes. + +"She's not told me anything. I've got eyes. I can see for myself." + +"Oh, you've got eyes, have you? Jolly lot you see!" + +But she was penitent that night and asked Winny to forgive her. She +implored her not to leave off coming. + +And Winny came and went now in pain instead of joy. Everything in +Ranny's house pained her. Violet's voice that filled it pained her, and +the crying of the little children. Ranny's face pained her. Most of all +it pained her to see Dossie's little cot drawn up beside Ranny's bed in +the back room; they looked so forlorn, the two of them; so outcast and +so abandoned. + +She went unhindered and unheeded into Ranny's room, tidying it and +putting the little girl to bed. But into Violet's room she would not go +more than she could help. She hated Violet's room; she loathed it; and +she dared not think why. + + * * * * * + +One Saturday evening in the last week of September Ransome had come home +late after a long solitary ride in the country. Violet, who was busy +making a silk blouse for herself, had refused to go with him. Winny had +laid it down as a law for Ranny that Violet was never to be left for +very long to herself, if he wanted her to be happy. And, of course, he +wanted her to be happy. But if ever there was a moment when he could +leave her with a clear conscience it was when she was dressmaking. + +She gave herself to it with passion, with absorption. He had known her +to sit for hours over a new blouse in apparently perfect happiness. + +And to-day he could have sworn that she was happy. She had risen of her +own accord and kissed him good-by and told him to enjoy himself and not +hurry home. She would be all right, and Winny had said she would drop in +for tea. He left her sewing white lace onto blue silk in a matchless +tranquillity. + +And he _had_ enjoyed his ride, and he had not hurried home, for he knew +that the children would be all right (even if Violet's happy mood had +changed) as long as Winny was there to look after them. + +He rode far out into the open country, into the deep-dipping lanes, +between fields, and through lands scented with autumn. And as he rode he +was a boy again. Never since his marriage had he known such joy in +freedom and such ecstasy in speed. There was a wind that drove him on, +and the great clouds challenged him and raced with him as he went. + +He came home against the wind, but that was nothing. The wind was a +challenge and a defiance of his strength; it set the blood racing in his +veins, and cooled it in his face when it burned. It was good to be +challenged by the wind and to defy it. It was good to struggle. It was +all good that happened to him on that day. + +Night had fallen when he returned. Granville was lit up behind its +yellow blinds. Winny stood at the open door with the lighted passageway +behind her. Granville in the autumnal dark, with the gas turned full on +inside it, looked all light, all quiet flame, as if the walls that were +the substance of it had been cut clean away, leaving a mere shell, a +mere framework for its golden incandescence. + +So small, so fragile, so insubstantial was the shell, that Winny's +slight figure in the doorway showed in proportion solid and solitary and +immense, as if it sustained the perishable fabric. + +She was leaning forward now, bearing up the shell on her shoulders. She +was looking out, up and down the Avenue. + +"That you, Winny?" he said. + +"Yes. I'm looking for Vi." + +"She gone out?" + +"Gone into Wandsworth." + +"What did she go for?" + +"To have a dress tried on." + +"I say, she _is_ going it!" + +"There's a girl in St. Ann's," said Winny, "what makes for her very +cheap." + +He sighed and checked his sigh. "You bin slavin', Win?" + +"No. Why?" + +"You looked fagged out." + +Winny's face was white under the gaslight. + +She said nothing. She stood there looking out while he propped his +bicycle up against the window sill. + +He followed as she turned slowly and went through the passage to the +back room. + +"Kids asleep?" + +"Yes. Fast." + +She went to the dresser, and he helped her to take down the cups and +plates and set the table for their supper. In all her movements there +was a curious slowness and constraint, as if she were spinning time +out, thread by thread. It was five-and-twenty past eight. + +"Who's that for?" she asked as he laid a third place at the side. + +"Well, I should think it was for you." + +She started ever so slightly, and stared at the three plates, as if +their number put her out in some intricate calculation. + +"I must be going," she said. + +"Not you. Not much!" + +She submitted, moving uneasily about the place, but busy, folding things +and putting them away. He ran upstairs to wash. She could hear him +overhead, splashing, rubbing, and brushing. + +When he came down again she was sitting on the sofa with her hands +clasped in front of her, her head bent, her eyes fixed, gazing at the +floor. + +"I suppose we've got to wait for Vi," he said. + +"Oh yes." + +They waited. + +"I say, it's a quarter to nine, you know," he said, presently. + +"Hungry, Ran?" + +"My word! I should think I was just. D'you think she's gone to Mother +and had supper there?" + +"She--might have." + +"Well, then, let's begin. Come along." + +She shook her head. There was a slight spasm in her throat as if the +idea of food sickened her. + +"What's the matter?" + +"Nothing--nothing. I'm all right. I don't want to eat anything, that's +all. I must be going soon." + +"You're tired out, Win. You've got past it. Tell you what, I'll make you +a cup of tea." + +"No, Ranny, don't. I'd rather not." + +She rose, and yet she did not go. He had never known Winny so undecided. + +Then suddenly she stooped. On the floor of the hearth rug she had caught +sight of some bits of blue silk left from Violet's sewing. With an +almost feverish concentration of purpose she picked up each one of the +scraps and snippets; she threw them on the hearth. Slowly, deliberately, +spinning out her thread of time, she gathered what she had strewed; she +gathered into a handful the little scraps and snippets of blue silk, +powdered with the gray ashes from the hearth, and dropped them in the +fire, watching till the last shred was utterly destroyed. + +There was a faint cry overhead and Ransome started up. + +The cry or his movement clenched her resolution. + +"_I'll_ go, Ranny," she said. + +And as she went she drew a letter in a sealed envelope from the bosom of +her gown and laid it on the table. + +"Vi said I was to give you that if she wasn't back by eight. It's nine +now." + +He stared and let her go. He waited. He was aware of her footsteps in +the front room upstairs, of the baby crying, and of the sudden stilling +of his cry. Then he opened the letter. + +He read in Violet's tottering, formless handwriting: + +/# + <sc>Dear Randall,</sc>--This is to let you know I've gone and that I'm not + coming back again. I stuck to you as long as I could, but it was + misery. You and me aren't suited to live together, and it's no use + us going on any more pretending. If you'd take me back to-morrow I + wouldn't come. I can't live without Leonard Mercier, nor he without + me. I dare say you know it's him I've gone with. + + We're awfully sorry for all the trouble we're bringing on you. But + we couldn't help ourselves. We were driven to it. I've been off my + head all this year thinking how I must do it, and all the time + being afraid to take the step. And ever since I made up my mind to + it I've been quiet inside and happy, which looks as if it was meant + and had got to be. + + You needn't blame Leonard. He held off till he couldn't hold off + any more, because he was a friend of yours and didn't want to hurt + you. It was really me made him. It's a tragedy, but it would be a + bigger tragedy if we didn't, for we belong to one another. And he's + taking me to Paris to live so as nobody need know anything about + it. He's got a post in a shop there. And we're starting on a + Saturday so as you can have Sunday to turn round in. + + You'll forgive me, Ranny dear. It's what I've always told you--you + shouldn't have married me. You should have married a girl like + Winny. She was always fond of you. It was a lie what I told you + once about her not being. I said it because I was mad on you, and I + knew you'd marry her if I let you alone. So you can say it's all my + fault, if you like. + + Yours truly, + + [she had hesitated, with some erasures, over the form of + valedictions] + + Vi. +#/ + +There was a postscript: + +/# + "You can do anything you like to me as long as you don't touch + Leonard. It's not his fault my caring for him more than you." +#/ + +And in a small hand squeezed into the margin he made out with difficulty +two more lines. "You needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby. There was +never anything between me and Leonard before July of last year." + +He did not read it straight through all at once. He stuck at the opening +sentence. It stupefied him. Even when he took it in it did not tell him +plainly what it was that she had done besides going away and not coming +back again. It was as if his mind were unable to deal with more than one +image at a time, as if it refused to admit the hidden significance of +language. + +Realization came with the shock of the name that struck at him suddenly +out of the page in a flash that annihilated the context. The name and +his intelligence leaped at each other and struck fire across the +darkness. His gorge rose at it as it would have risen at a foul blow +under the belt. + +Leonard Mercier; he saw nothing else; he needed nothing else but that; +it showed him her deed as the abomination that it was. If it had been +any other man he thought he could have borne it, for he might still have +held her clean. + +As it was, the uncleanness was such that his mind turned from it +instinctively as from a thing unspeakable. He closed his eyes, he hid +his face in his hands, as if the two had been there with him in the +room. And still he saw things. There rose before him a sort of welter of +gray slime and darkness in which were things visible, things white and +vivid, yet vague, broken and unfinished, because his mind refused to +join or finish them; things that were faceless and deformed, like white +bodies that tumble and toss in the twilight of evil dreams. These white +things came tumbling and tossing toward him from the gray confines of +the slime; urged by a persistent and abominable life, they were borne +perpetually on the darkness and were perpetually thrust back into it by +his terror. + +He turned the letter and read it to the end, to the last scribble on the +margin: "You should have married a girl like Winny Dymond." "It was a +lie what I told you once about her." "You needn't be afraid of being +fond of Baby." There was nothing evocative, nothing significant for him +in these phrases, not even in the names. His mind had no longer any grip +on words. The ideas they stood for were blurred; they were without form +or meaning; they rose and shifted like waves, and like waves they +disappeared on the surface of the darkness and the slime. + +He was roused from his sickening contemplation by a child's cry +overhead. It came again; it pierced him; it broke up the horror and +destroyed it. He woke with it to a sense of sheer blank calamity, of +overpowering bereavement. + +His wife had left him. That was what had happened to him. His wife had +left him. She had left her little children. + +It was as if Violet had died and her death had cleansed her. + +When the child cried a third time he remembered Winny. He would have to +tell her. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +He rose and went to the fireplace mechanically. His impulse was to tear +up and burn Violet's letter and thus utterly destroy all proof and the +record of her shame. He was restrained by that strong subconscious +sanity which before now had cared for him when he was at his worst. It +suggested that he would do well to keep the letter. It was--it was a +document. It might have value. Proofs and records were precisely what he +might most want later on. He folded it and replaced it in its envelope +and thrust it into the breast pocket of his coat. + +And it occurred to him again that he had got to tell Winny. + +He could hear her feet going up and down, up and down, in the front room +overhead where she walked, hushing the crying baby. Presently the crying +ceased and the footsteps, and he heard the low humming of her cradle +song; then silence; and then the sound of her feet coming down the +stairs. + +He would have to tell her now. + +He drew himself up, there where he was, standing by his hearth, and +waited for her. + +She came in softly and shut the door behind her and stood there as if +she were afraid to come too near. Her face was all eyes; all eyes of +terror, as before a grief too great, a bereavement too awful for any +help or consolation. She spoke first. + +"What is it, Ranny?" Her low voice went light like a tender hand that +was afraid to touch his wound. + +"She's left me; that's all." + +Her lips parted, but no words came; they parted to ease the heart that +fluttered with anguish in her breast. She moved a little nearer into the +room, not looking at him, but with her head bowed slightly as if her +shoulders bore Violet's shame. She stood a moment by the table, looking +at her own hand as it closed on the edge, the fingers working up and +down on the cloth. It might have been the hand of another person, for +all she was aware of its half-convulsive motion. + +"Oh, Ranny, _dear_--" At last she breathed it out, the soul of her +compassion, and all her hushed sense of his bereavement. + +"Did you know?" + +She shook her head, slowly, closing in an extremity of negation the eyes +that would not look at him. + +"No--No--" It was as if she had said, "Who _could_ have known it?" Yet +her voice had an uncertain sound. + +"But you had an idea?" + +"No," she said, taking courage from his incredible calmness. "I was +afraid; that was all." And then, as one utterly beaten by him and +defenseless, she broke down. "I tried so hard--so hard, so as it +shouldn't happen." + +It was as if she had said, "I tried so hard--so hard to save her for +you; but she had to die." + +"I know you did." + +But it was only then, in the long pause of that moment, that he knew; +that he saw the whole full, rich meaning and intention of the things +that she had done for him. + +And now, as if she were afraid lest he should see too much, as if +somehow his seeing it would sharpen the perilous edge she stood on, +would wind up to the pitch of agony her tense feeling of it all, Winny +suddenly became evasive. She found her subterfuge in stark matter of +fact. + +"You haven't had any supper," she said. + +"No more have you." + +"I don't want anything." + +"I'm sure _I_ don't. But you must. You'll be ill, Winny, if you don't." + +White-faced and famished, they kept it up, both struck by the indecency +of eating in the house of sorrow. Then for his sake she gave in, and he +for hers. + +"If you will, I will," she said. + +"That's right," said he. + +And together helping each other, they filled the kettle and set it on +the fire to boil, moving in silence and with soft footsteps, as in the +house where death was. And together they sat down to the table and +forced themselves to eat a little, each for the sake of the other, +encouraging each other with such difficult, broken speech as mourners +use. They behaved in all ways as if the ghost of a dead Violet sat in +her old place, facing Ranny. The feeling, embraced by each of them with +the most profound sincerity, was that Ranny's bereavement was +irreparable, supreme. Each was convinced with an inassailable and +immutable conviction that the thing that had happened was, for each of +them, the worst that could happen. + +Half through the meal he got up suddenly and left her. He was seized +with violent sickness, such sickness as he had never yet known, and +would have believed impossible. The sounds of his bodily anguish reached +her from the room above. They stirred her emotion to a passion of +helpless, agonizing pity. If she could only go up to him and put her +hand on his forehead, and do things for him! But she couldn't; and she +felt poignantly that if she did Ranny somehow wouldn't like it. So, as +there was nothing she could do for him, she laid her head down on her +arms and wept. + +She raised it suddenly, like a guilty thing, and dashed the tears from +her eyes, as if she were angry with them for betraying her. + +Ranny had recovered and was coming downstairs again. As he came in he +saw at once what she had been doing. + +"You've been crying, Winny?" + +She said nothing. + +"I wouldn't if I were you," he said. "There's no need." + +She rose and faced him bravely, for there were things that must be +thought of. + +"What are you going to do, Ranny?" she said. + +"Nothing. What is there to be done?" + +"Well--" She paused, breathing painfully. + +"Look here, Winny, you're dead-beat and you must go home to bed. Do you +know it's past ten?" + +She drew herself up. "I'm not going." + +"You must, dear, I'm afraid." + +He smiled, and the smile and his white face made her heart ache. Also +they made her more determined. + +"You must have somebody. You can't be left like this all by yourself. Do +you think I can go and leave you, when you're ill and all?" + +"I'm all right now. I wish I could see you home, but I can't leave the +house with the kids, you see, all alone." + +"Ranny," she said, "I'm not going." She was very grave, very earnest, +absolutely determined, and, child that she still was, absolutely unaware +of the impossibility of the thing that she proposed. She was blind to +herself, blind to all appearances, blind to all aspects of the case, but +one, his desolation and his necessity. + +"I can't leave you. I wouldn't be happy if I didn't stay. You might be +taken bad or something, in the night." + +"You can't stay, Winny. It wouldn't do." They were the words she had +used to him, in her wisdom, when he had asked her to make her home with +him and Violet. + +But the vision of propriety, which he raised and presented thus for her +consideration, it was nothing to her. She swept it all aside. + +"But I _must_," she said. "There's Baby." + +He remembered then that little one, above in Violet's deserted room. +Almost she had persuaded him, but for that secret sanity which had him +in its care. + +"I'll take him. You must go now," he said, firmly. "Now this minute." + +He looked for her hat and coat, found them and put her into them, +handling her with an extreme inflexibility of manner and tenderness of +touch, as if she had been a child. + +"Well, then," she compromised. "Let me help you move him." + +He let her; and they went upstairs and into Violet's room. Winny had +removed every sign of disorder left by Violet in the precipitancy of her +flight. Between them, very gently, they carried the cot, with the +sleeping baby in it, out of the room of the love knots and the rosebuds +into Ranny's room. They set the cot close up against the side of his bed +with the rail down so that Ranny's arms might reach out to Baby where he +lay. Dossie's little bed was drawn up at the foot. They stood together +for a moment, looking at the two children, at Dossie, all curled up and +burrowing into her pillow, and at Baby, lying by Ranny's bed as a +nursling lies by its mother. + +They were silent as the same thought tore at them. + +Night after night, for years, as long as Dossie and Baby were little, +Ranny would lie like that, on that narrow bed of his, shut in by the two +cots, one at his side and the other at his feet. And to Winny it had +come, for Ranny had rubbed it into her (tenderly enough; but he had +rubbed it in), that this was the last night when she could stand beside +him there. She had tried so hard to hold him and Violet together; and +all the time it had been Violet who had held her and him. It was +Violet's presence that had made it possible for her to go in and out +with Ranny in his house. + +She stooped for a final, reassuring look at Baby. + +"Can you manage with him?" she whispered. + +He nodded. + +"I've made him his food in that saucepan. You'll have to heat it on the +gas ring--in there." + +"In there" was Violet's room. + +They went downstairs together. + +"I wish I could see you home," he said again. + +"I'm all right." But she paused on the doorstep. "You ought to have +somebody. You can't be left all alone like this. Mayn't I run down and +fetch your mother?" + +"No," he said, "you mayn't. I'll go down myself to-morrow morning, if +you wouldn't mind coming in and looking after the kids for a bit." + +"Of course I'll come. Good night, Ranny." + +"Good night, Winky. And thanks--" His throat closed with a sharp +contraction on the words. She slipped into the darkness and was gone. + + * * * * * + +He was thankful that he had had the sense to see the impossibility of +it, of her spending the night in his house with nobody in it but the two +of them and the two children. + +But it was only when, in the act of undressing, he was reminded of +Violet's letter by its bulging in his breast pocket, that he glimpsed +the danger they had escaped. Up till then he had only thought of Winny, +of her reputation, of her post at Johnson's (imperiled if she were not +in by eleven), of all that she would not and could not think of in her +thought for him. Now, that inner sanity, that secret wisdom which had +made him preserve Violet's letter as a possibly valuable document, +suggested that if Winny had stayed all night in the house with him that +document would have lost its value. Not that he had meant to do anything +with it, that he had any plan, or any certain knowledge. Those two +ideas, or rather, those two instinctive appreciations, of the value of +the document, and of the awfulness of the risk they ran, were connected +in his mind obscurely as the stuff of some tale that he had been told, +or as something he had seen sometime in the papers. He put them from him +as things that he himself had no immediate use for; while all the time +subconscious sanity guarded them and did not let them go. + +But that was all it did for him. It did not lift from him his +oppression, or fill with intelligible detail his blank sense of +calamity, of inconsolable bereavement. This oppression, this morbid +sense, amounted almost to hallucination; it prevented him from thinking +as clearly as he might about all that, the value of the document, and +the rest of it, and about what he ought to do. It was with him as he lay +awake on his bed, shut in by the two cots; it, and the fear of +forgetting to feed Baby, got into his dreams and troubled them; they +watched by him in his sleep; they woke him early and were with him when +he woke. + +Dossie woke too. He took her into his bed and played with her, and in +playing he forgot his grief. A little before seven he got up and +dressed. He washed Dossie and dressed her as well as he could, with +tender, clumsy fingers that fumbled over all her little strings and +buttons. Pain, and pleasure poignant as pain, thrilled him with every +soft contact with her darling body. He tried to brush her hair as Winny +brushed it, all in ducks' tails and in feathers. + +He went down and busied himself, hours earlier than he need, making the +fire, getting ready Dossie's breakfast and Baby's and his own. Foraging +in the larder, he came upon a beefsteak pie that, evidently, Winny had +made for him, as if in foreknowledge of his need. When he had washed up +the breakfast things and the things that were left over from last night, +he went upstairs and made his bed, clumsily. Then he went down again and +tidied the sitting-room. In all this he was driven by his determination +to leave nothing for Winny to do for him when she came. He went to and +fro, with Dossie toddling after him and laughing. + +Upstairs, Baby laughed in his cot. + +And all the time, Ranny, with his obsession of bereavement and calamity, +was unaware of the peace, the exquisite, the unimaginable peace that had +settled upon Granville. + + * * * * * + +At half past eight Winny looked in (entering by the open door of +Granville) to see what she could do. + +She found him in the bathroom, trying to wash Baby. He had put the +little zinc bath with Baby in it inside the big one. + +"Whatever did you do that for, Ranny?" Winny asked, while her heart +yearned to him. + +He said he had to. The little beggar splashed so. Good idea, wasn't it? + +Almost he had forgotten his bereavement. + +Winny shook her head. + +"Anyhow, I've washed him all right." + +"Yes," said she. "But you'll never dry him." + +"Why not?" + +"You can't. Not in here. There isn't room for you to set. Where's your +chair and your flannel apron?" + +"Flannel apron?" + +"Yes. If you don't wear one you'll not get any hold on him. He'll slip +between your knees before you know he's gone." + +"Not if I keep 'em together." + +"_Then_ there's no lap for him. What he wants is petticoats." + +(Petticoats? That was the secret, was it? He had tried to soap Baby, bit +by bit, as he had seen Winny do, holding him, wrapped in a towel, on his +knees--a disastrous failure. It was incredible how slippery he was.) + +"There's his blanket. I thought I'd dry him on the floor." + +"He'll catch his death of cold, Ranny, if you do. There, give him to me. +We'll take him downstairs to the fire." + +He gave her the little naked, dripping body, and she wrapped it in the +warm blanket and carried it downstairs. + +"You bring the towels and the powder puff, and all his vests and +flannels and things," said Winny. + +He brought them. She established herself in the low chair by the fire +downstairs. He played with Dossie as he watched her. And all the time, +through all the play, his obscure instinct told him that she ought not +to be there. It suggested that if he desired to preserve the integrity +of the document, Winny and he must not be known to be alone in the house +together. + +But it was a question of petticoats. He realized it when he saw Baby +sprawling in the safe hollow of her lap. He had meant to tell Winny +that she mustn't stay; but she had him by those absurd petticoats of +hers, and behind her petticoats he shielded himself from the upbraidings +of his sanity. + +But Winny knew. She was not going to stay, to be there with him more +than was strictly necessary. When, with exquisite gentleness, she had +inserted Baby into all his little vests and things, she put on him his +knitted Baby's coat and hat, and gave him to Ranny to hold while she +arrayed Dossie in her Sunday best. Then she packed them both into the +wonderful pram, and wheeled them out into the Avenue, far from Ranny. + +For she knew that Ranny didn't want her. He wanted to be left alone to +think. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +He had been incapable of thinking until now, the first moment (since it +had happened) that he had been left alone. Last night the thing had +stupefied him so that he could not think. If he had tried to describe +what had been before him last night, he would have said there was a lot +of cotton wool about. It had been all like wool, cotton wool, nothing +that the mind could bite on, nothing that it could grasp. Last night +Winny had been there, and that had stopped his thinking. It was absurd +to say that what had happened had disturbed his night's rest. What had +disturbed his night's rest had been his fear lest he should forget to +feed Baby. And in the morning there had been too many things to do, +there had been Dossie and Baby. And then Winny again. + +And now they were all gone. There was silence and a clear space to think +in. His brain too was clear and clean. The clouds of cotton wool had +been dispersed in his movements to and fro. + +As an aid to thinking he brought out of his breast pocket Violet's +letter. He spread it on the table in the back sitting-room and sat down +to it, seriously, as to a document that he would have to master, a thing +that would yield its secret only under the closest examination. He was +aware that he had not by any means taken it all in last night. + +That she had gone off with Leonard Mercier, _that_ he had indeed +grasped, _that_ he knew. But beyond that the letter gave him no solid +practical information. It did not and it was not meant to give him any +clue. In going off Violet had disappeared and had meant to disappear. He +gathered from it that she had been possessed by one thought and by one +fear, that he would go after her and bring her back. + +"What on earth," he said to himself, "should I go after her for?" + +She made that clear to him as he read on. Her idea was that he would go +after her, not so much to bring her back as to do something to Mercier, +to inflict punishment on him, to hurt Mercier and hurt him badly. That +was what Violet was afraid of; that was why she tried to shield Mercier, +to excuse him, to take the whole blame on herself. And, evidently, that +was what Mercier was afraid of too. That was why he had bolted with her +to Paris. They must have had that in their minds, they must have planned +it months before. He must have been trying for the post he'd got there. +Ransome could see further, with a fierce shrewdness, that it was +Mercier's "funk" and not his loyalty that accounted for his "holding +off." "He held off because I was his friend, did he? He held off to save +his own skin, the swine!" + +And now she drew him up. What was all this about Winny Dymond? He must +have missed it last night. "She was always fond of you. It was a lie +what I told you about her not being. I said it because I was mad on you. +I knew you'd have married her if I'd let you alone." + +She was cool, the way she showed herself up. That's what she'd done, +had she? Lied, so that he might think Winny didn't care for him? Lied, +so that he mightn't marry her? Lied, so that she might get him for +herself? For her fancy, for no more than a low animal would feel. He +could see it now. He could see what she was. A woman who could fancy +Mercier must have been a low animal all through and all the time. + +How he had ever cared for her he couldn't think. There must have been +some beastliness in him. Men _were_ beasts sometimes. But he was worse. +He was a fool to have believed her lie. Even her beastliness sank out of +sight beside that treachery. + +Well--she'd been frank enough about it now. She must have had a face, to +own that she'd lied to him and trapped him! After that, what did it +matter if she _had_ left him? "I dare say you know who I've gone with." +What did it matter who she'd gone with? Good God! What did it matter +what she'd done? + +He could smile at her fear and at the cause of it. Mercier must have +terrified her with his funk. The postscript said as much. "You can do +anything you like to me, so long as you don't hurt Leonard." He smiled +again at that. What did she imagine he'd like to do to her? As for +Mercier, what should he want to hurt the beast for? He wouldn't touch +him--now--with the end of a barge-pole. + +Oh, well, yes, he supposed he'd have to leather him if he came across +him. But he wouldn't have any pleasure in it--now. Last year he would +have leathered him with joy; his feet had fairly ached to get at him, to +kick the swine out of the house before he did any harm in it. Now it was +as if he loathed him too much in his flabbiness to care for the contact +that personal violence involved. + +Yet, through all the miserable workings of his mind the thought of +Mercier's flabbiness was sweet to him. It gave him a curious consolation +and support. True, it had been the chief agent in the process of +deception; it had blinded him to Mercier's dangerous quality; it had +given him a sense of false security; he could see, now, the fool he'd +been to imagine that it would act as any deterrent to a woman so +foredoomed as Violet. Thus it had in a measure brought about the whole +catastrophe. At the same time it had saved him from the peculiar +personal mortification such catastrophes entail. In comparison with +Mercier he sustained no injury to his pride and vanity of sex. And +Mercier's flabbiness did more for him than that. It took the sharpest +sting from Violet's infidelity. It removed it to the region of insane +perversities. It removed Violet herself from her place in memory, that +place of magic and of charm where if she had remained she would have had +power to hurt him. + +When he considered her letter yet again in the calmness of that thought, +it struck him that Violet herself was offering him support and +consolation. "You shouldn't have married me. You should have married a +girl like Winny Dymond."--"I knew you'd marry her if I let you alone." +Why, after all these years, had she confessed her treachery? Why had she +confessed it now at the precise moment when she had left him? There was +no need. It couldn't help her. No, but it was just possible (for she was +quite intelligent) that she had seen how it might help him. It was +possible that some sort of contrition had visited her in that last +hour, and that she had meant to remind him that he was not utterly +abandoned, that there was something left. + +That brought him to the lines, almost indecipherable, squeezed in her +last hurried moment into the margin of the letter. "You mustn't be +afraid of being fond of Baby. There was nothing between me and Leonard +before July of last year." + +She had foreseen the supreme issue; she had provided for the worst +sting, the unspeakable suspicion, the intolerable terror. It was as if +she had calculated the precise point where her infidelity would touch +him. + +Faced with that issue, Ranny's mind, like a young thing forced to sudden +tragic maturity by a mortal crisis, worked with an incredible clearness +and capacity. It developed an almost superhuman subtlety of +comprehension. He looked at the thing all round; he controlled his +passion so that he might look at it. It was of course open to him to +take it that she had lied. Passion indeed clamored at him, insisting +that she did lie, that lying came easier to her than the truth. But, +looking at it all round without passion, he was inclined to think that +Violet had not lied. She had not given herself time or space to lie for +lying's sake. If she had lied, then, she had lied for a purpose. A +purpose that he could very well conceive. But if she lied for _that_ +purpose she would have given importance and prominence to her lie. She +wouldn't have hidden it away in an almost invisible scrawl on an +inadequate margin. + +Of course, she might have lied to deceive him for another purpose, for +his own good. But there again conscious deception would have made for +legibility at the least. + +Besides, she had put it in a way that left no room for doubt. "You +needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby." Even passion had to own that +the words had the ring of remorse, of insight, of certainty, and, above +all, of haste. Such haste as precluded all deliberation. Evidently it +was an afterthought. It had come to her, inopportunely, in the last +moment before flight, and she had given it the place and the importance +she would naturally give to a subject in which she herself was not in +any way concerned. + +There remained the possibility that she might be mistaken. But the dates +upheld her. In the beginning he and she had, of necessity, gone very +carefully into the question of dates. He remembered that there had been +a whole body of evidence establishing the all-important point beyond a +doubt. All of his honor that he most cared for she had spared. She had +not profaned the ultimate sanctity, nor poisoned for him the very +sweetness of his life. + + * * * * * + +There were sounds in the front garden. Winny was bringing in the +children. He went out to meet them as they came up the flagged walk. +Dossie toddled, clinging to the skirts of Winny, who in all her +tenderness and absurdity, with her most earnest air of gravity and +absorption in the adventure, pushed the pram. In the pram, tilted +backward, with his little pink legs upturned, Baby fondled, deliciously, +his own toes. He was jerking himself up and down and making for the +benefit of all whom it might concern his very nicest noises. + +Ranny stood in the doorway, silent, almost austere, like a man escaped +by a hair's breadth from great peril. + +When he caught sight of the silent and austere young man in the doorway, +Baby let go his fascinating toes. He chuckled with delight. He jerked +himself more than ever up and down. He struggled to be free, to be +lifted up and embraced by the young man. Silence and austerity were no +deterrent to Baby, so assured was he of his position, of his welcome, of +the safe, warm, tingling place that would presently be his in the hollow +of the young man's arm. The desire of it made Baby's arms and his body +writhe, with a heartrending agitation, in his little knitted coat. + +All this innocent ecstasy of Baby the young man met with silence and +austerity and somber eyes. + +With Winny's eyes on him he indeed lifted Baby up, disclosing, first, +his pathetically bunched and bundled back, and then his face, +exquisitely contorted. + +And Winny, who had _forgotten_ for a minute, laughed. + +"He is funny, isn't he? He smiles just like you do, all up in the +corners like." + +At that the young man's arms tightened, and he gripped Baby with passion +to his breast. He kissed him, looking down at him, passionately, +somberly. + +Winny saw, and the impulse seized her to efface herself, to vanish. + +"I must be going," she said, "or I shall be late for dinner. Can you +manage, Ranny? There's a beefsteak pie. I made it yesterday." + +As she turned Dossie trotted after her; and as she vanished Dossie +cried, inconsolably. + +He managed, beautifully, with the beefsteak pie. + +His sense of bereavement which still weighed on him was no longer +attached in any way to Violet. He could not say precisely what it _was_ +attached to. There it was. Only, when he thought of Violet it seemed to +him incomprehensible, not to say absurd, that he should feel it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +In the afternoon Winny came again for the children, so that he could go +to Wandsworth unencumbered. The weather was favorable to her idea, which +was not to be in Ranny's house more than she could help, but to be seen, +if seen she must be, out of doors with the children, in a public +innocence, affording the presumption that Violet was still there. + +Above all, she was not going to be seen with Ranny, or to be seen by him +too much, if she could help it. With her sense of the sadness of his +errand, the sense (that came to her more acutely with the afternoon) of +things imminent, of things, she knew not what, that would have to be +done, she avoided him as she would have avoided a bereaved person +preoccupied with some lamentable business relating to the departed. + +He was aware of her attitude; he was aware, further, that it would be +their attitude at Wandsworth. They would all treat him like that, as if +he were bereaved. They would not lose, nor allow him to lose for an +instant, their awestruck sense of it. That was why he dreaded going +there, why he had put it off till the last possible moment, which was +about three o'clock in the afternoon. His Uncle Randall would be there. +He would have to be told. He might as well tell him while he was about +it. His wife's action had been patent and public; it was not a thing +that could be hushed up, or minimized, or explained away. + +As he thought of all this, of what he would have to say, to go into, to +handle, every moment wound him up to a higher and higher pitch of +nervous tension. + +His mother opened the door to him. She greeted him with a certain +timidity, an ominous hesitation; and from the expression of her face you +might have gathered, in spite of her kiss, that she was not entirely +glad to see him; that she had something up her sleeve, something that +she desired to conceal from him. It was as if by way of concealing it +that she let him in stealthily with no more opening of the door than was +absolutely necessary for his entrance. + +"You haven't brought Vi'let?" she whispered. + +"No." + +They went softly together through the shop, darkened by the blinds that +were drawn for Sunday. In the little passage beyond he paused at the +door of the back parlor. + +"Where's Father?" + +She winced at the word "Father," so out of keeping with his habitual +levity. It was the first intimation that there was something wrong with +him. + +"He's upstairs, my dear, in His bed." + +"What's the matter with him?" + +"It's the Headache." She went on to explain, taking him as it were +surreptitiously into the little room, that the Headache had been +frequent lately, not to say continuous; not even Sundays were exempt. + +"He's a sad sufferer," she said. + +Instead of replying with something suitable, Ranny set his teeth. + +She had sat down helplessly, and as she spoke she gazed up at him where +he remained standing by the chimney-piece; her look pleaded, deprecated, +yet obstinately endeavored to deceive. But for once Ranny was blind to +the pathos of her deception. Vaguely her foolish secrecy irritated him. + +"Look here, Mother," he said, "I want to talk to you. I've got to tell +you something." + +"It's not anything about your Father, Ranny?" + +"No, it is not." + +(She turned to him from her trouble with visible relief.) + +"It's about my wife." + +"Vi'let?" + +"She's left me." + +"Left you? What d'you mean, Ranny?" + +"She's gone off--Bolted." + +"When?" + +"Last night, I suppose--to Paris." + +She stared at him strangely, without sympathy, without comprehension. It +was almost as if in her mind she accused him of harboring some monstrous +hallucination. With her eternal instinct for suppression she fought +against it, she refused to take it in. He felt himself unequal to +pressing it on her more than that. + +"Would she go there--all that way--by herself, Ranny?" she brought out +at last. + +"By herself? Not much!" + +"Well--how--" + +And still she would not face the thing straight enough to say, "How did +she go, then?" + +He flung it at her brutally, exasperated by her obstinacy. + +"She went with Mercier." + +"With _'im_--? _She_--" + +Her face seemed suddenly to give way under his eyes, to become +discolored in a frightful pallor, to fall piteously into the lines of +age. + +This face that his words had so crushed and broken looked up at him with +all its motherhood, mute yet vibrant, brimming in its eyes. + +"Sit down, dear," she said. "You'll be tired standing." + +He sat down, mechanically, in the nearest chair, bending forward, +contemplating his clenched hands. His posture put him at her mercy. She +came over to him and laid one hand on his shoulder; the other touched +his hair, stroking it. He shrank as if she had hurt him and leaned back. +She moved away, and took up a position in a seat that faced him. There +she sat and gazed at him, helpless and passive, panting a little with +emotion; until a thought occurred to her. + +"Who's looking after the little children?" + +"Winny--Winny Dymond." + +"Why didn't you send for _me_, Ranny?" + +"It was too late--last night." + +"I'd have come, my dear. I'd have got out of me bed." + +"It wouldn't have done any good." + +There was a long pause. + +"Were you alone in the house, dear?" + +He looked up, angry. "Of course I was alone in the house." + +She sat silent and continued to gaze at him with her tender, wounded +eyes. + +Outside in the passage the front-door bell rang. She rose in +perturbation. + +"That's them. Do you want to see them?" + +"I don't care whether I see them or not." + +She stood deliberating. + +"You'd better--p'raps--see your uncle. I'll tell him, Ranny. Your +Father's not fit for it to-day." + +"All right." + +He rose uneasily and prepared himself to take it standing. + +He heard them come into the shop, his Uncle and his Aunt Randall. He +heard his uncle's salutation checked in mid-career. He heard his +mother's penetrating whisper, then mutterings, commiserations. Their +communion lasted long enough for him to gather that his mother would +have about told them everything. + +They came in, marking their shocked sense of it by soft shufflings at +the door of the parlor, his sanctuary. He felt obscurely that he had +become important to them, the chief figure of a little infamous tragedy. +He had a moment's intense and painful prescience of the way they would +take it; they would treat him with an excruciating respect, an awful +deference, as a person visited by God and afflicted with unspeakable +calamity. + +And they did. It was an affair of downcast eyes and silent, embarrassed +and embarrassing hand-shakings. Ransome met it with his head in the air, +clear-eyed, defiant of their sympathy. + +"I think," his mother said, "we'd better come upstairs if we don't want +to be interrupted." For on Sundays the back parlor was assigned to the +young chemist, Mercier's successor, who assisted Mr. Ransome. + +Upstairs, the ordered room, polished to perfection, steadfast in its +shining Sunday state, appeared as the irremovable seat of middle-class +tradition, of family virtue, of fidelity and cleanliness, of sacred +immutable propriety. And into the bosom of these safe and comfortable +sanctities Ranny had brought horror and defilement and destruction. + +His Uncle Randall, try as he would, could not disguise from him that +this was what he had done. Because of Ranny's wife, Respectability, the +enduring soul of the Randalls and the Ransomes, could never lift up its +head superbly any more. All infamies and all abominations that could +defile a family were summed up for John Randall in the one word, +adultery. It was worse than robbery or forgery or bankruptcy; it struck +more home; it did more deadly havoc among the generations. It excited +more interest; it caused more talk; and therefore it marked you more and +was not so easily forgotten. It reverberated. The more respectable you +were the worse it was for you. If, among the Randalls and the Ransomes, +such a plunge as Violet's was unheard of, it made the more terrific +splash, a splash that covered the whole family. The Ransomes, to be +sure, stood more in the center, they were more deplorably bespattered, +and more, much more intimately tainted. But, by the very closeness of +their family attachment, the mud of Violet's plungings would adhere +largely to the Randalls, too. The taint would hang for years around him, +John Randall, in his shop. He had hardly entered his sister's room +before he had calculated about how long it would be before the scandal +spread through Wandsworth High Street. It wasn't as if he hadn't been +well known. As a member of the Borough Council he stuck in the public +eye where other men would have slipped through into obscurity. It was +really worse for him than any of them. + +All this was present in the back of John Randall's mind as he prepared +to deal efficiently with the catastrophe. Having unbuttoned his coat and +taken off his gloves with exasperating, slow, and measured movements, he +fairly sat down to it at the table, preserving his very finest military +air. The situation required before all things a policy. And the policy +which most appealed to Mr. Randall, in which he showed himself most +efficient, was the policy of a kindly hushing up. It was thus that for +years he had dealt with his brother-in-laws' inebriety. Ranny's case, to +be sure, was not quite so simple; still, on the essential point Mr. +Randall had made up his mind--that, in the discussion that must follow, +the idea of adultery should not once appear. If they were all of them as +a family splashed more or less from head to foot with mud of a kind that +was going to stick to them, why, there was nothing to be done but to +cover it up as soon as possible. + +It was in the spirit of this policy that he approached his nephew. It +involved dealing with young Mrs. Ransome throughout as a good woman who +had become, somehow, mysteriously unfortunate. + +"I'm sorry to hear this about your wife, Randall. It's a sad business, a +sad business for you, my boy." + +From her seat on the sofa beside Ranny's mother, Aunt Randall murmured +inarticulate corroboration of that view. + +Ranny had remained standing. It gave him an advantage in defiance. + +"I've never heard anything," his uncle continued, heavily, "that's +shocked and grieved me more." + +"I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, Uncle." + +At that Mr. Randall fumed a little feebly, thereby losing some of the +fineness of his military air. It was as if his nephew had disparaged his +importance, ignored his stake in the family's reputation, and as good as +told him it was no business of his. + +"But I _must_ worry about it. _I_ can't take it like you do, as cool as +if nothing had happened. Such a thing's never been known, never so much +as been named in your mother's family, or your father's, either. +It's--it's so unexpected." + +"I didn't expect it any more than you did." + +"You needn't take that tone, Randall, my boy. I'm sorry for you, but +you're not the only one concerned. Still, I'm putting all that aside, +and I'm here to help you." + +"You can't help me. How can you?" + +"I can help you to consider what's to be done." + +"There isn't anything to be done that I can see." + +"There are several things," said Mr. Randall, "that can be done." He +said it as if he were counsel giving an opinion. "You can take her back; +you can leave her alone; or you can divorce her. First of all I want to +know one thing. Did you give her any provocation?" + +"What do you mean by provocation?" + +"Well--did you give her any cause for jealousy?" + +Ranny's mother struck in. "He wouldn't, John." And his Aunt Randall +murmured half-audible and shocked negation. + +Ranny stared at his uncle as if he wondered where he was coming out +next. + +"Of course I didn't." + +"Are--you--quite--sure about that?" + +"You needn't ask him such a thing," said Ranny's mother; and Ranny +fairly squared himself. + +"Look here, Uncle, what d'you want to get at?" + +"The facts, my boy." + +"You've got all there are." + +"How about that young woman up at your place?" + +"What young woman?" + +"That Miss--" + +Ranny's mother supplied his loss. "Miss Dymond." + +"What's she got to do with it?" said Ranny. + +"I'm asking you. What _has_ she?" + +"Nothing. You can keep her out of it." + +"That's what I should advise _you_ to do, my boy." + +Ranny dropped his defiance and sank his flushed forehead. "I _have_ kept +her out of it." His voice was grave and very low. + +"Not if she's there. Taking everything upon her and looking after your +children." + +"What harm's she doing looking after them?" + +"You'll soon know if you take it into a court of law." + +"Who told you I was going to take it?" + +"That's what I'm trying to get at. _Are_ you?" + +"Am I going to divorce her, you mean?" + +That was what he had meant. It was also what he was afraid of, what he +hoped to dissuade his nephew from. Above all things he dreaded the +public scandal of divorce. + +"Yes," he said. "Is it bad enough for that?" + +"It's bad enough for anything. But I don't know what I'm going to do." + +"Well, it won't do to have that young woman's name brought forward in +the evidence." + +"Who'd bring it?" + +"Why, _she_ might" (Randall's face was blank). "Your wife, if she +defends the suit. That would be her game, you may be sure." + +It would, Randall reflected. That was the very point suggested last +night by his inner sanity, the use that might be made of Winny. Winny's +innocent presence in his house might ruin his case if it were known. +What was worse, far worse, it would ruin Winny. Whatever he did he must +keep Winny out of it. + +"I haven't said I was going to bring an action." + +"Well--and I don't advise you to. Why have the scandal and the publicity +when you can avoid it?" + +"Why, Ranny," his mother cried, "it would kill your Father." + +Ranny scowled. Her cry failed to touch him. + +Mr. Randall went on. He felt that he was bringing his nephew round, that +he was getting the case into his own hands, the hands that were most +competent to deal with it. It was only to be expected that with his +experience he could see farther than the young man, his nephew. What Mr. +Randall saw beyond the scandal of the Divorce Court was a vision of +young Mrs. Ransome, wanton with liberty and plunging deeper, splashing +as she had not yet splashed, bespattering them all to the farthest +limits of her range. The question for Mr. Randall was how to stop her, +how to get her out of it, how to bring her to her sober senses before +she had done more damage than she had. + +He wondered, had it occurred to Randall that he might take her back? + +"Have you any idea," he said, "what made her do it?" + +"Good God, what a question!" + +Mr. Randall made a measured, balancing movement of his body while he +drummed with his fingers on the table. + +"Well--" It was as if he took his question back, conceding its enormity. +He leaned forward now in his balancing, and lowered his voice to the +extreme of confidence. + +"Have you any idea how far she's gone?" (It was as near as he could get +to it.) + +"She's gone as far as Paris," said Ranny, with a grin. "Is that far +enough for you?" + +Mr. Randall leaned back as with relief, and stopped balancing. "It might +be worse," he said, "far worse." + +"How d'you mean--worse? Seems to me about as bad as it can be." + +"It's unfortunate--but not so serious as if--" He paused profoundly. He +was visibly considering it from some private and personal point of view. +"She might have stayed in London. She might have carried on at your own +door or here in Wandsworth." + +His nephew, Randall, was now regarding him with an attention the nature +of which he entirely misconceived. It gave him courage to speak out--his +whole mind and no mincing matters. + +"If I were you, Randall, the first thing I should do is to get rid of +that young woman--that Dymond girl--" He put up his hand to ward off the +imminent explosion. "Yes, yes, I know _all_ you've got to say, my boy, +but it won't do. She's a young girl--" + +"She's as good as they make them," said Ranny, glaring at him, "as good +as my mother there." + +"Yes, yes, yes. I know all about it. But you mustn't have her there." + +"Have her where?" + +"Where I know she's been--where your mother says she's been--in your +house. Now, don't turn on your mother; she hasn't said a word against +her. I'm not saying a word. But you mustn't--have--her--about, Randall. +You mustn't have her about. There'd be talk and all, before you know +where you are. It isn't right and it isn't proper." + +"No, Ranny, it isn't proper," said his mother; and his aunt said, No, it +wasn't, too. + +Ranny laughed unpleasantly. + +"You think it's as improper as the other thing, do you?" + +He addressed his uncle. + +"What other thing?" said Mr. Randall. It had made him wince even while +he pretended not to see it. It had brought him so near. + +"What my wife's done." + +"Well, Randall, since you ask me, to all appearances--appearances, mind +you--it is." + +"Appearances?" + +"Well, you must save appearances, and you must save 'em while you can." + +"How am I to save them, I should like to know?" + +"By actin' at once. By stoppin' it all before it gets about. You can't +have your wife over there in Paris carryin' on. You must just +start--soon as you can--to-morrow--and bring her back." + +"Not much!" + +"It's what you got to do, Randall. She's been unfortunate, I know; but +she's young, and you don't know how she may have been led on. 'S +likely's not you haven't looked after her enough. You don't know but +what you may have been responsible. You got to take her back." + +"What should I take her back for?" said Ranny, with false suavity. + +"To save scandal. To save trouble and misery and disgrace all round. You +got to think of your family." + +"What do you mean by my family? Me and my children?" + +"I mean the family name, my boy." + +A frightful lucidity had come upon Ranny, born of the calamity itself. +It was not for nothing that he had attained that sudden violent maturity +of his. He saw things as they were. + +"You mean yourself," he said. "Jolly lot you think of me and my children +if you ask me to take her back. Not me! I'll be damned first." + +"You married her, Randall, against the wishes of your family; and you're +responsible to your family for the way she conducts herself." + +"I should rather think I _was_ responsible! If I wasn't--if I was a +bletherin' idiot--I might take her back--" + +"I don't say if she leaves you again you'll take her back a second time. +But you got to give her a chance. After all, she's the mother of your +children. You married her." + +"Yes. That's where I went wrong. That's what made her do it, if you want +to know. _That's_ the provocation I gave her. It's what she always had +against me--the children, and my marrying her. And she was right. She +never ought to have had children. I never ought to have married +her--against her will." + +"Well, I can't think what you did it for--in such haste." + +"I did it," said Ranny, in his maturity, his lucidity, "because it was +the way I was brought up. I suppose, come to that, I did it for all +you." + +He saw everything now as it was. + +"How d'you make that out? Did it for us!" + +Then Ranny delivered his soul, and the escape, the outburst was +tremendous, cataclysmic. + +"For you and your rotten respectability! What you brought me up on. What +you've rammed down my throat all along. What you're thinking of now. +You're not thinking of me; you're thinking of yourself, and how +respectable you are, and how I've dished you. You don't want me to take +my wife back because you care a rap about me and my children. It's +because you're afraid. That's what it is, you're afraid. You're afraid +of the rotten scandal; you're afraid of what people'll say; you're +afraid of not looking respectable any more. You know what my wife's +done--you know what she _is_--" + +"She's a woman, Randall, she's a woman." + +"She's a--Well, she _is_, and you know it. You know what she is, and you +want me to take her back so as you can lie about it and hush it all up +and pretend it isn't there. Same as you've done with my father. He's a +drunkard--" + +"For shame, Randall," said his uncle. + +"He is, and you know it, and he knows it, and my mother knows it. And +yet you go on lying about him and pretending. I'm sick of it. I'm sick +of hearing about how good he is, and his Headaches--Headaches!" + +"Oh! Ranny, dear," his mother wailed, piteously. + +"I'm not blaming him, Mother. Poor old Humming-bird, he can't help it. +It's the way he's made. I'm not blaming Virelet. She can't help it, +either. It's my fault. If I'd wanted her to stick to me I oughtn't to +have married her." + +"What ought you to have done then?" his uncle inquired, sternly. + +"Anything but that. That's what started her. She couldn't stand it. +She'll stick to Mercier all right, you'll see, because she isn't married +to the swine; whereas if I took her back to-night she'd chuck me +to-morrow. Can't you see that she's like that? She's done the best day's +work she ever did for herself and me, too." + +"Well, how you can speak about it so, Ranny," said his mother. + +"There you're at it again, you know--pretendin'. You go on as if it was +the most horrible thing that could happen to any one, her boltin', when +you know the most horrible thing would be her comin' back again. To look +at you and Uncle and Aunt there, any one would think that Virelet was +the best wife and mother that ever lived, and that she'd only left me to +go to heaven." + +"Well, there's no good my saying any more, I can see," said Mr. Randall. +And he rose, buttoning his coat with dignity that struggled in vain +against his deep depression. He was profoundly troubled by his nephew's +outburst. It was as if peace and honesty and honor, the solid, +steadfast tradition by which he lived, had been first outraged, then +destroyed in sheer brutality. He didn't know himself. He had been +charged with untruthfulness and dishonesty; he, who had been held the +soul of honesty and truth; who had always held himself at least sincere. + +And he didn't know his nephew Randall. He had always supposed that +Randall was refined and that he had a good heart. And to think that he +could break out like this, and be coarse and cruel, and say things +before ladies that were downright immoral-- + +"Well," he said, as he shook hands with him, "I can't understand you, my +boy." + +"Sorry, Uncle." + +"There--leave it alone. I don't ask you to apologize to me. But there's +your mother. You've done your best to hurt her. Good-by." + +"He's upset, John," said Ranny's mother, "and no wonder. You should have +let him be." + +"I'm not upset," said Ranny, wearily. "What beats me is the rotten +humbug of it all." + +And no sooner did Mr. Randall find himself in the High Street with his +wife than he took her by the arm in confidence. + +"He was quite right about that wife of his. Only I thought--if he could +have patched it up--" + +"Ah, I dare say he knows more than we do. What I can't get over is the +way he spoke about his poor father." + +"Well--I wouldn't say it to Emma, but Fulleymore _does_ drink. Like a +fish he does." + +(It was his sacrifice to honesty.) + +"But Randall was wild. He didn't quite know what he was saying. Poor +chap! It's hit him harder than he thinks." + + * * * * * + +Ranny, alone with his mother, put his arm round her neck and kissed her. +(She had gone into her room and returned dressed, ready to go back with +him to Southfields.) + +"I'm sorry, Mother, if I hurt you." + +"Never mind, Ranny, I know how hurt you must have been before you could +do it. It was what you said about your Father, dear. But there--you've +always been good to him no matter what he's been." + +"Is he _very_ bad, Mother?" + +"He is. I don't know, I'm sure, how I'm going to leave him; unless he +can manage with Mabel and Mr. Ponting. She's a good girl, Mabel. And +he's got a kind heart, Ranny, that young man." + +"D'you think I haven't?" + +"I wasn't meaning you, my dear. Come, I'm ready now." + +They went downstairs. Mrs. Ransome paused at the kitchen door to give +some final directions to Mabel, the maid, and a message for Mr. Ponting, +the assistant; and they went out. + +As they were going down the High Street, her thoughts reverted to +Ranny's awful outburst. + +"Ranny, I wish you hadn't spoken to your uncle like you did." + +"I _know_, Mother--but he set my back up. He was talkin' through his +Sunday hat all the time, pretendin' to stick up for Virelet, knowin' +perfectly well what she is, and cussin' and swearin' at her for it in +his heart, and naggin' at me because there wasn't anybody else to go +for." + +"He was trying to help you, Ranny." + +"If God can't help me, strikes me it's pretty fair cheek of Uncle to +presume--" He meditated. + +"But he wasn't tryin' to help me. He was thinkin' how he could help his +own damned respectability all the blessed time. He knows what a bloomin' +hell it's been for Virelet and me this last year--and he'd have forced +us back into it--into all that misery--just to save his own silly skin." + +"No, dear, it isn't that. He doesn't think Vi'let should be let go on +living like she is if you can stop her. He thinks it isn't proper." + +"Well, that's what I say. It's his old blinkin', bletherin' morality +he's takin' care of, not me. Everybody's got to live like he thinks they +ought to, no matter how they hate it. If two Kilkenny cats he knew was +to get married and one of them was to bolt he'd fetch her back and tie +'em both up, heads together, so as she shouldn't do it again. And if +they clawed each other's guts out he wouldn't care. He'd say they were +livin' a nice, virtuous, respectable and moral life. + +"What rot it all is! + +"Stop her? As if any one could stop her! God knows she can't stop +herself, poor girl. She's made like that. I'm not blamin' her." + +For, with whatever wildness Ranny started, he always came back to +that--He didn't blame her. He knew whereof she was made. It was proof of +his sudden, forced maturity, that unfaltering acceptance of the fact. + +"Talk of helpin'! Strikes me poor Vi's helpin' more than anybody, by +clearin' out like she's done." + +That was how, with a final incomparable serenity, he made it out. + +But his mother took it all as so much wildness, the delirium, the +madness, born of his calamity. + +"He'd have been all right if I'd been ass enough to play into his hands +and gone blowin' me nose and grizzlin', and whinin' about my misfortune, +and let _him_ go gassin' about the sadness of it and all that. But +because I kept my end up he went for me. + +"Sadness! He doesn't know what sadness is _or_ misfortune. + +"My God! If every poor beggar had the luck I've had--to be let off +without having to pay for it!" + +Up till then his mother had kept silence. She had let him rave. "Poor +boy," she had said to herself, "he doesn't mean it. It'll do him good." + +But when he talked about not having to pay for it, that reminded her +that paying for it was just what he would have to do. + +"How'll you manage," she said now, "about the children? I can take them +for a week or two or more while you get settled." + +"Would you?" + +It _was_ a way out for the present. + +"I'd take them altogether--I'd love to, Ranny--if it wasn't for your +Father bein' ill." + +In spite of the cataclysm, she still by sheer force of habit kept it up. + +"I don't want you to take them altogether," he said. + +"I could do it--if you was to come with them--" + +That, indeed, was what she wanted, the heavenly possibility she had +sighted from the first. But she had hardly dared to suggest it. Even +now, putting out her tremorous feeler, she shrank back from his refusal. + +"If you could let Granville--and come and live with us." + +His silence and his embarrassment pierced her to the heart. + +"Won't you?" she ventured. + +"Well--I've got to think of them. For them, in some ways, the poor old +Humming-bird might, you see, be almost as bad as Virelet." + +She knew. She had known it all the time. She had even got so far in +knowledge as to see that Ranny's father was in a measure responsible for +Ranny's marriage. If Ranny had had more life, more freedom, and more +happiness around him in his home, he would not have been driven, as he +was, to Violet. + +"Well, dear, you just think it over. If you don't come you must get +somebody." + +Yes. He must get somebody. He had thought of that. + +"It can't be Winny Dymond, dear." + +"No," he assented. "It can't be Winny Dymond." + +"And you'll have to come to me until I can find you some one." + +They left it so. After all, it made things easier, the method that his +mother had brought to such perfection, her way of skating rapidly over +brittle surfaces, of circumnavigating all profound unpleasantness, and +of plunging, when she did plunge, only into the vague, the void. + +And through it all he was aware of the brittleness, the unpleasantness, +the profundity of what was immediately before him, how to deal with poor +Winny and her innocent enormity; the impropriety, as it had been +presented to him, of her devotion. + +But even this problem, so torturing to his nerves, was presently lost +sight of in the simple, practical difficulty of detaching Winny from the +children; or rather, of detaching the children from Winny, of tearing, +as they had to tear, them from her, piecemeal, first Baby, then Dossie, +with every circumstance of barbarous cruelty. + +It was a spectacle, an operation of such naked agony that before it the +most persistent, the most incorruptible sense of propriety broke down. +It was too much altogether for Mrs. Ransome. + +Dossie was the worst. She had strength in her little fingers, and she +clung. + +And the crying, the crying of the two, terrible to Ranny, terrible to +Winny, the passionate screams, the strangled sobs, the long, +irremediable wailing, the terrifying convulsive silences, the awful +intermissions and shattering recoveries of anguish--it was as if their +innocence had insight, had premonition of the monstrous, imminent +separation, of the wrong that he and she were about to do to each other +in the name of such sanctities as innocence knows nothing of. For +outrage and wrong it was to the holy primal instincts, drawing them, as +it had drawn them long ago, seeking to bind them again, body and soul, +breaking all other bonds; insult and violence to honest love, to +fatherhood and motherhood, to the one (one and threefold) perfection +that they could stand for, he and she. + +It ended by its sheer terror in Winny's staying just for that evening, +to put the little things to sleep. For nobody else, not Ranny, and not +his mother, was able to do that. The dark design of their torturers was +to take these innocent ones by night, drugged with their sleep, and pack +them in the pram, snugly blanketed, and thus convey them in secrecy to +Wandsworth, where, it was hoped, they would wake up, poor lambs, to a +morning without memory. + +"Well--Winky," he said. But it was not yet well. He had to stand by and +see Winky stoop over Baby's cot (it was her right) for the last look. + +She knew it was her last look, in that room--in that way that had been +the way of innocence. + +"Well, I never!" said Ranny's mother, as he returned from seeing Winky +home. (So much was permitted him. It was even imperative.) + +"Did they ever cry like that for their Mammy?" + +He smiled grimly. His illumination was more than he could bear. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +It was in the cruelty of it, in that sudden barbarous tearing of the +children from Winny, of Winny from Ransome, and of Ransome from his +home, in that hurried, surreptitious flight through the darkness, that +he most felt the pressure and the malignant pinch of poverty. Owing to +his straitened circumstances, with all his mother's forethought and good +will, with all the combined resources of their ingenuity, they could do +no better to meet his lamentable case than this. "This," indeed, was +imperative, inevitable. He reflected bitterly that, if he had been a +rich man, like the manager or the secretary of Woolridge's, instead of a +ledger clerk (that was all that his last rise had made him) at a hundred +and fifty a year, he would have been spared "this." It would have been +neither inevitable nor imperative. It simply wouldn't have happened. He +would have had a house with a staff of competent servants, a nurse for +the children, a cook, and maybe a housemaid to manage for him, and so +forth. Winny wouldn't have come into it. It would never have occurred to +her to run the risks she had run for him. There would have been no need. +She would have remained, serene, beautiful in sympathy, outside his +calamity, untouched by its sordidness, its taint. All the machinery of +his household would have gone on in spite of it, without any hitch or +dislocation, working all the more smoothly in the absence of its +mistress. + +That was how rich people came out of this sort of thing, right side up, +smiling, knowing as they did that there was nothing to spoil the peace +of it for them, or make them apt to mistake it for anything but the +blessing that it was. Thus they got, as you may say, the whole good out +of it without any waste. At the worst, if they didn't like it, rich +people, driven to flight, depart from the scene of their disaster with +dignity, in cabs. + +But Ranny's departure, with all its ignominy, was not by any means the +worst. The worst, incomparably, was the going back on Monday evening to +settle up. There was a man coming from Wandsworth with a handcart for +the cots, the high chair and all the babies' furniture, and the kids' +toys and the little clothes, their whole diminutive outfit, and for what +he needed of his own. And when all the packing was done he would still +have to go into things. + +By the things he had to go into he meant the drawers and the cupboards +in his wife's room. + +And such things! It was as if the whole tale of her adultery, with all +its secret infamy, its squalor, its utter callousness, was there in that +room of the love-knots and the rosebuds. + +In the locked wardrobe--the key was on the chimney piece where he could +find it--he came on her old skirts, draggled and torn and stained as he +had known them, on the muslin gown of last year, loathsome and limp, +bent like a hanged corpse; and on her very nightgown of the other night, +dreadfully familiar, shrinking, poor ghost of an abomination, in its +corner. And under them, in a row, the shoes that her feet had gone in, +misshapen, trodden down at heel, gaping to deliver up her shame. + +These things Winny had collected and put away in order, and hidden out +of his sight as best she could. Seeing, she too, the tale they told, she +had hung a sheet in front of them and locked the door on them and laid +the key aside, to break in some degree the shock of them. For they were +things that had been good enough for him, but not good enough for +Violet's lover. She had gone to him in all her bravery, leaving them +behind, not caring who found them. + +And there was more to be gone through before he had finished with it. +There were the drawers, crammed with little things, the collars, the +ribbons and the laces, and one or two trinkets that he had given her, +cast off with the rest, all folded and tidied by Winny, smoothed and +coaxed out of the memories they held, the creases that betrayed the +slattern; and with them, tucked away by Winny, defiled beyond +redemption, almost beyond recognition, the sachet, smelling of violets +and with the word "Violet" sprawling all across it in embroidery. + +All these things, the dresses, the shoes, and the rest of them, he +gathered up in handfuls and flung into an old trunk which he locked and +pushed under the bed. + +Then he set his teeth and went on with his task. In the soiled linen +basket, among his own handkerchiefs as he counted them, he found one +queerly scented and of a strange, arresting pattern. It had the monogram +"L. M." stitched into the corner. She must have borrowed it from the +beast. Or else--the beast had been in the house and had left it there. + +That finished him. + + * * * * * + +Finished as he was in every sense, thoroughly instructed, furnished with +details that fitted out and rounded off all that was vague and +incomplete in his vision of the thing, he was still unprepared for the +question with which his mother met him. + +"Have you told Mr. and Mrs. Usher?" + +He hadn't. + +He had forgotten Mr. and Mrs. Usher, forgotten that this prolongation of +his ordeal would be necessary. + +"Well, you'll have to." + +"Of course I'll have to." + +"Will you go and see him?" + +"No. I--can't. I'll write." + +He wrote in the afternoon of the next day at Woolridge's, in the +luncheon hour when he had the ledger clerks' pen to himself. He was very +brief. + +He received his father-in-law's reply by return. Mr. Usher made no +comment beyond an almost perfunctory expression of regret. But he said +that he must see Randall. And, as the journey between Elstree and +Wandsworth was somewhat long to be undertaken after office hours, he +proposed the "Bald-Faced Stag," Edgware, as a convenient halfway house +for them to meet at, and Wednesday, at seven or thereabouts, as the day +and hour. Thus he allowed time for Randall to receive his letter and, if +necessary, to answer it. No telegraphing for Mr. Usher, except in case +of death, actual or imminent. + +Ransome supposed that he would have to see him and get it over. Soon +after seven on Wednesday, then, Mr. Usher having ridden over on his mare +Polly and Ransome on his bicycle, they met in the parlor of the +"Bald-Faced Stag," Edgware. Mr. Usher's friend the landlord had +undertaken that they should not be disturbed. + +It was impossible for Ransome not to notice something queer about his +father-in-law, something utterly unlike the bluff and genial presence he +had known. Mr. Usher seemed to have shrunk somehow and withered, so that +you might have said the catastrophe had hit him hard, if that, his mere +bodily shrinkage, had been all. What struck Ransome as specially queer +about Mr. Usher was his manner and the expression of his face. You could +almost have called it crafty. Guilty it was, too, consciously guilty, +the furtive face of a man on the defensive, armed with all his little +cunning against a possible attack, having entrenched himself in the +parlor of the "Bald-Faced Stag" as on neutral territory. + +"What say to a bit of supper, my boy, before we begin business?" + +It was a false and feeble imitation of his old heartiness. + +Over a supper of cold ham and cheese and beer they discussed Ransome's +father's health and his mother's health, and Mrs. Usher's health, which +was poor, and Mr. Usher's prospects, which were poorer, not to say bad. +He leaned on this point and returned to it, as if it might have a +possible bearing on the matter actually in hand, and with a certain +disagreeable effect of craftiness and intention. It was as if he wished +to rub it in that whatever else Randall forgot, he wasn't to forget +_that_, that he had nothing to look to, nothing to hope for in his +father-in-law's prospects; as if he, Mr. Usher, had arranged this +meeting at the "Bald-Faced Stag" for the express purpose of making that +clear, of forestalling all possible misunderstanding. He kept it before +him, with the cheese and beer, on the brown oil-cloth of the table from +which poor Randall found it increasingly difficult to lift his eyes. + +It was almost a relief to him when Mr. Usher pushed his plate away with +a groan of satiety, and began. + +"Well, what's all this I hear about Virelet?" + +Randall intimated that he had heard all there was. + +"Yes, but what's the meaning of it? That's what I want to know." + +Randall put it that its meaning was that it had simply happened, and +suggested that his father-in-law was in every bit as good a position for +understanding it as he. + +"I dare say. But what I'm trying to get at is--did you do anything to +make it happen?" + +"What on earth do you suppose I did?" + +"There might be faults on both sides, though I don't say as there were. +But did you do anything to prevent it? Tell me that." + +"What could I do? I didn't know it was going to happen." + +"You should have known. You was warned fair enough." + +"Was I? Who warned me, I should like to know?" + +"Why, I did, and her mother did. Told you straight. Don't you go for to +say that I let you marry the girl under false pretenses, or her mother +either. I told you what sort Virelet was, straight as I could, without +vilifying my own flesh and blood. Did you want me to tell you +straighter? Did you want me to put a name to it?" + +His little eyes shot sidelong at Randall, out of his fallen, shrunken +fatness, more than ever crafty and intent. + +He was pitiful. Randall could have been sorry for him but that he showed +himself so mean. His little eyes gave him so villainously away. They +disclosed the fullness of his knowledge; they said he had known things +about Violet; he had known them all the time, things that he, Randall, +never knew. And he hadn't let on, not he. Why should he? He had been too +eager, poor man, to get Violet married. His eagerness, that had appeared +as the hardy flower of his geniality, betrayed itself now as the +sinister thing it was--when you thought of the name that he could have +given her! + +Randall did not blame him. He was past blaming anybody. He only said to +himself that this explained what had seemed so inexplicable--the +attitude, the incredible attitude of Mr. and Mrs. Usher; how they had +leaped at him in all his glaring impossibility, an utter stranger, with +no adequate income and no prospects; how they had hurried on the +marriage past all prudence; how they had driven him on and fooled him +and helped him to his folly. + +But he was not going to let them fool him any more. + +"Look here, Mr. Usher, I don't know what your game is and I don't care. +I dare say you _think_ you told me what you say you did. But you +didn't. You didn't tell me anything--not one blessed thing. And if you +had it wouldn't have done any good. I wouldn't have believed you. You +needn't reproach yourself. I was mad on Virelet. I meant to marry her +and I did marry her. That's all." + +"Well," said Mr. Usher, partially abandoning his position, "so long as +you don't hold me responsible--" + +"Of course, I don't hold you responsible." + +"I'm sure me and the Missis we've done what we could to make it easier +for you." + +He gazed before him, conjuring up between them a quiet vision of the +long procession of hampers, a reminder to Randall of how deeply, as it +was, he stood indebted. + +"And we can't do no more. That's how it is. No more we can't do." + +"I'm not asking you to do anything. What do you _want_?" + +"I want to know what you're going to do, my boy." + +"Do?" + +"Yes, do." + +"About what?" + +"About Virelet. Talk of responsibility, you took it on yourself contrary +to the warnings what you had, when you married her. And having taken it +you ought to have looked after her. Knowing what she is you ought to +have looked after her better than you've done." + +"How _could_ I have looked after her?" + +"How? Why, as any other man would. You should have made her work, work +with her 'ands, as I told you, 'stead of giving her her head, like you +did, and lettin' her sit bone-idle in that gimcrack doll-house of yours +from morning till night. Why, you should have taken a stick to her. +There's many a man as would, before he'd 'a' let it come to that. Damn +me if I know why you didn't." + +"Well, really, Mr. Usher, I suppose I couldn't forget she was a woman." + +"Woman? Woman? I'd 'a' womaned 'er! Look 'ere, my boy, it's a sad +business, and there's no one sorrier for you than I am, but there's no +good you and me broodin' mournful over what she's done. Course she'd do +it, 's long's you let her. You hadn't ought to 'ave let 'er. And seein' +as how you have, seems to me what you've got to do now is to take her +back again." + +"I can't take her back again." + +"And why not?" + +"Because of the children--for one thing." + +That argument had its crushing effect on Mr. Usher. It made him pause a +perceptible moment before he answered. + +"Well--you needn't look to me and her mother to 'ave her--" + +Randall rose, as much as to say that this was enough; it was too much; +it was the end. + +"We've done with her. You took her out of our 'ands what 'ad a hold on +her, and you owe it to her mother and me to take her back." + +"If that's all you've got to say, Mr. Usher--" + +"It isn't all I've got to say. What I got to say is this. Before you was +married, Randall, I don't mind telling you now, my girl was a bit too +close about you for my fancy. I've never rightly understood how you two +came together." + +There, as they fixed him, his little eyes took on their craftiness again +and his mouth a smile, a smile of sensual tolerance and understanding, +as between one man of the world and another. + +"I don't know, and I don't want to know. But however it was--I'm not +askin', mind you--however it was"--He was all solemn now--"you made +yourself responsible for that girl. And responsible you will be held." + +It may have been that Mr. Usher drew a bow at a venture; it may have +been that he really knew, that he had always known. Anyhow, that last +stroke of his was, in its way, consummate. It made it impossible for +Randall to hit back effectively; impossible for him to say now, if he +had wished to say it, that he had not been warned (for it seemed to +imply that if Mr. Usher's suspicions were correct, Randall had had an +all-sufficient warning); impossible for him to maintain, as against a +father whom he, upon the supposition, had profoundly injured, an +attitude of superior injury. If Mr. Usher had deceived Randall, hadn't +Randall, in the first instance, deceived Mr. Usher? In short, it left +them quits. It closed Randall's mouth, and with it the discussion, and +so that the balance as between them leaned if anything to Mr. Usher's +side. + +"Well, I'm sorry for you, Randall." + +As if he could afford it now, Mr. Usher permitted himself a return to +geniality. He paused in the doorway. + +"If at any time you should want a hamper, you've only got to say so." + +And Randall did not blame him. He said to himself: "Poor old thing. It's +funk--pure funk. He's afraid he may have to take her back himself. And +who could blame him?" + +Funny that his father-in-law should have taken the same line as his +Uncle Randall. Only, whereas his Uncle Randall had reckoned with the +alternative of divorce, his father-in-law had not so much as hinted at +the possibility. + + * * * * * + +It was almost as if Mr. Usher had had a glimpse of what was to come when +he had been in such haste, haste that had seemed in the circumstances +hardly decent, to saddle Ransome with the responsibility. + +For, if Ransome had really thought that Violet was going to let him off +without his paying for it, the weeks that followed brought him proof +more than sufficient of his error. He had sown to the winds in the +recklessness of his marriage and of his housekeeping, and he reaped the +whirlwind in Violet's bills that autumn shot into the letter box at +Granville. + +He called there every other day for letters; for he was not yet +prepared, definitely, to abandon Granville. + +The bills, when he had gathered them all in, amounted in their awful +total to twenty pounds odd, a sum that exceeded his worst dreams of +Violet's possible expenditure. He had realized, in the late summer and +autumn of last year, before the period of compulsory retirement had set +in, that his wife was beginning to cost him more than she had ever done, +more than any woman of his class, so far as he knew, would have dreamed +of costing; and this summer, no sooner had she emerged triumphant +than--with two children now to provide for--she had launched out upon a +scale that fairly terrified him. But all her past extravagance did +nothing to prepare him for the extent to which, as he expressed it, she +could "go it," when she had, as you might say, an incentive. + +The most astounding of the bills his whirlwind swept him was the bill +from Starker's--from Oxford Street, if you please--and the bill (sent in +with a cynical promptitude) from the chemist in Acacia Avenue at the +corner. That, the chemist's, was in a way the worst. It was for scent, +for toilette articles, strange yet familiar to him from their presence +in his father's shop, for all manner of cosmetics, for things so +outrageous, so unnecessary, that they witnessed chiefly to the shifts +she had been put to, to her anxieties and hastes, to the feverish +multiplication of pretexts and occasions. Still, they amounted but to a +few pounds and an odd shilling or two. Starker's bill did the rest. + +That, the high, resplendent "cheek" of it, showed what she was capable +of; it gave him the measure of her father's "funk," for, of not one of +the items, from the three-guinea costumes (there were several of them) +down to the dozen of openwork Lisle-thread hose at two and eleven the +pair, had Ransome so much as suspected the existence. The three-guinea +costumes he could understand. It was the three nightgowns, trimmed lace, +at thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen shillings apiece, that took his breath +away, as with a vision of her purposes. Still, to him, her husband, +Starker's statement of account represented directly, with the perfection +of business precision, the cost of getting rid of her; it was so simply +and openly the cost of her outfit, of all that she had trailed with her +in her flight. + +Yet, as he grasped it, he saw with that mature comprehension which was +now his, that, awful as it was, that total of twenty pounds odd +represented, perfectly, the price of peace. It was open to him to +repudiate his wife's debts, in which case she would appear in the County +Court, which, with its effect of publicity, with the things that would +be certain to come out there, was almost as bad as the Divorce Court. +Then the unfortunate tradespeople would not be paid, a result of her +conduct which was intolerable to Ranny's decency. Besides, he wanted to +be rather more than decent, to be handsome, in his squaring of accounts +with the woman whom, after all, in the beginning he had wronged. He +could even reflect with a humor surviving all calamity, that though +twenty-odd pounds was a devil of a lot to pay, his deliverance was +cheap, dirt cheap, at the money. + +But that was not all. There was Granville. + +He hated Granville. He could not believe how he ever could have loved +it. The fact that he was gradually becoming his own landlord only made +things worse. It gave Granville a malignant power over him, that power +which he had once or twice suspected, the power to round on him and +injure him and pay him back. He knew he was partly responsible for +Granville's degradation. He had done nothing for this property of his. +He had not given it a distinctive character; he had not covered it with +creepers or painted it green or built a balcony. He had left it to +itself. + +He asked himself what it would look like in seventeen years' time when +it would be his. In seventeen years' time he would be forty-two. What +good would he be then? And what good would Granville be to him? What +good was it now? In its malignancy it demanded large sums to keep it +going and if it didn't get them it knew how to avenge itself. Slowly +perishing, it would fall to dust in seventeen years' time when it came +into his hands. + + * * * * * + +But he had not dreamed of the extent to which Granville could put on the +screw. + +He was enlightened by the agent of the Estate Company to which Granville +owed its being. The agent, after a thorough inspection of the premises, +broke it to Ransome that if he did not wish to lose Granville, he would +have to undertake certain necessary repairs, the estimate for which +soared to the gay tune of ten pounds eight shillings and eightpence. It +was the state of the roof, of the southwest wall, and of the scullery +drain that most shocked the agent. Of the scullery drain he could hardly +bring himself to speak, remarking only that a little washing down from +time to time with soda would have saved it all. The state of that drain +was a fair disgrace; and it was not a thing of days; it dated from +months back--years, he shouldn't be surprised. It was fit to breed a +fever. + +Of course, it wasn't quite as bad as the agent had made out. But Ranny, +knowing Violet, believed him. It gave him a feeling of immense +responsibility toward Granville, and the Estate Company, and the agent. + +Finally, owing to Violet's reckless management, his debts to the grocer, +the butcher, and the milkman had reached the considerable total of nine +pounds eighteen shillings and eleven pence. It would take about forty +pounds odd to clear his obligations. + +The question was how on earth was he to raise the money? Out of a salary +of twelve pounds a month? + +He would have to borrow it. But from whom? Not from his father. To +whatever height his mother kept it up, she could not conceal from him +that his father was in difficulties. Wandsworth was going ahead, caught +by the tide of progress. The new Drug Stores over the way were drawing +all the business from Fulleymore Ransome's little shop. Even with the +assistance of the young man, Mr. Ponting, Fulleymore Ransome was not in +a state to hold his own. But John Randall, the draper, if you like, was +prosperous. He might be willing, Ransome thought, to lend him the money, +or a part of it, at a fair rate of interest. + +And John Randall indeed lent him thirty pounds; but not willingly. His +reluctance, however, was sufficiently explained by the fact that he had +recently advanced more than that sum to Fulleymore. He was careful to +point out to Randall that he was helping him to meet only those +catastrophes which might be regarded as the act of God--Violet's bills +and the deterioration of Granville. He was as anxious as Randall himself +to prevent Violet's appearance in the County Court, and he certainly +thought it was a pity that good house property should go out of his +nephew's hands. But he refused flatly to advance the ten pounds for the +weekly arrears, in order to teach Randall a lesson, to make him feel +that he had some responsibility, and to show that there was a limit to +what he, John Randall, was prepared to do. + +For days Ransome went distracted. The ten pounds still owing was like a +millstone round his neck. If he didn't look sharp and pay up _he_ would +be County-Courted too. He couldn't come down on his father-in-law. His +father-in-law would tell him that he had already received the equivalent +of ten pounds in hampers. There was nobody he _could_ come down on. So +he called at a place he had heard of in Shaftesbury Avenue, where there +was a "josser" who arranged it for him quite simply by means of a bill +of sale upon his furniture. After all, he did get some good out of that +furniture. + +And he got some good, too, out of Granville when he let it to Fred Booty +for fifteen shillings a week. + +He was now established definitely in his father's house. The young man +Mr. Ponting had shown how kind his heart was by turning out of his nice +room on the second floor into Ranny's old attic. The little back room, +used for storage, served also as a day nursery for Ranny's children. Six +days in the week a little girl came in to mind them. At night Ranny +minded them where they lay in their cots by his bed. + +It was all that could be done; and with the little girl's board and the +children's and his own breakfast and supper and his Sunday dinner, it +cost him thirty shillings a week. There was no way in which it could be +done for less, since it was not in him to take advantage of his +mother's offer to let him have the rooms rent free. + + * * * * * + +And underneath Ranny's rooms, between the bedroom at the back and the +back parlor, between the parlor and the shop, between the shop and the +dispensing-room, Fulleymore Ransome dragged himself to and fro, more +than ever weedy, more than ever morose, more than ever sublime in his +appearance of integrity; and with it all so irritable that Ranny's +children had to be kept out of his way. He would snarl when he heard +them overhead; he would scowl horribly when he came across the "pram," +pushed by the little girl, in its necessary progress through the shop +into the street and back again. + +But at Ranny he neither snarled nor scowled, nor had he spoken any word +to him on the subject of the great calamity. No reproach, no reminder of +warnings given, none of that reiterated, "I told you so," in which, +Ranny reflected, he might have taken it out of him. He also seemed to +regard his son Randall as one smitten by God and afflicted, to whose +high and sacred suffering silence was the appropriate tribute. His very +moroseness provided the sanctuary of silence. + +And all the time he drank; he drank worse than ever; furtively, +continuously he drank. Nobody could stop him, for nobody ever saw him +doing it. He did it, they could only suppose, behind Mr. Ponting's back +in the dispensing-room. + +They were free to suppose anything now; for, since Ranny's great +delivering outburst, they could discuss it; and in discussion they +found relief. Ranny's mother owned as much. She had suffered (that also +she owned) from the strain of keeping it up. Ranny's outburst had saved +her, vicariously. It was as if she had burst out herself. + +There were, of course, lengths to which she would never go, admissions +which she could not bring herself to make. There had to be some +subterfuge, some poor last shelter for her pride. And so, of the +depression in Fulleymore's business she would say before Mr. Ponting, +"It's those Drug Stores that are ruining him," and Mr. Ponting would +reply, gravely, "They'd ruin anybody." + +Mr. Ponting was a fresh-colored young man and good-looking, with his +blue eyes and his yellow hair sleeked backward like folded wings, so +different from Mercier. Mr. Ponting had conceived an affection for Ranny +and the children. He would find excuses to go up to the storeroom, where +he would pretend to be looking for things while he was really playing +with Dossie. He would sit on Ranny's bed while Ranny was undressing, and +together they would consider, piously, the grave case of the +Humming-bird, and how, between them, they could best "keep him off it." + +"It's the dispensary spirits that he gets at," Mr. Ponting said. "That's +the trouble." + +(And it always had been.) + +"The queer thing is," said Ranny, "that you never fairly see him tight. +Not to speak of." + +"That's the worst of it," said Mr. Ponting. "I wish I _could_ see your +father tight--tumbling about a bit, I mean, and being funny. The beastly +stuff's going for him inside, all the time--undermining him. There +isn't an organ," said Mr. Ponting, solemnly, "in your father's body that +it hasn't gone for." + +"How d'you know?" + +"Why, by the medicines he takes. He's giving himself strophanthus now, +for his heart." + +"I say--d'you think my mother knows that?" + +"It's impossible to say what your mother knows. More than she lets on, I +shouldn't be surprised." + +Mr. Ponting pondered. + +"It's wonderful how he keeps it up. His dignity, I mean." + +"It's rum, isn't it?" said Ranny. He was apparently absorbed in tying +the strings of his sleeping-suit into loops of absolutely even length. +"But he always _was_ that mysterious kind of bird." + +He began to step slowly backward as he buttoned up his jacket. Then, by +way of throwing off the care that oppressed him, and lightening somewhat +Mr. Ponting's burden, he ran forward and took a flying leap over the +Baby's cot into his own bed. + +Mr. Ponting looked, if anything, a little graver. "I wouldn't do that, +if I were you," he said. + +"Why not?" said Ranny over his blankets, snuggling comfortably. + +"Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Ponting, vaguely. + +In a day or two Ranny himself knew. + +His arrangements had carried him well on into October. In the last week +of that month, on a Tuesday evening, he appeared at the Regent Street +Polytechnic, where he had not been seen since far back in the last year. +It was not at the Gymnasium that he now presented himself, but at the +door of that room where every Tuesday evening, from seven-thirty to +eight-thirty, a qualified practitioner was in attendance. + +It was the first time that Ransome had availed himself of this privilege +conferred on him by the Poly. + +He said he wouldn't keep the medical man a minute. + +But the medical man kept Ranny many minutes, thumping, sounding, +intimately and extensively overhauling him. For more minutes than Ranny +at all liked, he played about him with a stethoscope. Then he fired off +what Ranny supposed to be the usual questions. + +"Had any shock, worry, or excitement lately? + +"Been overdoing it in any way? + +"Gone in much for athletics?" + +Ranny replied with regret that it was more than three years since he had +last run in the Wandsworth Hurdle Race. + +He was then told that he must avoid all shock, worry, or excitement. He +mustn't overdo it. He must drop his hurdle-racing. He mustn't bicycle +uphill, or against the wind; he mustn't jump; he mustn't run-- + +"Not even to catch a train?" + +"Not to catch anything." + +And the doctor gave him a prescription that ran: + +/P + Sodæ Bicarb., one dram. + Tinct. Strophanthi, two drams-- +P/ + +He remembered. That was the stuff he'd measured for old Mr. Beasley's +heart mixture. It was the stuff that Ponting said his father was taking +now. + +If any one had told him three years ago that his heart was rocky he'd +have told them where to go to. It had been as sound as a bell when he +entered for the Poly. Gym. + +Well, he supposed that was about the finishing touch--if they wanted to +do the thing in style. + +He went slowly over Wandsworth Bridge and up the High Street, dejected, +under the autumn moon that had once watched his glad sprinting. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +And in all this time he had not heard again from Violet, nor had he +written to her. + +Then--it was in the first week of November--Violet wrote. + +She wrote imploring him to set her free. It was rooted in her, the fear +that he would compel her to come back, that he had the power to make +her. She wanted (he seemed to see it) to feel safe from him forever. +Leonard had promised to marry her if she were free. She intimated that +Leonard was everything that was generous and honorable. She wanted (she +who had abused him so for having married her), she wanted to marry +Mercier, to have a hold on him and be safe. Marriage was her idea of +safety now. + +She went on to say that if he would consent to divorce her, it would be +made easy for him, she would not defend the suit. + +That meant--he puzzled it out--that meant that it would lie between the +two of them. Nobody else would be dragged into it. Winny's name would +not by any possibility be dragged in. Violet would have no use for +Winny, since she was not going to defend the suit. She might--at the +worst--have to appear as witness, if the evidence of Violet's letters +(her own admission) was not sufficient. It looked as if it would be +simple enough. Why should he not release her? He had no business not to +give her the chance to marry Mercier, to regulate the relation, if that +was what she wanted. + +It was his own chance, too, his one chance. He would be a fool not to +take it. + +And as it came over him in its fullness, all that it meant and would yet +mean, Ranny felt his heart thumping and bounding, dangerously, in its +weakened state. + +On a Wednesday evening in November, he presented himself once more at +the Regent Street Polytechnic and at the door of an office where, on +Wednesday evenings, an experienced legal adviser held himself in +readiness to give advice, that legal adviser who had been the jest of +his adolescence, whose services he had not conceived it possible that he +should require. + +He had a curiously uplifting sense of the gravity and impressiveness of +the business upon which at last, inconceivably, he came. But this odd +elation was controlled and finally overpowered by disgust and shame, as +one by one, under the kind but acute examination of the legal man, he +brought out for his inspection the atrocious details. And he had to show +Violet's letter of September, the document, supremely valuable, +supremely infamous, supported by the further communication of November. +The keen man asked him, as his uncle and his father-in-law had asked, if +he had given any provocation, any cause for jealousy, misunderstanding, +or the like? Had his own conduct been irreproachable? When all this part +of it was over, settled to the keen man's satisfaction, Ranny was told +that there was little doubt that he could get his divorce if--that was +the question--he could afford to pay. Divorce was, yes, it was a costly +matter, almost, you might say, the luxury of the rich. A matter, for +him, probably of forty or fifty pounds--well, say, thirty, when you'd +cut expenses down to the very lowest limit. Could he, the keen but +kindly man inquired, afford thirty? + +No, he couldn't. He couldn't afford twenty even. With all his existing +debts upon him he couldn't now raise ten. + +He asked whether he could get his divorce if he put it off a bit until +he could afford it? + +The legal man looked grave. + +"Well--yes. If you can show poverty--" + +Ranny thought he could undertake to show _that_ all right. + +At the legal man's suggestion he wrote a letter to his wife assuring her +that it was impossible for her to desire a divorce more than he did; +that he meant to bring an action at the very moment when he could afford +it, pointing out to her that her debts which he had paid had not made +this any easier for him; that in the meanwhile she need not be anxious; +that he would not follow her or molest her in any way; and that in no +circumstances would he take her back. + +And now Ranny's soul and all his energy were set upon the one aim of +raising money for his divorce. It was impossible to lay his hands upon +that money all at once. He could not do it this year, nor yet the next, +for his expenses and his debts together exceeded the amount of his +income; but gradually, by pinching and scraping, it might be done +perhaps in two or three years' time. + +His chief trouble was that in all these weeks he had seen nothing of +Winny. He had called twice at the side door of Johnson's, but they had +told him that she was not in; and, hampered as he was with the children, +he had not had time to call again. Besides, he knew he had to be +careful, and Winny knew it too. That, of course, would always help him, +her perception of the necessity for care. There were ways of managing +these things, but they required his mother's or his friends' +co-operation; and so far Mrs. Ransome had shown no disposition to +co-operate. Winny was not likely to present herself at Wandsworth +without encouragement, and she had apparently declined to lend herself +to any scheme of Maudie's or of Fred Booty's. With Winny lying low there +was nothing left for him but the way he shrank from, of persistent and +unsolicited pursuit. + +November passed and they were in December, and he had not seen her. +After having recovered somewhat under the influence of the drug +strophanthus, he now became depressed, listless, easily fatigued. + +Up till now there had been something not altogether disagreeable to Mrs. +Ransome in the misfortunes of her son. They had brought him back to her. +But he had not wanted to come back; and now she wondered whether she had +done well to make him come, whether (after all he had gone through) it +was not too much for him, realizing as he did his father's awful state. +It had gone so far, Mr. Ransome's state, that there was no way in which +it could be taken lightly. + +And she was depressed herself, perceiving it. Mr. Ransome's state made +him unfit for business now, unfit to appear in the shop, above all +unfit for the dispensary. Fit only to crawl from room to room and +trouble them with the sad state of his peaked and peevish face. He +required watching. He himself recognized that in his handling of tricky +drugs there was a danger. The business was getting out of hand. It was +small and growing smaller every month, yet it was too much for Mr. +Ponting to cope with unassisted. They were living, all three of them, in +a state of tension most fretting to the nerves. + +The whole house fairly vibrated with it. It was as if the fearful +instability of Mr. Ransome's nervous system communicated itself to +everybody around him. At the cry or the sudden patter of Ranny's +children overhead, Mr. Ransome would be set quivering and shaking, and +this disturbance of his reverberated. Ranny set his teeth and sat tight +and "stuck it"; but he felt the shattering effect of it all the same. + +And the children felt it too, subtly, insidiously. Dossie became +peevish, easily frightened; she was neither so good nor so happy with +her Granny and the little girl as she had been with Winny. Baby cried +oftener. Ranny sometimes would be up half the night with him. + +All this Mrs. Ransome saw and grieved over and was powerless to help. + +In Christmas week the state of Mr. Ransome became terrible, not to be +borne. Ranny was working hard at the counting-house; he was worn out, +and he looked it. + +The sight of him, so changed, broke Mrs. Ransome down. + +"Ranny," she said, "I wish you'd get away somewhere for Christmas. Me +and Mabel'll look after the children. You go." + +He said there wasn't anywhere he cared to go to. + +"Well--is there anything you'd like to do?" + +"To do?" + +"For Christmas, dear. To make it not so sad like. Is there anybody," she +said, "you'd like to ask?" + +No, there wasn't. At any rate, if there was he wouldn't ask them. It +wouldn't be exactly what you'd call fun for them, with the poor old +Humming-bird making faces at them all the time. + +His mother looked at him shrewdly and said nothing. But she sat down and +wrote a letter to Winny Dymond, asking her to come and spend Christmas +Day with them, if, said Mrs. Ransome, she hadn't anywhere better to go +to and didn't mind a sad house. + +And Winny came. She hadn't anywhere better to go to, and she didn't mind +a sad house in the least. + +They wondered, Ranny and his mother, how they were ever going to break +it to the Humming-bird. + +"Your Father won't like it, Ranny. He's not fit for it. He'll think us +heartless, having strangers in the house when he's suffering so." + +But Mr. Ransome, when asked if he was fit for it, replied astoundingly +that he was fit enough if it would make Randall any happier. + +It did. It made him so happy that his recovery dated from that moment. +He had only one fear, that Dossie would have forgotten Winky. + +But Dossie hadn't, though after two months of Wandsworth she had +forgotten many things, and had cultivated reserve. When Ranny said, +"Who's this, Dossie?" she tucked her head into her shoulder and smiled +shyly and said, "Winty." But they had to pretend that Baby remembered, +too. He hadn't really got what you would call a memory. + +And, after all, it was Ranny (Winny said to herself) who remembered +most. For he gave her for a Christmas present, not only a beautiful +white satin "sashy," scented with lavender (lavender, not violets, this +time), but a wonderful hot-water bag with a shaggy red coat that made +you warm to look at it. + +"Ranny! Fancy you remembering that I had cold feet!" + +That night he went home with her to Johnson's side door, carrying the +sachet and the hot-water bag and the things his mother had given her. + +Upstairs, in the attic she shared with three other young ladies, the +first thing Winny did was to turn to the Cookery Book she had bought a +year ago and read the directions: "How to Preserve Hot-Water Bags"--to +preserve them forever. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +Thus nineteen-seven, that dreadful year, rolled over into +nineteen-eight. By nineteen-ten, at the very latest, Ransome looked to +get his divorce. He had no doubt that he could do it, for he found it +far less expensive to live with his mother at Wandsworth than with +Violet at Granville. He knew exactly where he was, he had not to allow +so considerably for the unforeseen. His income had a margin out of which +he saved. To make this margin wider he pinched, he scraped, he went as +shabby as he dared, he left off smoking, he renounced his afternoon cup +of tea and reduced the necessary dinner at his A B C shop to its very +simplest terms. + +The two years passed. + +By January, nineteen-ten, he had only paid off what he already owed. He +had not raised the thirty pounds required for his divorce. Indomitable, +but somewhat desperate, he applied to his Uncle Randall for a second +loan at the same interest. He did not conceal from him that divorce was +his object. He put it to him that his mind was made up unalterably, and +that since the thing had got to be, sooner or later, it was better for +everybody's sake that it should be sooner. + +But Mr. Randall was inexorable. He refused, flatly, to lend his money +for a purpose that he persisted in regarding as iniquitous. Even if he +had not advanced a further sum to young Randall's father, he was not +going to help young Randall through the Divorce Court, stirring all that +mud again. Not he. + +"You should wash your dirty linen at home," he said. + +"You mean keep it there and never wash it. That's what it comes to," +said young Randall, furiously. + +"It's been kept. And everybody's forgotten that it's there by this time. +Why rake it up again?" said his Uncle Randall. + +And there was no making him see why. There was no making any of them +see. Mrs. Ransome wouldn't hear of the divorce. "It'll kill your Father, +Ranny," she said, and stuck to it. + +And Ranny set his mouth hard and said nothing. He calculated that if he +put by twelve shillings a week for twenty-five weeks that would be +fifteen pounds. He could borrow the other fifteen in Shaftesbury Avenue +as he had done before, and in six months he would be filing his +petition. + +As soon as he was ready to file it he would tell Winny he cared for her. +He would ask her to be his wife. + +He had not told any of them about Winny. But they knew. They knew and +yet they had no pity on him, nor yet on her. When he thought of it Ranny +set his face harder. + + * * * * * + +Yet Winny came and went, untroubled and apparently unconscious. She was +not only allowed to come and go at Wandsworth as she had come and gone +at Granville, by right of her enduring competence; she was desired and +implored to come. For if she had (and Mrs. Ransome owned it) a "way" +with the children, she had also a way with Mrs. Ransome, and with Mr. +Ransome. The Humming-bird, growing weedier and weaker, revived in her +presence; he relaxed a little of his moroseness and austerity. "I don't +know how it is," said Ranny's mother, "but your Father takes to her. He +likes to see her about." + +Saturday afternoons, and Sundays, and late evenings in summer were her +times, so that of necessity she and Ranny met. + +Not that they pleaded necessity for meeting. Since his awful +enlightenment and maturity, Ransome had never thought of pleading +anything; for he did not hold himself accountable to anybody or require +anybody to tell him what was decent and what wasn't. And Winny was like +him. He couldn't imagine Winny driven to plead. She had gone her own way +without troubling her head about what people thought of her, without +thinking very much about herself. As long as she was sure he wanted her, +she would be there, where he was. He felt rather than knew that she +waited for him, and would wait for him through interminable years, +untroubled as to her peace, profoundly pure. He was not even certain +that she was aware that she was waiting and that he waited too. + + * * * * * + +In the spring of nineteen-ten it looked as if they would not have very +long to wait. He had measured his resources with such accuracy that by +June, if all went well, he could set about filing his petition. + +And now, seeing the thing so near and yet not accomplished, Ranny's +nerve went. He began to be afraid, childishly and ridiculously afraid, +of something happening to prevent it. He had a clear and precise idea of +that something. He would die before he could file his petition, before +he could get his divorce and marry Winny. His heart to be sure was +better; but at any moment it might get worse. It might get like his +father's. It might stop altogether. He thought of it as he had never +thought of it before. He humored it. He never ran. He never jumped. He +never rode uphill on his bicycle. He thought twice before hurrying for +anything. + +Against these things he could protect himself. + +But who could protect him against excitement and worry and anxiety? Why, +this fear that he had was itself the worst thing for him imaginable. And +then worry. He _had_ to worry. You couldn't look on and see the poor old +Humming-bird going from bad to worse, you couldn't see everybody else +worrying about him, and not worry too. He would go away and forget about +it for a time, and when he came back again the terrible and intolerable +thing was there. + +And at the heart of the trouble there was a still more terrible and +intolerable peace. It was as if Mr. Ransome had made strange terms with +the youth and joy and innocent life that had once roused him to such +profound resentment and disgust. His vindictive ubiquity had ceased. +When the spring came he could no longer drag himself up and down stairs. +His feet and legs were swollen; they were like enormous weights +attached to his pitifully weedy body. His skin had the sallow +smoothness, the waxen substance that marked the deadly, unmistakable +progress of his disease. He could not always lie down in his bed. +Sometimes he lived, day and night, motionless in his invalid's chair, +with his legs propped before him on a footrest. He would sit for hours +staring at them in lamentable contemplation. He could measure his span +of life from day to day as the swelling rose or sank. On his good days +they wheeled him from his bedroom at the back to the front sitting-room. + +And through it all, as by some miracle, he preserved his air of +suffering integrity. + +It was quite plain to Ranny that his father could not live long. And if +he died? Even in his pity and his grief Ranny could not help wondering +whether, if his father died any time that year, it would not make a +difference, whether it would not, perhaps, at the last moment prevent +his marrying? + +Partly in defiance of this fear, partly by way of committing himself +irretrievably, he resolved to speak to Winny. He desired to be +irretrievably committed, so that, whatever happened, decency alone would +prevent him from drawing back. Though he could not in as many words ask +Winny to marry him before he was actually free, there were things that +could be said, and he saw no earthly reason why he should not say them. + +For this purpose he chose, in sheer decency, one of his father's good +days which happened to be a fine, warm one in May and a Saturday. He had +arranged with Winny beforehand that she should come over as early as +possible in the afternoon and stay for tea. He now suggested that, as +this Saturday was such a Saturday as they might never see again, it +would be a good plan if they were to go somewhere together. + +"Where?" said Winny. + +Wherever she liked, he said, provided it was somewhere where they'd +never been before. And Winny, trying to think of something not too +expensive, said, "How about the tram to Putney Heath?" + +"Putney Heath," Ranny said, "be blowed!" + +"Well, then--how about Hampton Court or Kew?" + +But he was "on to" her. "Rot!" he said. "You've been there." + +"Well--" Obviously she was meditating something equally absurd. + +"What d'you say to Windsor?" + +But Winny absolutely refused to go to Windsor. She said there was one +place she'd never been to, and that was Golder's Hill. You could get tea +there. + +"Right--O!" said Ranny. "We'll go to Golder's Hill." + +"And take the children," Winny said. + +Well, no, he rather thought he'd leave the kids behind for once. + +"Oh, Ranny!" Voice and eyes reproached him. "You couldn't! You may never +get a day like this again." + +"I know. That's why," said Ranny. + +The kids, Stanley, aged three, and Dossie, aged five, understanding +perfectly well that they were being thrown over, began to cry. + +"Daddy, take _me_--take _me_," sobbed Dossie. + +"And me!" Stanley positively screamed it. + +"I say, you know, if they're going to howl," said Ranny. + +"You _must_--" + +"That's it, I mustn't. They can't have everything they choose to howl +for." + +"There," said Winny. "See! Daddy can't take you if you cry. He can't, +really." + +(She had gone--perfidious Winny!--to the drawer where she knew Stanley's +clean suit was. Stanley knew it too.) + +The children stopped crying as by magic. With eyes where pathos and +resentment mingled they gazed at their incredible father. Tears, large +crystal tears, hung on the flame-red crests of their hot cheeks. + +Winny turned before she actually opened the drawer. + +"Who wants," said she, "to go with Daddy?" + +"Me," said Dossie. + +"Me," said Stanley. + +"Well, then, give Daddy a kiss and ask him nicely. Then perhaps he'll +take you." + +And they did, and he had to take them. But it was mean, it was +treacherous of Winny. + +"What did you do that for, Winky?" he said, going over to her where she +rummaged in the drawer. + +"Because," she said, "you promised." + +"Promised what?" + +"Promised you'd take them. Promised Stanny he should wear his knickers. +They told me you'd promised." + +And he had. + +"I forgot," he said. + +"_They'd_ never have forgotten." + +She was holding them, the ridiculous knickers, to the nursery fire. + +It took ten minutes to get Stanley into them, into the little blue linen +knickers he had never worn before, and into his tight little white +jersey; and then there was Dossie and her wonderful rig-out, the clean, +white frock and the serge jacket of turquoise blue and the tiny mushroom +hat with the white ribbon. It took five minutes more to find Stanley's +hat, the little soft hat of white felt, in which he was so adorable. +They found it on Ranny's bed, and then they started. + +It was a great, an immense adventure, right away to the other side of +London. + +"We'll take everything we can," said Ranny. And they did. They took the +motor bus to Earl's Court Tube Station, and the Tube (two Tubes they had +to take) to Golder's Green. The adventure began in the first lift. + +"Where we goin'?" the children cried. "Where we goin', Daddy?" + +"We're going down--down--ever so far down, with London on the top of +us--All the horses"--Winny worked the excitement up and up--"All the +people--All the motor buses on the top of us--" + +"On top of me?" + +"And on me?" cried Dossie. "And on Daddy and on Winky?" + +"Will it make us _dead_?" said Stanley. He was thrilled at the prospect. + +"No. More alive than ever. We shall come rushing out, like bunny +rabbits, into the country on the other side." + +Ever so far down into the earth they went, with London, and then Camden +Town, and then Hampstead Heath--a great big high hill--right on the top +of them; and then, all of a sudden, just as Winny had said, they came +rushing out, more alive than ever, into the country, into the green +fields. + +But there was something wrong with Ranny. He wasn't like himself. He +wasn't excited or amused or interested in anything. He looked as if he +were trying not to hear what Winny was saying to the children. He was +abstracted. He went like a man in a dream. He behaved almost as if he +wanted to show that he didn't really belong to them. + +Of course, he did all the proper things. He carried his little son. He +lifted him and Dossie in and out of the trains as if they had been +parcels labeled "Fragile, with Care." But he did it like a porter, a +sulky porter who was tired of lifting things; and they might really have +been somebody else's glass and china for all he seemed to care. + +Ranny was angry. He was angry with the little things for being there. He +was angry with himself for having brought them, and with Winny for +having made him bring them; and he was angry with himself for being +angry. But he couldn't help it. Their voices exasperated him. The +children's voices, the high, reiterated singsong, "Where we goin'?" +Winny's voice, poignantly soft, insufferably patient, answering them +with all that tender silliness, that persistent, gentle, intolerably +gentle tommy-rot. + +For all the time he was saying to himself, "She doesn't care. She +doesn't care a hang. It's them she cares for. It's them she wants. It's +them she's wanted all the time. She's that sort." + +And as he brooded on it, hatred of Winky, who had so fooled him, crept +into his heart. + +"Oh, Daddy!" Dossie shouted, with excitement. (They had emerged into the +beautiful open space in front of Golder's Green Station.) "Daddy, we're +bunnies now! We'll be dea' little baby bunnies. You'll be Father Bunny, +and Winky'll be Mrs. Mother Bun! _Be_ a bunny, Daddy?" + +Perceiving his cruel abstraction, Dossie entreated and implored. "_Be_ +it!" + +But Daddy refused to be a bunny or anything that was required of him. So +silent was he and so stern that even Winny saw that there was something +wrong. She knew by the way he let Stanny down from his shoulder to the +ground, a way which implied that Stanny was not so young nor yet so +small and helpless as he seemed. He could walk. + +Stanny felt it; he felt it in the jerk that landed him; but he didn't +care, he was far too happy. + +"He's a young Turk," said Winny, and he was. By his whole manner, by the +swing of his tiny arms, by his tilted, roguish smile, by his eyes, +impudent and joyous (blue they were, like his mother's, but clear, +tilted, and curled like Ranny's), Stanny intimated that Daddy was sold +if he imagined that to walk was not just what Stanny wanted. And in +spite of it he was heartrending, pathetic; so small he was, with all his +baby roundness accentuated absurdly by the knickers. + +"He's just such another as you, Ranny," Winny said. (She was +uncontrollable!) "Such a little man as he is, in those knickers." + +"Damn his knickers," said Ranny to himself, behind his set teeth. But he +smiled all the same; and by the time they had got into the wonderful +walled garden of Golder's Hill he had recovered almost completely. + +It was not decent to keep on sulking in a place which had so laid itself +out to make you happy; where the sunshine flowed round you and soaked +into you and warmed you as if you were in a bath. The garden, inclosed +in rose-red walls and green hedges, was like a great tank filled with +sunshine; sunshine that was visible, palpable, audible almost in its +intensity; sunshine caught and contained and brimming over, that +quivered and flowed in and around the wall-flowers, tulips and +narcissus, that drenched them through and through and covered them like +water, and was thick with all their scents. You walked on golden paths +through labyrinths of brilliant flowers, through arches, tunnels and +bowers of green. You were netted in sunshine, drugged with sweet live +smells, caged in with blossoms, pink and white, of the espaliers that +clung, branch and bud, like carved latticework, flat to the garden wall. + +Neither could he well have sulked in the great space outside, where the +green lawns unrolled and flung themselves generously, joyously to the +sun, or where, on the light slope of the field beyond, the trees hung +out their drooping vans, lifted up green roof above green roof, +sheltering a happy crowd. + +And even if these things, in their benignant, admonishing, reminding +beauty, had not restored his decency, he was bound to soften and unbend, +when, as they were going over the rustic bridge, Stanny tried to turn +himself upside down among the water lilies. And as he captured Stanny by +a miracle of dexterity, just in time, he realized, as if it had been +some new and remarkable discovery, that his little son was dear to him. + +By slow stages, after many adventures and delays, they reached the +managerie on the south side. + +"Oh, Daddy, Daddy, look at that funny bird!" + +Dossie tugged and shouted. + +In a corner of his yard, round and round, with inconceivable rapidity +and an astounding innocence, as if he imagined himself alone and +unobserved, the Emu danced like a bird demented. On tiptoe, absurdly +elongated, round and round, ecstatically, deliriously, he danced. He +danced till his legs and his neck were as one high perpendicular pole +and his body a mere whorl of feathers spinning round it, driven by the +flapping of his wings. + +"He _is_ making an almighty fool of himself," said Ranny. + +"What does he do it for, Daddy?" + +"Let's ask the keeper." + +And they asked him. + +"'E's a Emu, that's what 'e is," said the keeper. "That's what he does +when he goes courtin'. Only there won't be no courtin' for him this +time. 'Is mate died yesterday." + +"And yet he dances," Winny said. + +"And yet he dances. Heartless bird!" said Ranny. + +They looked at the Emu, who went on dancing as if unobserved. + +"Scandalous, I call it," Ranny said. "Unfeelin'." + +"Perhaps," said Winny, "the poor thing doesn't know." + +"Per'aps he does know, and that's why he's dancin'." + +Winny gazed, fascinated, at the uplifted and ecstatic head. + +"_I_ know," she said. "It's his grief. It's affected his brain." + +"It's Nacher," said the keeper, "that's what it is. Nacher's wound 'im +up to go, and he goes, you see, whether or no. It's the instint in 'im +and the time of year. 'E don't know no more than that." + +"But that," said Winny, "makes it all the sadder." + +She was sorry for the Emu, so bereaved and so deluded, dancing his +fruitless, lamentable dance. + +"He _is_ funny, isn't he?" said Stanny. + +And they went slowly, spinning out their pleasure, back to that part of +the lawn where there were innumerable little tables covered with pink +cloths, set out under the trees, and seated at the tables innumerable +family parties, innumerable pairs of lovers, pairs of married people, +pairs of working women and of working girls on holiday; all happy for +their hour, all whispering, laughing, chattering, and drinking tea. + +On the terrace in front of the big red house were other tables with +white covers under awnings like huge sunshades, where people who could +afford the terrace sat in splendor and in isolation and listened to the +music, played on the veranda, of violins and cello and piano. + +Ransome and Winny and the children chose a pink-covered table on the +lawn under a holly tree in a place all by themselves. And they had tea +there, such a tea as stands out forever in memory, beautiful and +solitary. What the children didn't have for tea, Ranny said, was not +worth mentioning. + +And after tea they sat in luxurious folding-chairs under the terrace and +listened to the violins, the cello, and piano. Other people were doing +the same thing as if they had been invited to do it, as if they were all +one party, with somewhere a friendly host and hostess imploring them to +be seated, to be happy and to make themselves at home. + +And down the slope of the lawn, Stanny and Dossie rolled over and over +in the joy of life. And up the slope they toiled, laughing, to roll +interminably down. + +And the moments while they rolled were golden, priceless to Ranny. +Winny, seated beside him on her chair, watched them rolling. + +"It's Stanny's knickers," she said, "that I can't get over!" + +"I don't want to hear of them again" (the golden moments were so few). +"You make me wish I hadn't brought those kids." + +"Oh, Ranny!" Her eyes were serious and reproachful. + +"Well--I can't get you to myself one minute." + +"But aren't we having quite a happy day?" she said. "What with the +beautiful flowers and the music and the Emu--" + +"You were sorry, Winky, for that disgraceful bird, and you're not a bit +sorry for me." + +"Why should I be?" + +"My case is similar." + +Her eyes were serious still, but round the corners of her mouth a little +smile was playing in secret by itself. She didn't know it was there, or +she never would have let it play. + +"Don't you know that I want to say things to you?" + +She looked at him and was frightened by the hunger in his eyes. + +"Not now, Ranny," she said. "Not yet." + +"Why not?" + +"I want"--she was desperate--"I want to listen to the music." + +At that moment the violins and the cello were struggling together in a +cry of anguish and of passion. + +"You _don't_," he said, savagely. + +He was right. She didn't. The music, yearning and struggling, tore at +her heart, set her nerves vibrating, her breast heaving. It was as if it +drew her to Ranny, urgently, irresistibly, against her will. + +"Not now, Ranny," she said, "not now." And it was as if she asked him to +take pity on her. + +"No," he said. "Not now. But presently, when I see you home." + +"No. Not even then. Not at all. You mustn't, dear," she whispered. + +"I shall." + +They sat silent and let the music do with them as it would. + +And the sun dropped to the fields and flooded them and sank far away, +behind Harrow on the Hill. And they called the children, the tired +children, to them and went home. + +Stanny had to be carried all the way. He hung on his father's shoulder, +utterly limp, utterly helpless, utterly pathetic. + +"He's nothing but a baby after all," said Winny. + +They were going over Wandsworth Bridge. + +"Do you remember, Ranny, the first time you ever saw me home, going over +this bridge? What a moon there was!" + +"I do. That _was_ a moon," said Ranny. + + * * * * * + +There was no moon for them to-night. + +It was in a clear twilight, an hour later, that he saw her home. + +They went half the way without speaking, till they came to the little +three-cornered grove beside the public footpath. It was deserted. He +proposed that they should sit there for a while. + +"It's the only chance I'll ever get," he said to himself. + +She consented. The plane trees sheltered them and made darkness for them +where they sat. + +"Winky," he said, after an agonizing pause, "you must have thought it +queer that I've never thanked you for all you've done for me." + +"Why should you? It's so little. It's nothing." + +"Do you suppose I don't know what it is and what you've done it for?" + +"Yes, Ranny, you know what I did it for, and you see, it's been no +good." + +"How d'you mean, no good?" + +"It didn't do what I thought it would." + +"What was that?" + +"It didn't keep poor Vi and you together." + +"Reelly"--She went on as if she were delivering her soul at last of the +burden that had been too heavy for it--"I can see it all now. It did +more harm than good." + +"How do you make that out?" + +"D'you mind talking about it?" + +"Not a bit." + +"Well, don't you see--it made it easier for her. It gave her the time +and everything she wanted. If I hadn't been there that night she +couldn't have gone, Ranny. She wouldn't have left the children. She +wouldn't, reelly. And I hadn't the sense to see it then." + +"I'm glad you hadn't." + +"Oh, why?" + +"Because then you wouldn't have been there. I knew you were trying to +keep it all together. But it was bound to go. It couldn't have lasted. +_She'd_ have gone anyhow. You don't worry about that now, do you?" + +"Sometimes I can't help thinking of it." + +"Don't think of it." + +"I won't so long as you know what I did it for." + +He meditated. + +"I know what you did it for in the beginning. But--Winks--you were there +_afterward_." + +"Afterward--?" + +"After Virelet went you were doing things." + +"Well--and didn't you want me?" + +"Of course I wanted you. Did you never wonder why I let you do things? +Why I can bear to take it from you? Don't you know I couldn't let any +other woman do what you do for me?" + +"I'm glad if you feel like that about it." + +"I don't believe you've any idea how I feel about it. I don't believe +you understand it yet." His voice thickened. + +"I couldn't have let you, Winny, if I hadn't cared for you. I should +have been a low animal, a mean swine to let you if I hadn't cared. I'm +not talking as if my caring paid you back in any way. I couldn't pay you +back if I worked for you for the rest of my life. But that's what I'm +going to do if I can get the chance." + +She could feel him trembling beside her and she was afraid. + +"Would you let me?" he said. "Would you have me, Winny? Do you care for +me enough to have me?" + +"You know I've always cared for you." + +"Would you marry me if I was free?" + +"Don't talk about it, dear. You mustn't." + +"And why mustn't I?" + +"It's no good. You're not free. You married Vi, dear, and whatever she's +done you can't un-marry her." + +"Can't I? That's precisely what I can do; and it's what I'm going to +do." + +"You're not. You couldn't." + +It seemed to him that she shrank from him in horror. + +"You don't understand. You're talking as if she and I cared for each +other. That's at an end. It's done for. She's asked me to divorce her." + +"Asked you? When?" + +"More than two years ago, and I promised. She wants to marry Mercier, +and she'd better. I'd have been free two years ago if I'd had the money. +But I've got it now. I've been saving for it. I've been doing nothing +else, thinking of nothing else from morning till night for more than two +years, because I meant to ask you to marry me." + +"All that time?" + +"All that time." + +"But Ranny, you know you _needn't_. I'm quite happy." + +"Are you?" + +"Yes. You mustn't think I'm not and that you've got to make anything up +to me, because that would make me feel as if I'd--there's a word for it, +I know, but I can't think of it. It's what horrid girls do to men when +they're trying to get hold of them--as if I'd comp--comprised--" + +"D'you mean compromised?" + +"Yes." + +"I make you feel as if you'd compromised me?" + +"That's right." + +"Well, I _am_ jiggered! If that doesn't about take the biscuit! Winky, +you're a blessing, you're a treasure, you're a treat; I could live for a +fortnight on the things you find to say." + +He would have drawn her to him, but she held herself rigid. + +"Well, but--I haven't--have I?" + +"If you mean, have you made me want to marry you, you _have_. Haven't I +told you I've thought of nothing else for more than two years?" + +"D'you want it so badly, Ranny?" + +"I want _you_ so badly. Didn't you know I did? Of course you knew." + +"No, Ranny, I didn't. I thought all the time perhaps some day poor +Virelet would come back." + +"She'll never come back." + +"But, if she did? If she changed her mind? Perhaps she's changed it now +and wants to come back and be good." + +"If she did I wouldn't take her." + +He felt her eyes turn on him through the dark in wonder. + +"But you'd have to. You couldn't not." + +"I could, and I would." + +"No, Ranny, you wouldn't. You'd never be cruel to poor Vi." + +"Don't talk about her. Don't think about her." + +"But we must. There she is. There she's always been--" + +"And here we are. And here we've always been. Have you ever thought for +a minute of _yourself_? Have you ever thought of _me_? I'm sick of +hearing you say 'poor Vi.' Poor Vi! D'you know why I won't take her +back? Why I can't forgive her? It's not for what you know she's done. +It's for something you never knew about. I've a good mind to tell you." + +"No--don't. I'd rather not know. Whatever it was, she couldn't help it." + +"You ought to know. It was something she did to you." + +"She never did anything to me, Ranny." + +"Didn't she? She did something to me that came to the same thing. I +suppose you think I cared for her before I cared for you?" + +"Well--yes." + +"I didn't then. It was the other way about. And she knew it. And she +lied to me about you. She told me you didn't care for me." + +"She told you--?" + +"She told me." + +"I didn't think that Virelet would have done that." + +"Nor I." + +She paused, considering it. + +"How did you find out it was a lie, Ranny? Oh--oh--I suppose I showed +you--" + +"Not you. She owned up herself." + +"When?" + +"That night she went off. She wrote it in that letter. She told me why +she did it, too. It was because she knew I cared for you and was afraid +I'd marry you. She wasn't going to have that. Now you know what she is." + +"Why did you believe her?" + +"Why, Winky, you, you little wretch, you took care of that all right." + +"But, Ranny, if you cared for me, why did you marry her?" + +"Because I was mad and she was mad, and we neither of us knew what we +were doing. It was something that got hold of us." + +"Aren't you mad now, Ranny?" + +"Rather! But I know what I'm doing all the same. I didn't know when I +married Violet." + +"Don't talk as if you didn't care for her. You _did_ care." + +"Of course I cared for her. But even that was different somehow. _She_ +was different. Why do you bother about her?" + +"I'm only wondering how you'd feel if you was to see her again." + +"I shouldn't feel anything--anything at all. Seeing her would have no +more effect on me than if she was a piece of clockwork." He paused. + +"I say--you're not afraid of her?" he said. + +"No. I've been through all that and got over it. I'm not afraid of +anything." + +"You mean you're not afraid to marry me?" + +"No. I'm not afraid." + +He felt her smile flicker in the darkness. + +It was then that in the darkness he drew her to him, and she let herself +be drawn, her breast to his breast and her head against his shoulder. +And as she rested there she trembled, she shivered with delight and +fear. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +He had seen her home. At her door in the quiet Avenue he had held her in +his arms again and kissed her. Her eyes shone at his under the +lamplight. + +He went back slowly, reviving the sweet sense of her. + +A great calm had followed his excitement. He was sustained by an +absolute certainty of happiness. It was in his grasp, nothing could take +it from him. He would raise the rest of the money on Monday. He would +see that lawyer on Wednesday. Then he would take proceedings. Once he +had set the machinery going it couldn't be stopped. The law simply took +the thing over, took it out of his hands, and he ceased to be +responsible. + +So he argued; for at the back of his mind he saw more clearly than ever +(he could not help seeing) something that might stop it all, disaster so +great, so overwhelming that when it came his affairs would be swallowed +up in it. In the face of that disaster it would be indecent of him to +have any affairs of his own, or at any rate to insist on them. But he +refused to dwell on this possibility. He persuaded himself that his +father was better, that he would even recover, and that the business +would recover too. For the last six months Ponting had been running it +with an assistant under him, and between them they had done wonders with +it, considering. + +And on the Sunday something occurred that confirmed him in his rosy +optimism. + +His father was having another good day, and they had wheeled him into +the front sitting-room. Upstairs in the small back room Ransome was +getting the children ready for their Sunday walk, when his mother came +to him. + +"Ranny," she said, "take off their hats and coats, dear. Your Father +wants them." + +"What does he want them for?" + +"It's his fancy. He's gettin' better, I think. I don't know when I've +seen him so bright and contented as he's been these last two days. And +so pleased with everything you do for him--There, take them down, dear, +quick." + +He took them down and led them into the room. But they refused to look +at their grandfather; they turned from him at once; they hid their faces +behind Ranny's legs. + +"They're afraid of me, I suppose," said Mr. Ransome. + +"No," said Ranny, "they're not." But he had to take Stanny in his arms +and comfort him lest he should cry. + +"You're not afraid of Gran, are you? Show Gran your pretty pinny, Doss." + +He gave her a gentle push, and the child stood there holding out her +pinafore and gazing over it at her grandfather with large, frightened +eyes. Mr. Ransome's eyes looked back at her. They were sunken, somber, +wistful, unutterably sad. He did not speak. He did not smile. It was +impossible to say what he was thinking. + +This mutual inspection lasted for a moment so intense that it seemed +immeasurable. Then Mr. Ransome closed his eyes as if pained and +exhausted. + +And Ranny stooped and whispered, "Kiss him, Dossie, kiss poor Gran." + +The child, perceiving pity somewhere and awed into submission, did her +best, but her kiss barely brushed the sallow, waxen face. And as he felt +her there Mr. Ransome opened his eyes suddenly and looked at her again, +and Dossie, terrified, turned away and burst out crying. + +"She's shy. She's a silly little girl," said Ranny, as he led her away. +He knew that, in the moment when the child had turned from him, his +father had felt outcast from life and utterly alone. + +Mr. Ransome stirred and looked after him. "You come back here," he said. +"I've something to say to you." + +Ranny took the children to his mother and went back. Mr. Ransome was +sitting up in his chair. He had roused himself. He looked strangely +intelligent and alert. + +He signed to his son to sit near him. + +"How old are those children?" he said. + +"Dossie was five in March, and Stanny was three in April." + +"And they've been--how long without their mother?" + +"It'll be three years next October." + +"Why don't you get rid of that woman?" said Mr. Ransome. It was as if +with effort and with pain and out of the secret, ultimate sources of his +being that he drew the energy to say it. They would never know what he +was thinking, never know (as Ranny had once said) what was going on +inside him. And of all impossible things, _this_ was what he had come +out with now! + +"Do you mean that, Father?" + +"Of course I mean it." + +"Well, then--as it happens--it's what I'm going to do." + +"You should have done it before." + +"I couldn't." + +"Why not?" + +"I hadn't the money." + +Mr. Ransome closed his eyes again as if in pain. + +"I'd have given it you, Randall," he said, presently. He had opened his +eyes, but they wandered uneasily, avoiding his son's gaze. "If I'd had +it. But I hadn't. I've been doing badly." + +And again his eyelids dropped and lifted. + +"Things have gone wrong that hadn't ought to if I'd been what I should +be." + +There was anguish in Ranny's father's eyes now. They turned to him for +reassurance. As if in some final act of humility and contrition, he +unbared and abased himself, he laid down the pretension of integrity. + +His shawl had slipped from his knees. His hands moved over it as if, +having unbared, he now sought to cover himself. Ransome stooped over him +and drew the shawl up higher and wrapped it closer with careful, tender +touches. + +"Don't worry about that," he said. + +"Your Mother'll be all right, Randall. She's got a bit of her own. It's +all there, except what she put into the business. You won't have to +trouble about her." He paused. "Have you got the money now?" he said. + +"I shall have. To-morrow, probably." + +"Then don't you wait." + +"It'll be beastly work, you know, Father. Are you sure you don't mind?" + +"What _I_ mind is your being married to that woman. I never liked it, +Randall." + +He closed his eyes. His face became more than ever drawn and peaked. His +mouth opened. With short, hard gasps he fought for the breath he had so +spent. + +Ransome's heart reproached him because he had not cared enough about his +father. And he said to himself, "He must have cared a lot more than he +ever let on." + +The way to the Divorce Court had been made marvelously smooth for him. +His mother couldn't say now that it would kill his father. + +But on Monday morning things did not go with Ransome entirely as he had +expected. Shaftesbury Avenue refused to lend him more than ten pounds on +the security of his furniture. Still, that was a trifling hitch. Now +that the proceedings had been consecrated by his father's sanction, +there could be no doubt that his mother would be glad to lend him the +five pounds. He would ask her for it that evening as soon as he got +home. + + * * * * * + +But he did not ask her that evening, nor yet the next. He did not ask +her for it at all. For as soon as he got home she came to him out of his +father's room. She stood at the head of the stairs by the door of the +room, leaning against the banisters. And she was crying. + +"Is Father worse?" he said. + +"He's going, my dear. There's a trained nurse just come. She's in there +with the doctor. But they can't do anything." + +He drew her into the front room, and she told him what had happened. + +"He was sittin' in his chair there like he was yesterday--so bright--and +I thought he was better, and I made him a drop of chicken broth and sat +with him while he took it. Then I left him there for a bit and went +upstairs to the children--Dossie was sick this morning--" + +"Dossie--?" + +"It's nothing--she's upset with something she's eaten--and I was there +with her ten minutes per'aps, and when I came back I found your Father +in a fit. A convulsion, the doctor says it was; he said all along he +might have them, but I thought he was better. And he's had another this +evening, and he hasn't come round out of it right. He doesn't know me, +Ranny." + +He had nothing to say to her. It was as if he had known that it would +happen, and that it would happen like this, that he would come home at +this hour and find his mother standing at the head of the stairs, and +that she would tell him these things in these words. He even had the +feeling that he ought to have told _her_, to have warned her that it +would be so. + +On Wednesday evening, at eight o'clock, when Ransome should have been in +the lawyer's room at the Polytechnic, he was standing by his father's +bed. Mr. Ransome had partially recovered consciousness, and he lay +supported by his son's arms in preference to his own bed. For his bed +had become odious to him, sinking under him, falling from him +treacherously as he sank and fell, whereas Ranny's muscles adjusted +themselves to all his sinkings and fallings. They remained and could be +felt in the disintegration that presently separated them from the rest +of Ranny, Ranny's arms being there, close under him, and Ranny's face a +long way off at the other end of the room. + +The process of dissolution had nothing to do with Mr. Ransome. It went +on, not in him but outside him, in the room. He was almost unaware of +it, it was so inconceivably gradual, so immeasurably slow. First of all +the room began to fill with gray fog, and for ages and ages Ranny's face +and his wife's face hung over him, bodiless, like pale lumps in the fog. +Then for ages and for ages they were blurred, and then withdrawn from +him, then blotted out. + +This dying, which was so eternally tedious to Mr. Ransome, lasted about +twenty minutes, so that at half past eight, when Ranny should have been +listening to his legal adviser, he was trying to understand what the +doctor was trying to tell him about the causes, the very complicated +causes of his father's death. + + * * * * * + +And with Mr. Ransome's death there came again on Ranny and his mother, +and on all of them, the innocence and the immense delusion in which they +had lived, in which they had kept it up, in the days before Ranny's wife +had run away from him and before Ranny's enlightenment and his awful +outburst. Only the innocence was ten times more persistent, the delusion +ten times more solemn and more unutterably sacred now. Mr. Ransome's +death made it impossible for them to speak or think or feel about him +otherwise than if he had been a good man. If Ranny could have doubted it +he would have stood reproved. From the doctor's manner, from his Uncle +Randall's manner and his Aunt Randall's, from Mr. Ponting's and the +assistant's manner, and from the manner, the swollen grief, uncontrolled +and uncontrollable, of the servant Mabel, he would have gathered that +his father was a good man. + +But Ransome never doubted it. He spoke, he thought, he felt as if his +father's death had left him inconsolable. It was the death of a man who +had made them all ashamed and miserable; who had tried to take the joy +out of Ranny's life as he had already taken it out of Ranny's mother's +face; who had hardly ever spoken a kind word to him; who, if it came to +that, had never done anything for him beyond contributing, +infinitesimally, to his existence. And even this Mr. Ransome had done by +accident and inadvertence, thinking (if he could be said to have been +thinking at all) of his own pleasure and not of his son's interests; for +Ranny, if he had been consulted, would probably have preferred to owe +his existence to some other parent. + +And even in his last act, his dying, in his choice of that hour, of all +hours open to him to die in, Mr. Ransome had inflicted an incurable +injury upon his son. He had timed it to a minute. And Ranny knew it. He +had had the idea firmly fixed in his head that if he did not go to the +Polytechnic and find out how to set about filing his petition that +Wednesday night, he would never get his divorce. Things would happen, +they were bound to happen if he gave them time. + +And yet that death, so ill-timed, so disastrous for Ranny in its +consequences, Ranny mourned as if it had been in itself an affliction, +an irreparable loss. He felt with the most entire sincerity that now +that the Humming-bird was dead he would never be happy again. + +On the Sunday after the funeral, which was on the Saturday, he sat in +the front parlor with his mother and Mr. and Mrs. Randall, listening +with a dumb but poignant acquiescence to all that they were saying about +his father. Their idea now was that Mr. Ransome was not only a good man, +a man of indissoluble integrity, but a man of unimaginably profound +emotions, of passionate affections concealed under the appearance of +austerity. + +"No one knows," Mrs. Ransome was saying, "what 'E was thinking and what +'E was feeling--what went on inside him no one ever knew. For all he +said about it you'd have thought he didn't take much notice of what +happened--Ranny's trouble--and yet I know he felt it something awful. It +preyed on 'is mind, poor Ranny being left like that. Why, it was after +that, if you remember, that he began to break up. I put all his illness +down to that. + +"And then the children--you might say he didn't take much notice of +them, but 'E was thinking about them all the time, you may depend upon +it. 'E sent for them the Sunday before he died. I'm glad he did, too. +Aren't you, Ranny?" + +"Yes, Mother," Ranny said, and choked. + +"It'll be something for them to remember him by when they grow up. But +they'll never know what was in his heart. None of us ever knew nor ever +will know, now." + +"He was a good man, Emmy, and a kind man--and just. I never knew any one +more just than Fulleymore. We were saying so only last night, weren't +we?" + +"Yes, John," said Mrs. Randall. "We were saying you could always depend +upon his word. And, as _you_ say, there were things in him we never +knew--and never shall know." + +And so it went on, with tearful breaks and long, oppressive silences, +until some one would think of some as yet unmentioned quality of Mr. +Ransome's. Every now and then, in the silences, one of them would be +visited by some involuntary memory of his unpleasantness and of the +furtive vice that had destroyed him, and would thrust the thought back +with horror, as outrageous, indecent, and impossible. They all spoke in +voices of profound emotion and with absolute, unfaltering conviction. + +"We shall never know what was in him." Always they came back to that, +they dwelt on it, they clung to it. Under all the innocence and the +delusion it was as if, through their grief, they touched reality, they +felt the unaltered, unapparent splendor, and testified to the mystery, +to the ultimate and secret sanctity of man's soul. + + * * * * * + +Of all that Ransome was aware obscurely, he shared their sense of that +hidden and incalculable and enduring life. But his own grief was +different from theirs. It was something unique, peculiar to himself and +incommunicable. + +Even he had not realized what was at the bottom of his grief until he +found himself alone with it, walking with it on the road to Southfields. +He had left the Randalls with his mother and had escaped, with an +irritable longing for the darkness and the open air. He knew that the +reason why he wanted to get away from them was that his grief was so +different from theirs. + +For they were innocent; they had nothing to reproach themselves with. If +they had not loved his father quite so much as they thought they did, +they had done the next best thing; they had never let him know it. They +had behaved to him, they had thought of him, in consequence, more +kindly, more tenderly than if they _had_ loved him; in which case they +would not have felt the same obligation to be careful. They had never +hurt him. Whereas he-- + +That was why he would give anything to have his father back again. It +was all right for them. He couldn't think what they were making such a +fuss about. They had carried their behavior to such a pitch of +perfection that they could perfectly well afford to let him go. There +was no reason why they should want him back again, to show him-- + +All this Ranny felt obscurely. And the more he thought about it the more +it seemed to him horrible that anybody should have lived as his father +had lived and die as he had died, without anybody having really loved +him. It was horrible that he, Ranny, should not have loved him. For that +was what it came to; that was what he knew about himself; that and +nothing else was at the bottom of his grief, and it was what made it so +different from theirs. It was as if he realized for the first time in +his life what pity was. He had never known what a terrible, what an +intolerable thing was this feeling that was so like love, that should +have been love and yet was not. For he didn't deceive himself about it +as his mother (mercifully for her) was deceiving herself at this moment. +This intolerable and terrible feeling was not love. In love there would +have been some happiness. + +Walking slowly, thinking these things, or rather feeling them, vaguely +and incoherently, he had come to the grove by the public footpath. It +was there that he had sat with his mother more than six years ago, when +she had as good as confessed to him that she had not loved her husband; +not, that was to say, as she had loved her child. + +And it was there, only the other night, that he had sat with Winny. One +time seemed as long ago as the other. + +And it was there that Winny was sitting now, on their seat, alone, +facing the way he came, as if positively she had known that he would +come. + +He realized then that it was Winny that he wanted, and that the grief he +found so terrible and intolerable was driving him to her, though when he +started he had not meant to go to her, he had not known that he would +go. + +She rose when she saw him and came forward. + +"Ranny! Were you coming to me?" + +"Yes." (He knew it now.) "Let's stay here a bit. I've left Uncle and +Aunt with Mother." + +"How is she?" + +"Oh--well, it's pretty awful for her." + +"It must be." + +He was sitting near her but a little apart, staring at the lamplit road. +She felt him utterly removed from her. Yet he was there. He had come to +her. + +"I don't think," he said, presently, "Mother'll ever be happy again. _I_ +sha'n't, either." + +She put her hand on his hand that lay palm downward between them on the +seat and that was stretched toward her, not as if it sought her +consciously, but in utter helplessness. There was no response in it +beyond a nervous quivering that struck through her fingers to her heart. + +He went on. "It's not as if _he_ had been happy. He wasn't. Couldn't +have been." + +She fell to stroking gently that hand under her own. Its nervous +quivering ceased. + +"You know that funny way he had--the way he used to go poppin' in and +out as if he was lookin' for somebody? That's what I can't bear to think +of. Like as if he'd wanted something badly and wouldn't let on to +anybody about it. Nobody knew what was going on inside him all these +years. That's the horrible thing. We ought to have known and we didn't. +There he was, poppin' in and out, and he might have been a mile off for +all we could get at him. We didn't know anything about him--not reelly." + +He mused. + +"That's it. We don't know anything about anybody--ever. I didn't know +anything about Virelet--don't know now. I never shall know. Come to +that, I don't know anything about you. Nor you about me--reelly." + +"Oh, Ranny," she whispered. It was her one protest against the agony he +was making her share with him. + +"What do we know about anything? What does it all mean? The whole +bloomin' show? The Combined Maze? They shove us into it without our +leave. They make us do things we don't want to do and never meant to do. +I didn't want to care for Virelet. I wanted to care for you. I didn't +want to marry her, nor she me. I didn't mean to. I meant to marry you. +But I did care for her, and I did marry her. I don't suppose _he_ wanted +to do like he did or ever meant to. And look how he was treated--shoved +in--livin' his horrible little life down there--doin' the things he +didn't mean--lookin' for things he never got--and then shunted like +this, all anyhow, God knows where--before he could put a hand on +anything. There's no sense in it. + +"I wouldn't mind so much if I'd only cared for him. But I didn't. I +wanted to--I meant to--but I didn't. There you are again. It's all like +that and there's no sense in it." + +"But you _did_ care, Ran, dear. You're caring now. You couldn't talk +like this about him if you didn't care." + +"No. I'm talkin' like this--because I didn't care. Not a rap. My God! If +I thought Stanny would ever feel to me as I felt to my father, I'd go +and kill myself." + +"But he won't, dear. You haven't behaved to him like your father behaved +to you," said Winny, calmly. + +"What do you mean?" + +"You know what I mean. At any rate, you will know presently when you can +look at it as it reelly is. Nobody could have done more for your father +than you did. If he'd been the best father in the world you couldn't +have done more." + +"Doin' things is nothing. Besides, I didn't. D'you know, I wouldn't go +into his business when he wanted me to? I wouldn't do it, just because I +couldn't bear bein' with him all the time. And he knew it." + +"I don't care if he did know it, Ranny. You'd a perfect right to live +your own life. You'd a right to choose what you'd do and where you'd be. +As it was, you never had any life of your own where your father was +about. I can remember how it was, dear, if you don't. If you'd given in +because he wanted you to; if you'd been boxed up with him down there +from morning till night, you'd never have had any life at all. Not as +much as _that_! And then, instead of caring for him as you did, you'd +have got to hate him, and then he'd have hated you; and your mother +would have been torn between you. That's how it would have been, and you +knew it. Else you'd never have left him." + +"I say--fancy your knowin' all that!" + +"Of course I know it. I knew it all the time." + +"Who told you?" + +"You don't have to be told things like that, Ranny." + +The hand she was stroking moved from under her hand and caught it and +grasped it tight. + +"Didn't I always know you were a dear?" she went on. "You said I didn't +know anything about you. But I knew that much." + +"Yes--but--how did you know I cared for him?" + +"Oh, why--because--you couldn't have called him the Humming-bird and +all those funny names you did if you hadn't cared. And, of course, he +knew that too. That's what he wouldn't let on, dear--the lot he knew. It +must have made him feel so nice and comfortable inside him to know that +whatever he was to do you'd go on calling him a Humming-bird." + +"D'you think it did--reelly?" + +"Why--don't you remember how it used to make your mother smile? Well, +then." + +Well, then, she seemed to say, it was all right. + +That was how she brought him round, to sanity when he thought his brain +was going and to happiness when he felt it so improbable, not to say +impossible, that he should ever be happy again. + + * * * * * + +A fortnight passed. + +In the three days following the death he had not thought once about his +own concerns. He simply hadn't time to think of them. Every minute he +could spare was taken up with the arrangements for his father's funeral. +Sunday had been given over to mourning and remorse. It was Monday +morning and the weeks following it that brought back the thought of his +divorce. They brought it back, first, in all its urgency, as a thing +vehemently and terribly desired, then as a thing, urgent indeed, but +private and personal and, therefore, of secondary importance, a thing +that must perforce stand over until the settlement of his father's +affairs, till finally (emerging from the inextricable tangle in which it +had become involved) it presented itself as it was, a thing hopeless and +unattainable. + +His father's affairs were worse than anything he had believed. For, +except for that terror born of his own private superstition, he had not +really looked forward to disaster on an overwhelming scale.... He had +imagined his father's business as surviving him only for a little while, +and his father's debts as entailing perhaps strict economy for years. +But for the actual figures he was not prepared. + +And how his father, limited as he was in his resources and destitute, +you would have thought, of all opportunity for wild expenditure, how he +could have contrived to owe the amount he did owe passed Ranny's +understanding. + +Into that pit of insolvency there went all that was fetched by the sale +of the stock and the goodwill of the business and all that Mrs. Ransome +had put into the business, including what she had saved out of her tiny +income. As for Ranny's savings and the sum he had borrowed--the whole +thirty pounds--they went to pay for the funeral and the grave and the +monumental stone. + +There could be no divorce. Divorce was not to be thought of for more +than two years, when he would have got his rise. + +He broke the news to Winny, sitting with her in their little halfway +grove, the place consecrated to Ranny's confidences. + +"I can't do different," he said, summing it all up. + +"Of course, you can't. Never mind, dear. Let's go on as we are." + +It was what Violet had said to him, but with how different a meaning! + +"But Winky--it means waiting years. It'll be more than two before I can +get a divorce--and we can't marry till six months after. That's three +years. I can't bear to ask you to wait so long." + +"Don't worry about me. I'm quite happy." + +"You don't know how much happier you would be. Me too." + +She pressed her face against his shoulder. + +"I don't think I could be any happier than I am." + +"You don't know," he repeated. "You don't know anything at all." + +"I know I love you and you me, and that's enough." + +"Oh--_is_ it?" + +"It's the great thing." + +"Winny, d'you know, that if poor Father hadn't died when he did--we +missed it by a day. To think it could happen like that!" + +He clinched it with, "This Combined Maze has been a bit too much for you +and me." + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +Mrs. Ransome for the first time in her life was thinking. She called it +thinking, although that was no word for it, for its richness, its +amplitude, its peculiar secret certainty. You might say that for the +first time in her life Mrs. Ransome was fully conscious; that, with an +extraordinary vividness and clarity she saw things, not as she believed +and desired them to be, but as they were. + +She saw, for the first time since Mr. Ransome's death, that she was +happy; or rather, that she had been happy for more than two years, that +is to say, ever since Mr. Ransome's death. And this vision of her +happiness, of her iniquitous and disgraceful satisfaction, was shocking +to Mrs. Ransome. She would have preferred to think that ever since Mr. +Ransome's death she had been heartbroken. + +But it was not so. Never in all her life had she been so at peace; never +since her girlhood had she been so gay. This state of hers had lasted +exactly two years and four months, thus clearly dating from her +bereavement. For it was in May of nineteen-ten that he had died, and she +was now in September nineteen-twelve. + +She might not have been aware of it but that it, her happiness, had only +six months more to run. + +For two years and four months she had had her son Ranny to herself. She +had been the mistress of his house, the little house that she loved, +and the mother of his children whom (next to her son Ranny) she adored. +For two years and four months she had made him comfortable with a +comfort he had never dreamed of, which most certainly he had never +known. With tenderness and care and vigilance unabridged and unremitted, +she had brought Granville and Stanley and Dossie to perfection. It had +not been so hard. Stanley and Dossie she had found almost perfect from +the first, more perfect than Ranny she had found them, because they were +not so near to her own flesh, and not loved so passionately as he. + +And Granville, once far from perfect, had responded to treatment like a +living thing. Maudie and Fred Booty had cherished it, they handed it on +to Mrs. Ransome spotless and intact. Spotless and intact she had kept +it. Spotless and intact no doubt it would be kept when, in six months' +time, she in turn would hand it over to Winny Dymond, to Ranny's second +wife. + +He had only just told her. + +That was what hurt her most, that she had only just been told, when for +more than two years he had been thinking of it. It was no use saying +that he couldn't have told her before, because he wasn't free. He wasn't +free now; not properly, like a widower. + +That he would, after all, get rid of poor Violet, who hadn't, in all +those years, troubled him or done him any harm, _that_ had been a blow +to her. She hadn't believed it possible. She had thought the question of +divorce had been settled once for all, five years ago, by his Uncle +Randall. And John Randall in the meanwhile had justified his claim to +be heard, and his right to settle things. He had canceled the debt that +poor Fulleymore had owed him. To be sure, he could afford it. He was +more prosperous and prominent than ever. He was, therefore, less than +ever likely to approve of the divorce. + +If the idea of divorce had been appalling five years ago, it was still +more appalling now. Since, after all, poor Violet had removed herself so +far and kept so quiet, the scandal of her original disappearance had +somehow diminished with every year, while, proportionately, with every +year, the scandal, the indecency, the horror of the Divorce Court had +increased, until now it seemed to be a monstrous thing. + +And that Ranny should have chosen this time of all times! When they'd +paid off all the creditors and got clear, and stood respected and +respectable again. As if his poor father's insolvency, which, after all, +he couldn't help (since it was the Drug Stores that had ruined him), as +if that wasn't enough disgrace for one family, he must needs go and rake +up all that awful shame and trouble, after all these years, when +everybody had forgotten that there _had_ been any trouble and any shame. + +That was what Mrs. Ransome found so hard to bear. And that she had been +deceived; that he should have let her go on thinking that it wasn't +possible, up to the last minute (it was Saturday and he was going to the +lawyer on Monday), she who had the first right to be told. + +All these years he had deceived her. All these years he had meant to do +it the very minute he had got his rise. + +For Ransome had attained the summit of his ambition. He was now a petty +cashier with a pen all to himself at the top of the counting-house, and +an income of two hundred a year. Short of making him assistant secretary +(which was ridiculous) Woolridge's could do no more for him. + +And Winny Dymond (Mrs. Ransome reflected bitterly), though he hadn't +been free to speak to her, though he was practically (it didn't occur to +Mrs. Ransome that what she meant was theoretically) a married man, Winny +had known it all the time. + +It was extraordinary, but Mrs. Ransome, who was really fond of Winny, +felt toward her more acute and concentrated bitterness than she had felt +toward Violet, whom she hated. She was able to think of Ranny's first +wife as poor Violet, though Violet had made him miserable and destroyed +his home and had left him and his children. And the thought of his +marrying Winny Dymond was intolerable to Mrs. Ransome, though she had +recognized her as the one woman Ranny ought to have married, the one +woman worthy of him, and she would have continued to welcome her in that +capacity as long as Ranny had refrained from marrying her. + +For Ranny's mother knew that in Violet her motherhood had had no rival. +Violet's passion for Ranny, Ranny's passion for Violet, had not robbed +her of her son. Violet, not having in her one atom of natural feeling, +and caring only for her husband's manhood and his physical perfection, +had left to Mrs. Ransome all that was most dear to her in Ranny. Married +to Violet, he was still dependent on his mother. He clung to her, he +deferred to her judgment, he came to her for comfort. If he had been +ill it was she and not Violet who would have nursed him. Whereas Winny +would take all that away from her. She would take--she could not help +taking--Ranny utterly away; not from malice, not from selfishness, not +because she wanted to take him, but because she could not help it. She +was so made as to be all in all to him, so made as to draw him to her +all in all. There would be absolutely nothing of Ranny left over for his +mother, except the affection he had always felt for her, which, for a +woman of Mrs. Ransome's temperament, was the least thing that she +claimed. Her instinct had divined Winny infallibly, not only as a wife +to Ranny, but as a mother. A mother Winny was and would be to him far +more than if she had used her womanhood to bear him children. + +So that, without the smallest preparation, she saw herself required at +six months' notice to give up her son. And while she blamed him for not +having told her, she overlooked the fact that if she had been told she +could not have borne the knowledge. It would have poisoned for her every +day of the eight hundred and forty-five days for which in her ignorance +she had been so happy. + +She did not attempt to deny that she had been happy. But what she had +_said_ to Ranny when he told her was, "It's a mercy your poor father +doesn't know." + +And in that moment she thought of her happiness with a sharp pang as if +it had been unfaithfulness to her dead husband. + +It was at half past seven on a Saturday evening in the last week of +September, nineteen-twelve, that Mrs. Randall sat alone in the back +sitting-room at Granville and meditated miserably on those things. + +Upstairs in his bedroom overhead she could hear Ranny moving very +softly, for fear of waking Stanley. She knew what he was doing. He was +changing, making himself smart enough to take Winny Dymond to the Earl's +Court Exhibition. + + * * * * * + +Upstairs in his bedroom overhead, Ranny moved very softly, for fear of +waking Stanley. He was changing into a new gray suit, making himself +more smart than he had been for years to take Winny to the Earl's Court +Exhibition. + +In that shirt, glistening, high-collared, in a gray-blue tie, in +gray-blue socks and brown boots, Ranny looked very smart indeed. And the +suit, the suit looked splendid, the fold down the legs of the trousers +being as yet unimpaired. + +And Ranny looked young, ever so young still, though he was thirty-two. +The faint lines at the corner of his eyes and of his mouth accentuated +agreeably their upward tilt. He had gained distinction by the increasing +firmness of his face. Virile in its adolescence, it had kept its youth +in its maturity. Ranny's face expressed him. It was fine and clean; it +had not one mean or faltering line in it. And his figure had not, after +all, deteriorated. Flabbiness was as far from him as it had been in his +youth. + +With infinite precautions, Ranny opened a drawer where he found a small +japanned tin box, very new. This he unlocked softly, and from a little +canvas bag that lay in the compartment specially reserved for it he took +a sovereign, one of four, that represented rather more than a week's +proportion of his new salary. + +He had made up his mind that when the day came he would spend no less a +sum. So great a rise could not be celebrated on less. If a cashier of +Woolridge's could have been capable of saving, say, one and ninepence +out of that sovereign, the man who was engaged to Winny Dymond would +have died rather. + +Of course, it was a thundering lot to spend. But then Ranny desired, he +was determined to spend a thundering lot. It was extravagant, but he +wished to be extravagant. It was reckless, irresponsible, but reckless +and irresponsible was what he felt. He meant to go it. He meant to have +his fling just for once. And he meant that Winny, who had never had +hers, nor any share in anybody else's, should taste, just for once, the +rapture of a fling. She should have it for three solid hours of that +delicious night, in one mad, flaming, stupendous orgy at the Earl's +Court Exhibition. + +For it wasn't really his rise that called for it. That was only a means +to his divorce and marriage. It was his engagement that he proposed to +celebrate. + +The engagement, though he could hardly believe it, was a fact. True, it +could not be made public until a decent interval after the divorce; but +it had been acknowledged and settled between him and Winny as soon as +ever he knew that he had got his rise. They would never celebrate it at +all if they didn't celebrate it now before all the beastliness began. + +For he knew perfectly well that it would be beastly. Winny would feel it +even more than he did. She would feel it for him. Things that they had +both forgotten would be raked up again, all the misery and all the +shame. Now that it was imminent he dreaded the Divorce Court. His Uncle +Randall could not have shrunk more painfully from this public washing of +his dirty linen. He would come out of the Great Washhouse feeling +almost, but not quite as unclean as if his linen had been kept at home +and never washed at all. + +And the trail of all that nastiness would spread over the six months of +their engagement; it would poison everything. + +He didn't mean to think about it or let Winny think. They were going to +enjoy themselves to-night while they could, while they still felt +innocent and clean and jolly. + + * * * * * + +He stooped for a moment over the crib where his little son lay curled +and snuggling, his face hidden, his head, with its crop of dark hair, +showing like the fur of some soft burrowing animal. He freed the little +mouth muffled in bedclothes, and tucked the blankets closer. He picked +up Stanny's Teddy bear that had fallen lamentably to the floor, and laid +it where Stanny would find it beside him when he woke. + +Treading softly, he went into the next room where Dossie lay in her own +little bed beside his mother's, her little seven-year-old girl body +stretched out in all its dainty slenderness (so unlike Stanny's. He saw +with a pang of sudden passion the sweet difference). Her face, laid +sideways in her golden-brown hair, showed already a fine edge, nose, and +mouth and chin turned subtly, and carved out of their baby softness to +the likeness of his own. He stooped and kissed Dossie's hair, and took +without touching the sweetness of her mouth. Then he ran softly down the +stairs. + +His mother heard him running and came to the door of the room. "You're +not going out like that," she said, "without an overcoat? It'll rain +before you're back, I know, and that new suit'll be ruined." + +"Rot! It _can't_ rain on a night like this. Good night, Mother. Don't go +sittin' up. I don't know when I'll be in." + +"I'll hot some cocoa for you last thing and leave it on the trivet." + +"Sha'n't want cocoa." + +"What shall you want then?" + +"Oh, Lord!" His nerves were all on edge. He couldn't bear it. +"_Nothing!_" he cried, as he rushed out. + +At the gate it struck him that he had been a brute to her. He turned. He +rushed back to her. He put his arm round her and kissed her. + +"You're all right now, aren't you?" + +"Yes, Ran, dear, I'm all right." She smiled. "Run away and don't keep +Winny waiting." + +(Heaven only knew what it cost her.) + +And Ranny looked back, laughing, through the doorway. "You know, Mother, +it reelly _is_ all right. And you're an angel." + +And she said, "There! Go along with you." + +He went. + + * * * * * + +"Ranny, how nice you look!" + +Winny herself was looking nice and knew it. She wore a green cotton +gown trimmed with white pipings, and a thing she called a Peggy hat that +was half a bell and half a bonnet and had diminutive roses sewn on it +here and there like buttons. + +They were going down the long entrance to the Exhibition, between +painted walls, in brilliant illumination, and in publicity that might +have been trying if they had had eyes for anything except each other. + +Winny's eyes were brimming with joy and tenderness as she looked at him. +If she loved the new gray suit, the brown boots, and the Trilby hat, she +did not love them more than the shabby blue serge with the place she +knew in the lining where she had mended it. All the same, it was +impossible to see him in such things without that little breathless +thrill of wonder and excitement. There wasn't one man at Earl's Court +that night who could compare with Ranny. He made them all look weedy, +flabby; pitiful, uninteresting things. + +And then, all of a sudden (they were at the paygate), as she looked, +astonishment, grief, and anxiety appeared on Winny's face. Something had +dismayed her tenderness, dashed her joy. She had seen Ranny take out of +his waistcoat pocket gold--not ten shillings, but a whole sovereign. And +a dreadful fear awoke in her. + +He was going to spend it all. + +She knew it, something told her; she could see by the way he smacked it +down, careless like. And Winny couldn't bear it; she couldn't bear to +think that Ranny, who had pinched and scraped and done without things +for years, should go and throw away all that on her! + +But anybody could see that he was going to do it, by the strange +excitement and abstraction in his eyes, by the way he gathered up the +change and took Winny by the arm and walked off with her. His eyes and +the close crook of his arm drawing her along with him in his course, the +slight leaning of his body toward hers as they went, his stride and the +set of his head proclaimed that he had got her, that she couldn't +escape, that he meant to go it, that he had the right to spend on her +more than he could possibly afford. + +She could see what he was thinking. In one tremendous burst he was going +to make up to her now for all that she had missed. What was more, he was +going to rub it into her that he had the right to. She couldn't realize +their happiness as he did. They had been cheated out of it so long that +she couldn't believe in it, couldn't believe that it was actually in +their grasp, the shining, palpitating joy that for five years had been +dangled before them only to be jerked out of their hands. He wanted to +make her feel it; to make her taste and touch and handle the thing that +seemed impossible and yet was certain. + +Ranny was intoxicated, he was reckless with certainty. + +And Winny couldn't bear it. All the way up between the painted walls she +was trying to think what she could do to prevent his spending a whole +sovereign. She knew that it was no use fighting Ranny. The more she hung +on to him to stop him, the more Ranny would struggle and break loose. +Persuasion was no good. The more she reasoned, the more determined he +would be to spend that sovereign, and the more ways he would find to +spend it. + +It was to be one of those mortal combats between man's will and woman's +wit. Winny meant to circumvent Ranny and to defeat him by guile. + +And at first it looked as if it could be done easily. For at first the +Exhibition seemed to be on Winny's side. + +They had emerged from between the painted walls into Shakespeare's +England, into the narrow, crooked streets under the queer old +overhanging houses with the swinging signs--hundreds of years old Ranny +said they were. And in the streets there were strange crowds, young men +and young women who went shouting and singing and were marvelously and +fantastically dressed. And they had glimpses through lattice windows of +marvelous and fantastic merchandise. Marvelous and fantastic it seemed +to Winny at first sight. But when she saw that it was just what they +were selling in the shops to-day the delicious confusion in her mind +heightened the effect of fantasy and of enchantment. + +"I didn't think it would be like this," she said. + +But why it was like that and why it was called Shakespeare's England, +what on earth Shakespeare had to do with it, Winny couldn't think. + +"Shakespeare? Why, he wrote books, didn't he?" + +"Plays, Winky, plays." + +"Plays then." + +And when Ranny told her that it meant that England was like this in +Shakespeare's time, hundreds of years ago, and reminded her that they +had a scene from one of his plays on at the Coliseum the other day, +Winny thought that only made it more marvelous and more like a dream +than ever. + +And she thought Ranny was more marvelous than ever, with the things he +knew. + +And then, having lured him into this tangled side issue, she began, as +cool and offhand as you please. He gave her the opening when he asked +her what she'd like to do next. + +"This is good enough for me," she said. + +For the most marvelous thing about Shakespeare's England was that you +could walk about in it free of charge. + +He looked at her almost as if he knew what she was up to. + +"But you've seen it, Winky. You've seen all there is of it. You don't +want to stay here all night, do you?" + +He had her there, with his reminder of the hours they had to put in. + +"Well"--she was lingering in the most natural manner, as if fascinated +by the exterior of the Globe Theater. For she wished to spin out the +time. + +She saw Ranny's hand sliding toward his pocket. + +"Would you like to go inside it?" he said. + +"No, Ranny, dear, I wouldn't. At least, I'd rather not if you've no +objection." + +She spoke firmly, seriously, as if she knew something against the Globe +Theater, as if the Globe Theater were disreputable or improper. + +Then (it was wonderful how she contrived the little air of excited +inspiration), "Tell you what," she said, "let's go and sit down +somewhere and listen to the band. There's nothing I love so much as +listening to a band." + +She knew that they charged nothing for listening to the band. + +It was a prompting from the Exhibition itself, proving, here again, that +it was on her side, an entirely friendly and benignant power. + +"All right," said Ranny. "_That's_ in the Western Garden." + +He took her by the arm and drew her, not to the Western Garden, but to a +street (he seemed to know it by instinct) through which Shakespeare's +England, iniquitously, treacherously, led them to their doom, the Water +Chute. + +For there the Exhibition threw off her mask and revealed herself as the +dangerous Enchantress that she was. Hung with millions of electric +bulbs, crowned and diademed, and laced with jewels of white flame, she +signaled to them out of the mystery and immensity of the night. For a +moment they were dumb, they stood still, as if they paused on the brink +and struggled, protesting against this ravishing of their souls by the +Exhibition. Straight in front of them, monstrous yet fragile, its +substance withdrawn into the darkness, its form outlined delicately in +beads of light, in brilliants, in crystals strung on invisible threads, +the Water Chute reared itself like a stairway to the sky, arch above +arch, peak above peak, diadem above diadem, tilted at a frightful pitch. +Chains of light, slung like garlands from tall standards, ringed the +long lake that stretched from their feet to the bottom of the stair. The +water, dark as the sky, showed mystic and enchanted, bordered with +trembling reeds of light. + +From somewhere up in the sky, under the topmost diamonded arch, there +came a rumbling and a rushing-- + +It thrilled them, agitated them. + +And their youth rose up in them. They looked at each other, and their +eyes, the eyes of their youth, shone with the same excitement and the +same desire. + +She knew that he had deceived her, that this was not the Western Garden, +where the band played; she was aware that the Exhibition was not to be +trusted either; that it was in league with him against her; that if she +yielded to it they were lost. And yet she yielded. The deep and high +enchantment was upon her. The Exhibition had her by the hair. She was +borne on, breathless, unprotesting, to the white palings where the +paygate was. + +It was worth it. She had to own it. Never before had either of them +tasted such ecstasy; from the precipitous climb in the truck that hauled +them, up and up, to the head of the high diamonded stair; the brief, +exciting passage along the gangway to the boat that waited for them, its +prow positively overhanging the topmost edge, the sliding lip of danger, +where the rails plunged shining to the blackness below; the race they +had for the front seat where, Ranny said, they would get the best of it; +and then--the downrush! + +It was as if they had been shot, exulting, from the sky to the water, +sitting close, sitting tight, linked together, each with an arm round +the other's waist, and the hand that was free grasping the rail, their +bodies bowed to the hurricane of their speed, with the rapture in their +throats mounting and mounting, a towering, toppling climax of delight +and fear, as the boat shot from the rails into the water and rose like +a winged thing and leaped, urging to the heights that had sent it forth, +and dropped, perilously again, with a shudder and a smack, once, twice; +so tremendous was the impetus. + +They heard young girls behind them scream for joy; but they were dumb, +they were motionless; they drank rapture through set teeth; it went +throbbing through them and thrilling, prolonging its brief life in +exquisite reverberations. + +And as if that wasn't enough, they went and did it all over again. + +And Winny struggled; she tried to hold him back; she put forth all her +innocent guile; she pitted her fragile charm against the stupendous +magic of the Exhibition. She loitered, spellbound to all appearance, in +the bazaar, before the streaming, shining booths that poured out their +strange merchandise, Italian, French, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese. + +"I don't want to do anything but walk about and look at things," she +said. "Why, we might have traveled for years and not seen as much." + +Winny seemed to be scoring points in the bazaar. + +Then, before she knew where she was, Ranny, with all the power of the +Exhibition at his back, had bought her a present, a little heart-shaped +brooch made of Florentine turquoises. + +That came of looking at things. She might have known it would. + +"I'm tired of these shops," said Winny. "We shall be too late to hear +anything of the band." + +Thus she drew him to the Western Garden, so that for the moment she +seemed to have it all in her own hands. For here there were more +lights, and even more extravagant and fantastic display of electric +jewelry, more garlands of diamond and crystal, illuminating, decorating +everything. And there were rubies hanging in strange trees, and at their +feet the glamour of light dissolved, half of it perished, gone from the +world, drunk up by the earth, half living on where gray walks wound like +paths in a dream, between rings of spectral green, islands of dimmed, +mysterious red, so transformed, so unclothed and clothed again by +glamour, as to be hardly discernible as beds of geraniums in grass. + +Here they wandered for what seemed an eternity of bliss. + +"What more do you want?" said Winny. "Isn't this beautiful enough for +anybody?" Neither of them had any idea that the beauty and the glamour +of it was in their own souls as they drank each other's mystery. + +"Let's just sit and listen to the band," she said. And they sat and +listened to it for another eternity, till Ranny became restless. For +thirteen and eleven pence halfpenny was burning in his pocket. + +The thought of it made him take her to a restaurant where they sat for +quite a long time and drank coffee and ate ices. Winny submitted to the +ices. They were delicious, and she enjoyed them without a shadow of +misgiving. She was, in fact, triumphant, for she looked on ices as the +close and crown of everything, and she calculated that out of that +sovereign there would be exactly eleven and twopence halfpenny left. + +"Well--it's been lovely. And now we must go home," she said. + +"Go home? Not much. Why, we've only just begun." He looked at her. +"D'you suppose I don't know what _you're_ up to? You're jolly clever, +but you can't take _me_ in, Winky. Not for a single minute." + +"Well, then, Ranny, let me pay for _something_." And she took out her +little purse. + +After that it was sheer headlong, shameful defeat for Winky. He had +found her out, he had seen through her man[oe]uvers, and he and the +Exhibition, the destructive and terrible Enchantress, had been laughing +at her all the time. A delirious devil had entered into Ranny with the +coffee and the ices, urging him to spend. And Winny ceased to struggle. +He knew at what point she would yield, he knew what temptations would be +irresistible. He got round her with the Alpine Ride; the Joy Wheel +fairly undermined her moral being; and on the Crazy Bridge Ranny's +delirious devil seized her and carried her away, reckless, into the +Dragon's Gorge. + +Emerging as it were from the very jaws of the Dragon, they careered arm +in arm through the rest of the Exhibition, two rushing portents of youth +and extravagance and laughter; till, as if the Enchantress had twisted +her wand and whisked them there, they found themselves inside the +palisades of the Igorrote Village. + +A swarm of half-naked savages leaped at them. + +It was Ranny who recovered first. + +"It's all right, Winky. They're the Philippine Islanders." + +"Well, I never--" + +"Nor I. Talk of travelin'--" + +But it was all very well to talk. The sight had sobered them. Gravely +and silently they went through that village. At last, Ranny paused +outside a hut no bigger than a dog-kennel. It bore the label: "Beda And +His Fiancée Kodpat Undergoing Trial Marriage." + +Ranny laughed. "By Jove, that tickles _me_!" he said. + +"What does it mean, Ranny?" + +"Why, I suppose it means they try it first and if they don't like it +they can chuck it." + +"What an idea!" + +"It's a rippin' good idea, Winky. Shows what a thunderin' lot of sense +these simple savages have got. You bet they're not quite so simple as +they seem. They know a thing or two. Why, they must be hundreds of years +ahead of us in civilization, to have thought it all out like that. Think +of it, that fellow Beda's had a better chance than me." + +They turned away from Beda and Kodpat, and presently Winny stood +entranced before the little house that contained Baby Francis (born in +the Exhibition) and his mother. She looked so long at Baby Francis that +Ranny couldn't bear it. + +"Oh, look at him, Ranny! Isn't he a little lamb?" Winny's eyes were +tender, and her face quivered with a little dreamy smile. + +"D'you want to take him home and play with him? Shall I ask if he's for +sale?" + +"Oh, Ranny!" + +She turned away. And he drew her arm in his. "You won't be happy till +you've got him, Winky." + +She said nothing to that; only her mouth, without her knowing it, kept +for him its little dreamy smile. + +"I believe," said Ranny, "you've never reelly got over Stanley's goin' +into knickers." + +"I _love_ his knickers," she protested. + +"Yes, but you'd love _him_ better if he was that size, wouldn't you?" + +"I couldn't love him better than I do, Ranny. You know I couldn't. And I +wouldn't like him to be any different to what he is." + +She was very serious, very earnest, almost as if she thought he'd really +meant it. + +Silent in the grip of an emotion too thick and close for utterance, they +wandered back again to the enchanted garden where the band had played +for them. The garden was silent, too. The bandstand was empty, black, +unearthly as if haunted by some thin ghost of passionate sound; and +empty, row after row of seats in the great parterre, except for a few +couples who sat leaning to each other, hand in hand, finding a happy +solitude in that twilight desolation. + +Like worshipers strayed into some church, they joined this enraptured, +oblivious company of devotees, choosing seats as far as possible from +any other pair. + + * * * * * + +"Hadn't we better be going?" + +They had sat there in silence, holding each other's hands. The +excitement, the delirious devil in them, had spent itself, and under it +they felt the heaving, dragging groundswell of their passion. + +To Winny it had never come before like this. Up till now it had been +enough simply to be with Ranny. Merely to look at him gave her profound +and poignant pleasure. To touch him in those rare accidental contacts +the adventure brought them, to feel the firm muscles of his arm under +his coat sleeve, stopped her breath with a kind of awe and wonder, as if +in Ranny's body thus discerned she came unaware upon some transcendent +mystery. + +Yet Winny knew now why, in what way, and with what terrible strength she +loved him and he her. She loved him, primarily and supremely, for +himself, for the simple fact that he was Ranny. She loved him also for +his body, for his slenderness, and for his strong-clipping limbs, and +she loved him for his face because it could not by any possibility be +anybody else's. + +And in her joy and tenderness, in their engagement and in the whole +adventure, this going out with him and all the rare, shy contacts it +occasioned, instalments of delight, windfalls of bliss that Heaven sent +her to be going on with, in the very secrecy and mystery of it all, +Winny felt that disturbing yet delicious sense of something iniquitous, +something perilous, something, at any rate, unlawful. It was the same +sense that she had known and enjoyed in the days when she went into the +scullery at Granville to make beefsteak pies for Ranny; the same sense, +but far more exquisite, far more exciting. + +She did not connect it in any way with Violet. Violet had ceased to +exist for them. Violet had of her own act annihilated herself. But Winny +knew that until Ranny was divorced from his wife the law continued to +regard him as married to her. So that, while firm land held and would +always hold her, she was aware that he and she were walking on the +brink, and that by the rule of the road Ranny went, so to speak, upon +the outer edge where it was far more dangerous. She knew that he had +more than once looked over; and she knew (though nothing would induce +_her_ to look) that the gulf was there, not far from her adventurous +feet. + +Still, it was wonderful how all these years they had kept their heads. + +So she said: "Hadn't we better be going? I think we ought to." + +She had unlaced her hand from his, and had turned in her seat to face +him with her decision. + +"Not yet." + +"Well--soon. It's getting rather chilly, don't you think?" + +At that he jumped up. "Are you cold, Winky?" + +"My feet are, sitting." + +"I forgot your little feet." + +He raised her. + +"It isn't late," he said. "We can walk about a bit." + +They walked about, for he was very restless again. + +"Wherever does that music come from?" Winny said. + +Sounds came to them of violins and 'cellos, of trombones and clarinets, +playing a gay measure, a dance, insistent, luring, irresistible. + +They followed it. + +In a vast room fronted by a latticed screen, all green and white, roofed +by a green and white awning, and having a pattern of latticework, green +and white, upon its inner walls, on a vast polished floor was a crowd of +couples dancing to the music they had heard. It came loud through the +open lattices, the insistent, luring, irresistible measure, violent now +in solicitation, in appeal; and over it and under went the trailing, +shuffling slur of the feet of the dancers and the delicate swish of +women's gowns as they whirled. + +Standing close outside, they could see into the hall through the +lattices of the screen. They saw forty or fifty couples whirling slowly +round and round to the irresistible measure; some were stiff and +awkward, palpably shy; some with invincible propriety whirled upright +and rigid, like toys wound up to whirl; some were abandoned to the +measure with madness, with passion, with a corybantic joy. Here and +there a girl leaned as if swooning in her lover's arms; her head hung +back; her lower lip drooped; her face showed the looseness and blankness +of a sensuous stupor. Other faces, staring, upraised, wore a look of +exaltation and of ecstasy. All were superbly unaware. + +Winny's face pressed closer and closer to the lattice. One of her little +feet went tap-tapping on the gravel, beating the measure of the waltz. +For at the sound of the music, at the sight of the locked and whirling +couples, her memory revived; she heard again the beating of the measure +old as time; she felt in her limbs the start and strain of the wild +energy; and instinct, savage and shy, moved in the rhythm of her blood, +and desire for the joy of the swift running, of the lacing arms and +flying feet. + +In her body she was standing outside the Dancing Saloon at the Earl's +Court Exhibition, with her face pressed to the lattice; she was +twenty-seven last birthday in her body; but in her soul she was +seventeen, and she stood on the floor of the Polytechnic Gymnasium, +beating time to the thud of the barbell. She was Winny of the short +tunic and the knickers, and the long black stockings, and had her hair +(tied by a great bow of ribbon) in a door-knocker plat. + +"Oh, Ranny--" She looked at him with her shining eyes, half tender and +half wild. "If we only _could_--" + +Something gave way in him and dissolved, and he was weak as water when +he looked at her. + +The violins gave forth a penetrating, excruciating cry. And he felt in +him the tumult evoked, long ago, one Sunday evening by the music in the +Mission Church of St. Matthias's. + +Only he knew now what it meant. + +His voice went thick in his throat. + +"I mustn't, Winky. I daren't. Some day--you and I--" + +It was the supreme temptation of the great Enchantress; and they fled +from it. The violins shrieked out and cried their yearning as they went. + + * * * * * + +A scud of rain lashed the carriage windows as their train shot out of +the Underground at Walham Green. When they stepped out onto the platform +at Southfields, the big drops leaped up at them. + +"Well, I never," said Winny. "Who'd have thought it would have done +that?" + +They scuttled into shelter. + +"It'll be a score for Mother. She said it would come, and I said it +wouldn't." + +"It'll ruin your new suit." + +"And there won't be much left of your dress." + +"My dress'll iron out again. It's me poor hat." + +(The Peggy hat was not made for rain.) + +"I'll take it off and pin it up in me skirt. It's you I'm thinking of." + +She felt his coat to see what resistance it would offer to the rain. It +offered none. It made no pretense about it. + +"It'll be soaked, and it 'll never be the same again," she wailed. + +But Ranny remained godlike in his calm. There was still one and sixpence +of his sovereign left. + +"You can keep your hat on. We're going to take a cab." + +If he had said he was going to take an aeroplane she couldn't have been +more amazed. It was only seven minutes' walk to Acacia Avenue. And it +was not a common cab, it was Parker's fly that he was taking. + +She surrendered because of the new suit. + +"I can count the times I've ridden in a cab," she said. "This is the +third. First time it was going to Father's funeral. Second time it was +poor Mother's funeral. I've never been happy in a cab till now." + +"Poor little girl! Next time it'll be coming from our wedding. Will you +be happy then?" + +"I'm so happy now, Ranny, that I can't believe it." + +"It'll only be six months, or seven at the outside." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Certain." + +The worst of the cab was that it cut short their moments. + +It had been standing a whole minute before Johnson's side door. He sent +it away. + +For fifteen seconds, measured by hammer strokes of their hearts, they +were alone. On the streaming doorstep, under the dripping eaves, he held +her. He kissed her sweet face all wet with rain. + +"Little Winky--little darling Winky." He pushed back her Peggy hat, and +his voice lost itself in her hair. + +"They're coming," she whispered. + +There was a sound of footsteps and of a bolt drawn back. Somebody behind +the door opened it just wide enough to let Winny through, then shut it +on him. + +It was intolerable, unthinkable, that she should disappear like that. +Through a foot of space, in a hair's breadth of time, she had slipped +from him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +Nobody had seen them, for at this hour Acacia Avenue was deserted. The +long monotonous pattern of it stretched before him, splendidly blurred, +rich with lamplight and rain, bordered with streaming stars, striped +with watered light and darkness, glowing, from lamp to lamp, with dim +reds and purples that the daylight never sees, and with the strange +gas-lit green of its tree tufts shivering under the rain. + +Otherwise the Avenue was depressing in its desolation. The more so +because it was not quite deserted. At the far end of it the lamplight +showed a woman's figure, indistinct and diminished. This figure, visibly +unsheltered, moved obliquely as if it were driven by the slanting rain +and shrank from its whipping. + +He could not tell whether it were approaching or going from him. It +seemed somehow to recede, to have got almost to the end of the road, +past all the turnings; in which case, he reflected, the poor thing could +not be far from her own door. + +There was no mistaking his. Among all those monotonous diminutive houses +it was distinct because of its lamp-post and its luxuriantly tufted +tree. The gas was still turned on in the passage, so that above the door +the white letters of its name, Granville, could be seen. There was no +other light in the windows. Entering, he closed the door noiselessly, +locked it, slipped the chain, and turned the gas out in the passage. The +lamplight from outside came in a turbid dusk through the thick glass of +the front door. A small bead of gas made twilight in the sitting-room at +the back. + +The house was very still. + +His mother had evidently gone to bed; but she had left a fire burning in +the sitting-room, and she had set a kettle all ready for boiling on the +gas ring, and on the table a cup and saucer, a tin of cocoa, and a plate +of bread and cheese. + +He turned up the gas, put the tin of cocoa back into its cupboard, and +carried the bread and cheese to the larder in the scullery. He tried the +back door to make sure that it was locked, and paused for a moment on +the mat. He was thinking whether he had better not undress in there by +the fire and spread his damp things round the hearth to dry. + +And as he stood there at the end of the passage he was aware of +something odd about the window of the front door. Properly speaking, +when the passage was dark, the window should have shown clear against +the light of the lamp outside, with its broad framework marking upon +this transparency the four arms of a cross. Now it showed a darkness, a +queer shadowy patch on the pane under the left arm of the cross. + +The patch moved sideways to and fro along the lower panes; then suddenly +it rose, it shot up and broadened out, darkening half the window, its +form indiscernible under the covering cross. + +And as it stood still there came a light tapping on the pane. He thought +that it was Winny, that she had run after him with some message, or +that perhaps somebody else had run to tell him that something was +wrong. + +He went to the door; and as he went the tapping began again, louder, +faster, a nervous, desperate appeal. + +He opened the door, and the lamplight showed them to each other. + +"Good God!" He muttered it. "What are you doing here?" + +It was his instinct, not his eyes that knew her. + +She had not come forward as the door opened; she had swerved and stepped +back rather, gripping her skirts tighter round her as she cowered. +Sleeked by the rain, supple, sinuous, and shivering, she cowered like a +beaten bitch. + +Yet she faced him. Shrinking from him, cowering like a bitch, backing to +the edge of the porch where the rain beat her, she faced him for a +moment. + +Then she crept to him cowering; and as she cowered, her hands, as if in +helplessness and fear, let fall the skirts they had gathered from the +rain. Her eyes, as she came, gazed strangely at him; eyes that cowered, +bitchlike, imploring, agonized, desirous. + +She crept to the very threshold. + +"Let me in," she said. "You will, won't you?" + +"I can't," he whispered. "You know that as well as I do." + +Her eyes looked up sideways from their cowering. They were surprised, +bewildered, incredulous. + +"But I'm soaked through. I'm wet to me skin." + +She was on the threshold. She had her hand to the door. + +He could see her leaning forward a little, ready to fling her body upon +the door if he tried, brutally, to shut it in her face. It was as if +she actually thought that he would try. + +He knew then that he was not going to shut the door. + +"Come in out of the rain. And for God's sake don't make a noise." + +"I'm not making a noise. I didn't even ring the bell." + +He drew back before her as she came in, creeping softly in a pitiful +submission. Though the passage was lighted from the street through the +wide-open door, she went as if feeling her way along it, with a hand on +the wall. + +Ransome turned. He had no desire to look at her. + +He struck a match and lit the gas, raised it to the full flame, and +then, though he had no desire to look at her, he looked. He stared +rather. + +Outside in the half darkness he had known her, as if she stirred in him +some sense, subtler or grosser than mere sight. Now, in the full light +of the hanging lamp, he did not know her. He might have passed her in +the street a score of times without recognizing this woman who had been +his wife; though he would have stared at her, as indeed he would have +been bound to stare. It was not only that her body was different, that +her figure was taller, slenderer, and more sinuous than he had ever seen +it, or that her face was different, fined down to the last expression of +its beauty, changed, physically, with a difference that seemed to him +absolute and supreme. It was that this strange dissimilarity, if he +could have analyzed it, would have struck him as amounting to a +difference of soul. Or rather, it was as if Violet's face had never +given up her soul's secret until now; never until now had it so much as +hinted that Violet had any soul at all. The comparative fineness and +sharpness of outline might have reminded him of his wife as she had +looked when she came out of her torture after the birth of her first +child, but that no implacable resentment and no revolt was there. It was +plainly to be seen (nor did Ransome altogether miss it) that here were a +body and a soul that had suffered to extremity, and were now utterly +beaten, utterly submissive. + +This suggestion of frightful things endured was more lamentable by +contrast with the shining sleekness, the drenched splendor of her +attire. Ransome saw that her clothes helped to build up the impression +of her strangeness. Violet was dressed as his wife, at the most frenzied +height of her extravagance, had never dressed, as even Mercier's wife +could not have dressed, nor yet his mistress. The black satin coat and +gown that clung to her body like a sheath showed flawless, though they +streamed with rain; the lace at her throat, the black velvet hat with +the raking plume that had once been yellow, the design and quality of +the flat bag slung on her arm were details that belonged (and Ransome +knew it) to a world that was not his nor Mercier's either. And as he +took them in he conceived from them an abominable suspicion. + +His eyes must have conveyed his repulsion, for she spoke as if answering +them. + +"You mustn't mind my clothes. They're done for." + +She looked down, self-pitying, at her poor slippered feet standing in a +pool of rain. + +"I'm making such a mess of your nice hall." + +A little laugh shook in her throat and turned into a fit of coughing. He +saw how instantly one hand went to her mouth and pressed there while the +other struggled blindly, frantically, with the opening of her bag. + +"What is it?" + +"My hanky--" She coughed the words out. It, the childish word, moved him +to a momentary compassion. + +"Here you are." + +She stepped back from him as she stretched out her arm; then she turned +and leaned against the wall, hiding her face and muffling her cough in +Ransome's pocket handkerchief. + +Each gesture, each surreptitious and yet frantic effort at suppression, +showed her a creature that some brute had beaten, had terrified and +cowed. The old Violet would have come swinging up the path; she would +have pushed past him into the warm and lighted room; this one had come +creeping to his door. She took no step to which he did not himself +invite her. + +"Come in here a minute," he said. + +He put his hand upon her arm to guide her. He led her into the warm room +and drew up a chair for her before the fire. + +"Sit down and get warm." + +She shook her head; and by that sign he conceived the hope that she +would soon be gone. She looked after him as he went to the door of the +room to close it. When she heard the click of the latch her cough burst +out violently and ceased. + +She crouched down by the hearth, holding out her hands to the blaze. He +stood against the chimney-piece, looking down at her, silent, not +knowing what he might be required to say. + +She peeled off the wet gloves that were plastered to her skin; she drew +out the long pins from her hat, took it off, and gazed ruefully at the +lean plume lashed to its raking stem. With the coquetry of pathos, she +held it out to him. + +"Look at me poor feather, Ranny," she said. + +He shuddered as she spoke his name. + +"You'd better take your shoes off, and that coat," he said. + +She took them off. He set the shoes in the fender. He hung the coat over +the back of the chair to dry. As she stood upright the damp streamed +from her skirts and drifted toward the fire. + +"How about that skirt?" + +"I could slip it off, and me stockings, too, if you didn't mind." + +"All right," he muttered, and turned from her. He could hear the +delicate silken swish of her draperies as they slid from her to the +floor. + +She was slenderer than ever in the short satin petticoat that was her +inner sheath. Her naked feet, spread to the floor, showed white but +unshapely. She stood there like some beautiful flower rising superbly +from two ugly, livid, and distorted roots. + +But neither her beauty nor her ugliness could touch him now. + +"Look here," he said, "I'll get you some dry things." + +His mind was dulled by the shock of seeing her, so that it was unable to +attach any real importance or significance to her return. He knew her to +be both callous and capricious; therefore, he told himself that there +was no need to take her seriously now. The thing was to get rid of her +as soon as possible. He smothered the instinct that had warned him of +his danger, and persuaded himself that dry things would meet the +triviality of her case. + +He went upstairs very softly to his room. In a jar on the chimney-piece +he found a small key. Still going softly, he let himself into the little +unfurnished room over the porch where boxes were stored. Among them was +the trunk which contained Violet's long-abandoned clothes. He unlocked +it, rummaged, deliberated, selected finally a serge skirt, draggled but +warm; a pair of woolen stockings, and shoes, stout for all their +shabbiness. + +And as he knelt over the trunk his mind cleared suddenly, and he knew +what he was going to do. He was going to fetch a cab, if he could get +one, and take her away in it. If she was staying in London he would take +her straight back to whatever place she had come from. If she came from +a distance he would see her started on her journey home. He was +prepared, if necessary, to hang about for hours in any station, waiting +for any train that would remove her. If the worst came to the worst he +would take a room for her in some hotel and leave her there. But he +would not have her sitting with him till past midnight in his house. It +was too risky. He knew what he was about. He knew that there was danger +in any course that could give rise to the suspicion of cohabitation. He +knew, not only that cohabitation in itself was fatal, but that the +injured husband who invoked the law must refrain from the very +appearance of that evil. + +Of course, he knew what Violet had come for. She was beginning to get +uneasy about her divorce. And, personally, he couldn't see where the +risk came in unless the suit was defended. And it wasn't going to be +defended. It couldn't be. The suspicion of collusion would in his case +be a far more dangerous thing. It was what he had been specially warned +against. + +These two ideas, collusion and cohabitation, struggled for supremacy in +Ranny's brain. They seemed to him mutually exclusive; and all it came to +was that, with his suit so imminent, he couldn't be too careful. He must +not, even for the sake of decency, show Violet any consideration that +would be prejudicial to his case. + +Whereupon it struck him that the most perilous, most embarrassing detail +of the situation was the disgusting accident of the weather. In common +decency he couldn't have turned her out of doors in that rain. + +And under all the confused working of his intelligence his instinct told +him that what happened was not an accident at all. His inmost prescience +hinted at foredoomed, irremediable suffering; profound, irreparable +disaster. + + * * * * * + +But with his mind set upon its purpose he gathered up the shabby skirt, +the stockings, and the shoes, he took his own thick overcoat from its +peg in the passage; he warmed them well before the sitting-room fire. + +Violet watched him with an air of detachment, of innocent +incomprehension, as if these preparations in no way concerned herself. +She was sitting in the chair now, with her bare feet in the fender. + +He then put the kettle on the fire, and her eyes kindled and looked up +at him. + +"What are you going to do?" she asked. + +"I'm going to make you a cup of hot tea before you go." + +"I _can't_ go," she whispered. + +He was firm. + +"I'm awfully sorry, Violet. But you've got to." + +"But, Ranny--you couldn't turn a cat out on a night like this." + +"Don't talk nonsense about turning out. You know you can't stay here. I +can't think what on earth possessed you to come. You haven't told me +yet." + +She did not tell him now. She did not look at him. She sat bowed +forward, her elbows on her knees, and her chin propped on her hands, +while she cried, quietly, with slow tears that rolled down her bare, +undefended face. + +He made the tea and poured it out for her, and she took the cup from him +and drank, without looking at him, without speaking. And still she cried +quietly. Now and then a soft sob came from her in the pauses of her +drinking. + +Ransome sat on the table and delivered himself of what he had to say. + +"I don't know what's upsetting you," he said. "And you don't seem +inclined to tell me. But if you're worrying about that divorce, you +needn't. You'll get it all right. The--the thing'll be sent you in a +week or a fortnight." + +"Ranny," she said, "are you really doin' it?" + +"Of course I'm doing it." + +"I didn't know." + +"Well--you might have known." + +He was deaf to the terror in her voice. + +"I'd have done it years ago if I'd had the money. It isn't my fault +we've had to wait for it. It was hard luck on both of us." + +He stopped to look at her, still, like some sick animal, meekly +drinking, and still crying. + +He waited till her cup was empty and took it from her. + +"More?" + +"No, thank you." + +He put down the cup, turned, and went toward the door. There was a +savage misery in his heart and in all his movements an awful gentleness. + +She started up. + +"Don't go, Ranny. Don't leave me." + +Her voice was dreadful to his instinct. + +"I must." + +"You're going to do something. What are you going to do?" + +"I'm going to leave you to change into those things. I'm going to look +for a cab, and I'm going to take you back to wherever you came from." + +"You don't know where I came from. You don't know why I've come." + +There was the throb of all disaster in her voice. His instinct heard it. +But his intelligence refused to hear. It went on reasoning with her who +was unreasonable. + +"I don't know," it said, "why you want to stick here. It won't do either +of us any good." + +"Has it began?" she said. "Can't anything stop it?" + +"Yes. You can stop it if you stay here all night. If you want it to go +right you must keep away. It's madness your coming here at this time of +night. I can't think why you--I should have thought you'd have known--" + +"Oh, Ranny, don't be hard on me." + +"I'm not hard on you. You're hard on yourself. You want a divorce and I +want it. Don't you know we sha'n't get it--if--" + +"But I _don't_ want it--I don't indeed." + +"What's that?" + +"I don't want it. I didn't know you were divorcing me. I never thought +you'd go and do it after all these years." + +"Rot! You knew I was going to do it the minute I had the money." + +"You don't understand. I've come to ask you if you'll forgive me--and +take me back." + +"I forgave you long ago. But I can't take you back. You know _that_ well +enough." + +She made as if she had not heard him. + +"I'll be good, Ranny. I _want_ to be good." + +He also made as if he had not heard. + +"Why do you want me to take you back?" + +"That's why. So as I can be good. Father's turned me out, Ranny." + +"Your father?" + +"I went to him first. I didn't think I'd any right to come to you--after +I'd served you like I did." + +"Oh, never mind how you served me. What's Mercier been doing?" + +"He's got married." + +"Just like him. I thought he was going to marry _you_?" + +"He wouldn't wait for me. He couldn't. He thought you were never going +to get your divorce. He _had_ to settle down so as to get on in his +business. He wanted a Frenchwoman who could help him, and he daren't so +much as look at me--after, for fear she'd divorce him." + +"I told you he was a swine." + +"He wasn't. It wasn't _his_ fault. He'd have married me two years ago if +you could have divorced me then." + +Her mouth was loose to the passage of her sigh, as if for a moment she +felt a sensuous pleasure in her own self-pity. She did not see how his +mouth tightened to the torture as she turned the screw. + +She went on. "Lenny was all right. He was good to me as long as I was +with him. _He_ wouldn't have turned me into the street to starve." + +"Who _has_ turned you into the street?" He could not disguise his +exasperation. + +Then he remembered. "Oh--your father." + +"I don't mean Father. I mean the other one." + +"There _was_ another one? And you expect me to take you back?" + +"I'm only _asking_ you," she said. "Don't be so hard on me. I _had_ to +have some one when Lenny left me. He's been the only one since Lenny. +And he was all right until he tired of me." + +"Who's the brute you're talking about?" + +"He's a gentleman. That's all I can tell you." + +"Sounds pretty high class. And where does this gentleman hang out?" + +"I oughtn't to tell you. He's a painter, and he's awfully well known. +Well--it's somewhere in the West End, and we had a flat in Bloomsbury." + +She answered his wonder. "I met him in Paris. He took me away from +there, and I've been with him all the time. There wasn't anybody else. I +swear there wasn't--I swear." + +"Oh, you needn't." + +He got up and walked away. + +"Ranny--don't go for the cab until I've told you everything." + +"I'm _not_ going. What more have you got to say?" + +"Don't look at me like that, as if you could murder me. You wouldn't if +you knew how he's served me. He beat me, Ranny. He beat me with his +hands and with his stick." + +She rolled up the sleeves of her thin blouse. + +"Look here--and here. That's what he was always doing to me. And I've +got worse--bigger ones--on me breast and on me body." + +"Good God--" The words came from him under his breath, and not even his +instinct knew what he would say next. + +He said--or rather some unknown power took hold of him and said it--"Why +didn't you come to me before?" + +She hesitated. + +"He never turned me out until last night." + +Her pause gave him time to measure the significance of what she said. + +"He didn't really tire of me till I got ill. I had pneumonia last +spring. I nearly died of it, and I've not been right since. That's how I +got me cough. He couldn't stand it." + +She paused. + +"I ought to have gone when he told me to. But I didn't. I was awfully +gone on him. + +"And--last night--we were to have gone to the theater together; but he'd +been drinkin' and I said I wouldn't go with him. Then he swore at me and +struck me, and said I might go by myself. And I went. And when I came +home he shut the door on me and turned me into the street with nothing +but the clothes on me back and what I had in me purse. And he said if I +came back he'd do for me." + +She got it out, the abominable history, in a succession of jerks, in a +voice dulled to utter apathy. + +And an intolerable pity held him silent before this beaten thing, +although with every word she dragged him nearer to the ultimate, +foreseen disaster. + +She went on. + +"I was scared to walk about the streets all night in these things. I +always was more afraid of that than anything. Though _he_ never would +believe me when I said so. You don't know the names he called me. So I +took a taxi and I went to the first hotel I could think of--the +Thackeray. But I hadn't enough money with me, and they wouldn't take me +in. Then I went and sat in the waiting-room at Euston Station till they +closed. Then I sat outside on the platform and pretended to be waitin' +for a train. _He_ wouldn't believe me if I told him I'd spent the night +in that station. But I did. And I got me death of cold. And in the +morning me cough started, and they wouldn't take me in any of the shops +because of it. + +"I tried all morning. Starker's first. Then in the afternoon I went to +Father, and he wouldn't have me. He won't believe I haven't been bad, +because of me things and me cough. I suppose he thinks I've got +consumption or something. He saw me coming in at the gate and he turned +me out straight. I didn't even get to the door." + +"He couldn't--" + +"He did--reelly, Ranny, he did. He said he'd washed his hands of me and +I could go back to you. He said--No, I can't tell you what he said." + +There was no need to tell. He knew. + +She looked at him now, straight, for the first time. + +"Ranny--he knows. He knows what we did." + +"Did you tell him?" + +"Not me! He'd guessed it. He'd guessed it all the time. Trust _him_. And +he taxed me with it. And I lied. I wasn't goin' to have him thinkin' +_that_ of you." + +"Of _me_?" + +"Yes--_you_." It was her first flash of feeling since she began her +tale. "It doesn't matter what he thinks of me. I told him so." + +"Well? Then?" + +"Then I started lookin' for work again. Couldn't get any. Then I came +here. If you turn me out there'll be nothing but the streets. If I was +to get work nobody'll keep me. I haven't properly got over that illness. +I'm so weak I couldn't stand to do anything long. There are times when I +can hardly hold myself together." + +And still there was no feeling in her voice, and barely the suggestion +of appeal; only the flat tones of the last extremity. + +"I've come here because I'm afraid of going to the bad. I don't want to +be bad--not reelly bad. But I'll be driven to it if you turn me out." + +It might have been a threat she held out to him but that her voice +lacked the passion of all menace. Passion could not have served her +better than her dull, unvibrating statement of the fact. + +"If you won't take me back--" + +Her spent voice dropped dead on the last word and her cough broke out +again. + +Ransome's next movement averted it. She revived suddenly. + +"Ranny--are you going for that cab?" + +He turned. + +"No," he said. "You know I'm not." + +"Then, what are you thinking of?" + + * * * * * + +He was thinking: "I won't have Dossie and Stanny sleeping with her. And +I can't turn Mother out. So there's no room for her. Yes, there is. I +can get a camp bed and put it in the box room. I shall be all right in +there, and she can have my room to herself." + +No other arrangement seemed endurable or possible to him. + +And yet, while his flesh cried out in the agony of its repulsion, it +knew that in the years, the terrible, interminable years before them, it +could not be as he had planned. There would be a will stronger than his +own will that would not be frustrated. + +And he told himself that he could have borne it if it had not been for +that. + +There was a knocking at the door. The handle turned, and through the +slender opening which was all she dared make, Mrs. Ransome spoke to her +son. + +"Ranny, do you know you've left the front door open? Who's that +coughing?" she said. + +Neither of them answered. + +"Hasn't Winny gone yet? You shouldn't keep her out so late, dear. It's +time both of you were in bed." + +At that he rose and went to her. + + * * * * * + +Presently they could be heard moving Stanny's little cot into his +grandmother's room. + +That night Violet slept in Ransome's bed. + +Ransome lay on the sofa in the front sitting-room. He did not sleep, and +at dawn he got up and looked out. The rain had ceased. It was the +beginning of a perfect day. + +He remembered then that he had promised Winny to walk with her to +Wimbledon Common. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +"She's ill. Fair gone to pieces. But the doctor says she'll soon be all +right again if we take care of her." + +It was early evening of Sunday. They were going slowly up the steep hill +that winds, westward and southward, toward the heights of Wimbledon. + +He had just told her that Violet had come back. + +"I couldn't in common decency turn her out." + +In a long silence he struggled to find words for what he had to say +next. She saw him struggling and came to his help. + +"Ranny, you're going to take her back," she said. + +"What must you think of me?" + +"Think of you? I wouldn't have you different." The whole spirit of her +love for him was in those words. + +She continued. "You see, dear, it comes to the same thing. If you didn't +take her back I couldn't marry you, for it wouldn't be you. You'll have +to take her." + +"You talk as if I'd nobody but her to think of. Look what she's making +me do to you--" + +"I'm strong enough to bear it and she isn't. She'll go straight to the +bad if we don't look after her." + +"That's it. She said there was nothing but the streets for her." He +brooded. "If I was a rich man I could divorce her and give her an +allowance to live away. I can't stand it, Winny, when I think of you." + +"You needn't think of me, dear. It isn't as if I hadn't known." + +"How _could_ you know?" + +"I knew all the time she'd come back--some day." + +"Yes. But if Father hadn't died when he did we should have been safe +married. We missed it by a day. Mercier'd have married her two years +ago. If I'd had thirty pounds then it couldn't have happened. But I was +a damned fool. I should have thought of you _then_--I should have let +everything else go and married you." + +Slowly, drop by drop, he drank his misery. But she had savored sorrow so +far off that now that the cup was brought to her it had lost half its +bitterness. + +"You couldn't have done different, even then, dear. Don't worry about +me. It's not as if I hadn't been happy with you. I've had +you--reelly--Ranny, all these years." + +But the happiness that by way of comfort she held out to him was the +very dregs of Ranny's cup. + +"That's it," he said. "I don't know how it's going to be now. She's the +same, somehow, and yet different." + +It was his way of expressing the fact that Violet's suffering had given +her a soul, and that this soul, this subtler and more inscrutable +essence of her, would not necessarily be good. It might even be +malignant. Most certainly it would be hostile. It would come between +them. + +"It's a good thing the children'll be at school now--out of her way." + +"P'raps she's better--kinder, p'raps." + +"I don't know about that, Winny. I'm afraid. Anyhow, it'll never be the +same for you and me." + +He paused, and then seeing suddenly the full extent of their calamity, +he broke out. + +"What'll you _do_, Winny?" + +"I'll ask Mr. Randall if he'll take me on." + +"You won't stay here?" + +"No. Better not. I mustn't be too near, this time. That was the mistake +I made before. And you've got your mother." + +"And what have _you_ got?" he cried, fiercely. + +"I've got plenty--all I've ever had. These things don't go away, dear." + +They stood still, looking before them, with their unspoken misery in +their eyes. + +At their feet, down there, creeping low on the ground, spreading its +packed roofs for miles over the land that had once been green fields, +its red and purple smoldering and smoking in the autumn mist and sunset, +there lay the Paradise of Little Clerks. + +They turned and went slowly toward it down the hill. + +THE END + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Combined Maze, by May Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMBINED MAZE *** + +***** This file should be named 28461-8.txt or 28461-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/4/6/28461/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Combined Maze + +Author: May Sinclair + +Release Date: March 31, 2009 [EBook #28461] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMBINED MAZE *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + + + +<h1>THE COMBINED MAZE</h1> + +<h2>BY MAY SINCLAIR</h2> + +<h3>AUTHOR OF "THE DIVINE FIRE"</h3> + + +<h3>HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br /> +NEW YORK AND LONDON<br /> +MCMXIII</h3> + +<h3>COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS<br /> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br /> +PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1913</h3> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + + +<h3>SHE CLOSED HER EYES, AND HIS HOLD TIGHTENED</h3> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII</a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_COMBINED_MAZE" id="THE_COMBINED_MAZE"></a>THE COMBINED MAZE</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + + +<p>You may say that there was something wrong somewhere, some mistake, from +the very beginning, in his parentage, in the time and place and manner +of his birth. It was in the early eighties, over a shabby chemist's shop +in Wandsworth High Street, and it came of the union of Fulleymore +Ransome, a little, middle-aged chemist, weedy, parched, furtively +inebriate, and his wife Emma, the daughter of John Randall, a draper.</p> + +<p>They called him John Randall Fulleymore Ransome, and Ranny for short.</p> + +<p>Ranny should have been born in lands of adventure, under the green light +of a virgin forest, or on some illimitable prairie; he should have +sailed with the vikings or fought with Cromwell's Ironsides; or, better +still, he should have run, half-naked, splendidly pagan, bearing the +torch of Marathon.</p> + +<p>And yet he bore his torch.</p> + +<p>From the very first his mother said that Ranny was that venturesome. He +showed it in his ill-considered and ungovernable determination to be +born, and it was hard to say which of them, Ranny or his mother, more +nearly died of it. She must have been aware that there was a hitch +somewhere; for, referring again and again, as she did, to Ranny's +venturesomeness, she would say, "It beats me where he gets it from."</p> + +<p>He may have got some of it from her, for she, poor thing, had sunk, +adventurously, in one disastrous marriage her whole stock of youth and +gaiety and charm. It was Ranny's youth and charm and gaiety that made +him so surprising and so unaccountable.</p> + +<p>Circumstances were not encouraging to Ranny's youth, nor to his private +and particular ambition, the cultivation of a superb physique. For, not +only was he a little chemist's son, he was a great furniture dealer's +inexpensive and utterly insignificant clerk, one of a dozen confined in +a long mahogany pen where they sat at long mahogany desks, upon high +mahogany stools, making invoices of chairs and tables and wardrobes and +washstands and all manner of furniture. You would never have known, to +see him sitting there, that John Randall Fulleymore Ransome was a leader +in Section I of the London Polytechnic Gymnasium.</p> + +<p>So far, in his way, he testified, he bore his torch. Confined as he was +in a mahogany pen, born and brought up in the odor of drugs, and +surrounded by every ignominious sign of disease and infirmity, his dream +was yet of cleanness, of health, and the splendor of physical +perfection. The thing that young Ransome most loathed and abhorred was +Flabbiness, next to Flabbiness, Weediness. The years of his adolescence +were one long struggle and battle against these two. He had them ever +before him, and associated them, absurdly but inveterately, with a +pharmaceutical chemist's occupation; of Weediness his father being the +prime example; while for Flabbiness, young Mercier, his father's +assistant—well, Mercier, as he said, "took the biscuit." It was +horrible for young Ransome to inhabit the same house with young Mercier, +because of his flabbiness.</p> + +<p>In all cities there are many thousand Ransomes, more or less confined in +mahogany cages, but John Randall Fulleymore stands for all of them. He +was one of those who, in a cold twilight on a Saturday afternoon, +stagger from the trampled field, hot-eyed under their wild hair, whose +garments are stained from the torn grass and uptrodden earth, with here +and there a rent and the white gleam of a shoulder or a thigh; whose +vivid, virile odor has a tang of earth in it. He is the image and the +type of these forlorn, foredoomed young athletes, these exponents of a +city's desperate adolescence, these inarticulate enthusiasts of the +earth. He bursts from his pen in the evening at seven or half past, he +snatches somewhere a cup of cocoa and a sandwich, and at nine he is +seen, half pagan in his "zephyr" and his "shorts," sprinting like mad +through the main thoroughfares. In summer some pitch, more or less +perfect, waits for him in suburban playing fields; and the River knows +him, at Battersea, at Chelsea, at Hammersmith, and at Wandsworth, the +River knows him as he is, the indomitable and impassioned worshiper of +the body and the earth.</p> + +<p>And if the moon sees him sometimes haggard, panting, though indomitable, +though impassioned, reeling on the last lap of his last mile, and +limping through Wandsworth High Street home to the house of the weedy +pharmaceutical chemist his father, if the moon sees Ransome, why, the +Moon is a lady, and she does not tell.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>If you asked him what he did it for, he would say you did it because it +kept you fit, also (if you pressed him) because it kept you decent.</p> + +<p>And to know how right he was you had only to look at him, escaped from +his cage; you had only to follow his progress through the lighted +streets and observe his unbending behavior before the salutations of the +night. His fitness, combined with his decency, made him a wonder, a +desire, and a despair. Slender and upright, immaculately high-collared, +his thin serge suit molded by his sheer muscular development to the +semblance of perfection, Ranny was a mark for loitering feet and +wandering eyes. Ranny was brown-faced and brown-haired; he had brown +eyes made clear with a strain of gray, rather narrow eyes, ever so +slightly tilted, narrowing still, and lengthening, as with humor, at the +outer corners. There was humor in his mouth, wide but fine, that tilted +slightly upward when he spoke. There was humor even in his nose with its +subtle curve, the slender length of its bridge, and its tip, wide +spread, and like his mouth and eyes, slightly uptilted.</p> + +<p>Ranny, in short, was fascinating. And at every turn his mysterious +decency betrayed the promise of his charm.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It was Fred Booty, his friend and companion of the pen, who first put +him in the right way, discerning in him a fine original genius for +adventure.</p> + +<p>For when Ranny's mother said he was that venturesome, she meant that he +was fond, fantastically and violently fond of danger, of adventure. His +cunning in this matter beat her clean—how he found the things to do he +did do; the things, the frightful things he did about the house with +bannisters and windows, of which she knew. As for the things he found to +do with bicycles on Wandsworth Common and Putney Hill they were known +mainly to his Maker and Fred Booty. Booty, who could judge (being "a bit +handy with a bike" himself), said of them that they were "a fair treat."</p> + +<p>But these were the deeds of his boyhood, and in nineteen-two Ransome +looked back on them with contempt. Follies they were, things a silly kid +does; and it wasn't by those monkey tricks that a fellow developed his +physique. Booty had found Ransome in his attic one Saturday afternoon, a +year ago, half stripped, and contemplating ruefully what he conceived to +be the first horrible, mushy dawn of Flabbiness in his biceps muscle. +All he wanted, Booty had then declared, was a turn or two at the Poly. +Gym. Then Booty took Ransome round to his place in Putney Bridge Road, +and they sat on Booty's bed with their arms round each other's shoulders +while Booty read aloud to Ransome from the pages of the Poly. +Prospectus. Booty was a slender, agile youth with an innocent, sanguine +face, the face of a beardless faun, finished off with a bush of blond +hair that stood up from his forehead like a monumental flame.</p> + +<p>He read very slowly, in a voice that had in it both an adolescent croak +and an engaging Cockney tang.</p> + +<p>"The Poly.," said Booty, "really was a Club, '<i>where</i>,'" he underlined +it, "'every reasonable facil'ty shall bee offered fer the formation of a +steadfast character, <i>and</i>—<i>of</i>—true friendships; fer trainin' the +intellec'—'"</p> + +<p>"Int'lec' be blowed," said Ransome.</p> + +<p>"'<i>And</i> fer leadin' an upright, unselfish life. Day by day,'" read +Booty, "'the battle of life becomes more strenuous. To succeed entyles +careful preparation and stern'—stern, Ranny—'deetermination, it +deemands the choice of <i>good friends</i> and the avoid'nce of those persons +and things which tend <i>to</i> lessen, instead of <i>to</i> increase the +reesources of the individyool.' There, wot d'you think of <i>that</i>, Ran?"</p> + +<p>Ran didn't think much of it until Booty pointed out to him, one by one, +the privileges he would enjoy as a member of the Poly.</p> + +<p>For the ridiculous yearly sum of ten-and-six (it was all he could rise +to) Ransome had become a member of the Poly. Ten-and-six threw open to +him every year the Poly. Gym., the Poly. Swimming Bath, and the Poly. +Circulating Library. For ten-and-six he could further command the +services (once a week) of the doctor attached to the Poly. and of its +experienced legal adviser.</p> + +<p>That tickled Ransome. He didn't see himself by any possibility requiring +communion with that experienced man. But it tickled him, the sheer +fantastic opulence and extravagance of the thing. It tickled him so much +that whenever you disagreed with or offended Ransome his jest was to +refer you, magnificently, to "my legal adviser."</p> + +<p>Yes, for fantastic opulence and extravagance, Ransome had never seen +anything to beat the Poly. There was no end to it, no end to the +privileges you enjoyed. He positively ran amuck among his +privileges—those, that is to say, offered him by the Poly. Swimming +Bath and the Poly. Gym. As he said, he "fair abused 'em." But he +considered that the Poly. "got home again" on his exceptionally moderate +use of the Circulating Library, and his total abstention from the Bible +Classes. He was not yet aware of any soul in him apart from that +abounding and sufficing physical energy expressed in Fitness, nor was he +violently conscious of any moral sense apart from Decency.</p> + +<p>And Ranny despised the votaries of intellectual light; he more than +suspected them of Weediness, if not of Flabbiness. Yet (as he waited for +Booty in the vestibule), through much darkness and confusion, and always +at an immeasurable distance from him, he discerned, glory beyond glory, +the things that the Poly., in its great mercy and pity, had reserved for +those "queer johnnies." It made him giddy merely to look at the posters +of its lectures and its classes. It gave him the headache to think of +the things the fellows—fellows of a deplorable physique—and girls, +too, did there. For his part, he looked forward to the day when, by a +further subscription of ten-and-six, he would enroll himself as a member +of the Athletic Club.</p> + +<p>It was as if the Poly. put out feeler after feeler to draw him to +itself. Only to one thing he would not be drawn. When Booty advised him +to join the Poly. Ramblers he stood firm. For some shy or unfathomable +reason of his own he refused to become a Poly. Rambler. When it came to +the Poly. Ramblers he was adamant. It was one of those vital points at +which he resisted this process of absorption in the Poly. Booty +denounced his attitude as eminently anti-social—uppish, he called it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + + +<p>All that winter Ransome's nights and days were regulated in a perfect +order—making statements of account for nine hours on five days of the +week and four on Saturdays. Three evenings for the Poly. Gym. One for +the Swimming Bath. One for sprinting. One (Saturday) for rest or +relaxation after the violence of Rugger. One (Sunday) for the +improvement of the mind. On Sundays he was very seldom good for anything +else.</p> + +<p>But in the spring of nineteen-two something stirred in him, something +watched and waited; with a subtle agitation, a vague and delicate +excitement, it exulted and aspired. The sensation, or whatever it was, +had as yet no separate existence of its own. So perfect, in this spring +of nineteen-two, was the harmony of Ransome's being that the pulse of +the unborn thing was one with all his other pulses; it was one, +indistinguishably, with the splendor of life, the madness of running, +and the joy he took in his own remarkable performances on the horizontal +bar. It had the effect of heightening, mysteriously and indescribably, +the joy, the madness, and the splendor. And it was dominant, insistent. +Like some great and unintelligible <i>motif</i> it ran ringing and sounding +through the vast rhythmic tumult of physical energy.</p> + +<p>Not for a moment did he connect it with the increasing interest that he +took in the appearance of the Young Ladies of the Poly. Gym. He was not +aware how aware he was of their coming, nor how his heart thumped and +throbbed and his nerves trembled at the tramp, tramp of their feet along +the floor.</p> + +<p>For sometimes, it might be twice a year, the young men and the young +women of the Gymnasium met and mingled in a Grand Display.</p> + +<p>He was fairly well used to it; and yet he had never got over his +amazement at finding that girls, those things of constitutional and +predestined flabbiness, could do very nearly (though not quite) +everything that he could, leaving him little besides his pre-eminence on +the horizontal bar. And yearly the regiment of girls who could "do +things" at the Poly. increased under his very eyes. Their invasion +disturbed him in his vision of their flabbiness; it rubbed it into him, +the things that they could do.</p> + +<p>Not but what he had felt it—he had felt <i>them</i>—all about him, outside, +in the streets where they jostled him, and in the world made mostly of +mahogany, the world of counters and of desks, of pens where they too +were herded and shut up and compelled, like him, to toil. Queer things, +girls, for they seemed, incomprehensibly, to like it. Their liking it, +their businesslike assumption of equality, their incessant appearance +(authorized, it is true, by business) at the railings of his pen, the +peculiar disenchanting promiscuity of it all, preserved young Ransome in +his eccentricity of indifference to their sex. In fact, if you tried to +talk about sex to young Ransome (and Mercier did try) he would denounce +it as "silly goat's talk," and your absorption in it as "the most +mutton-headed form of Flabbiness yet out."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>But that was before the Grand Display of the autumn of last year, when +Winny Dymond appeared in the March Past of Section I of the Women's +Gymnasium; before he had followed Winny as she ran at top speed through +all the turnings and windings of the Combined Maze.</p> + +<p>There were about fifty of them, picked; all attired in black stockings, +in dark-blue knickerbockers, and in tunics that reached to the knee, +red-belted and trimmed with red. Stunning, he called them; so much so +that they fair took away his breath.</p> + +<p>That was what he said when it was all over. By that time he was ashamed +to confess that at the moment of its apparition the March Past had been +somewhat of a shock to him. He had his ideas, and he was not prepared +for the uniform; still less was he prepared for a personal encounter +with such quantities of young women all at once.</p> + +<p>All sorts of girls—sturdy and slender girls; queer girls with lean, +wiry bodies; deceptive girls with bodies curiously plastic under the +appearance of fragility; here a young miracle of physical culture; there +a girl with the pointed breasts and flying shoulders, the limbs, the +hips, the questing face that recalled some fugitive soul of the woods +and mountains; long-nosed, sallow, nervous Jewish girls; English girls +with stolid, colorless faces; here and there a face rosy and full-blown, +or a pretty tilted profile and a wonderful, elaborate head of hair. One +or two of these heads positively lit up the procession with their red +and gold, gave it the splendor and beauty of a pageant.</p> + +<p>They came on, single file and double file and four abreast, the long +line doubling and turning upon itself; all alike in the straight drop +of the arms to the hips, the rise and fall of their black-stockinged +legs, the arching and pointing of the feet; all deliciously alike in +their air of indestructible propriety. Here you caught one leashing an +iniquitous little smile in the corners of her eyes under her lashes; or +one, aware of her proud beauty, and bearing herself because of it, with +the extreme of indestructible propriety.</p> + +<p>There were no words to express young Ransome's indifference to proud +beauty.</p> + +<p>If he found something tender and absurd in the movements of all those +long black stockings, it was for the sake and on account of the long +black stockings worn by little Winny Dymond.</p> + +<p>Winny Dymond was not proud, neither was she what he supposed you would +call beautiful. She was not one of those conspicuous by their flaming +and elaborate hair.</p> + +<p>What he first noted in her with wonder and admiration was the absence of +weediness and flabbiness. Better known, she stirred in him, as a child +might, an altogether indescribable sense of tenderness and absurdity. +She stood out for him simply by the fact that, of all the young ladies +of the Polytechnic, she was the only one he really knew—barring Maudie +Hollis, and Maudie, though she was the proud beauty of the Polytechnic, +didn't count.</p> + +<p>For Maudie was ear-marked, so to speak, as the property (when he could +afford a place to put her in) of Fred Booty. Ransome would no more have +dreamed of cultivating an independent acquaintance with Maudie than he +would of pocketing the silver cup that Booty won in last year's Hurdle +Race. It was because of Maudie, and at Booty's irresistible request, +that he, the slave of friendship, had consented, unwillingly and +perfunctorily at first, to become Miss Dymond's cavalier. Maudie, also +at Booty's passionate appeal, had for six months shared with Winny +Dymond a room off Wandsworth High Street, so that, as he put it, he +might feel that she was near him; with the desolating result that they +weren't by any means, no, not by a long chalk, so near. For Maudie, out +of levity or sheer exuberant kindness of the heart, had persuaded Winny +Dymond to join the Polytechnic. In her proud beauty and in her affianced +state she could afford to be exuberantly kind. And Booty in his vision +of nearness had been counting on the long journey by night from Regent +Street to Wandsworth High Street alone with Maudie; and, though Miss +Dymond practically effaced herself, it wasn't—with a girl of Maudie's +temperament—the same thing at all. For Maudie in company was apt to be +a little stiff and stand-offish in her manner.</p> + +<p>Then (one afternoon in the autumn of last year it was) Booty sounded +Ransome, finding himself alone with him in the mahogany pen when the +senior clerks were at their tea. "I say," he said, "there's something I +want <i>you</i> to do for me," and Ransome, in his recklessness, his +magnificence, said "Right-O!"</p> + +<p>He said afterward that he had gathered from the expression of his +friend's face that his trouble was financial, a matter of five bob, or +fifteen at the very worst. And you could trust Boots to pay up any day. +So that he was properly floored when Boots, in a thick, earnest voice, +explained the nature of the service he required—that he, Ransome, +should go with him, nightly, to a convenient corner of Oxford Street, +and there collar that kid, Winny Dymond, and lug her along.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean," asked Ransome, "walk home with her?"</p> + +<p>Well, yes; that, Booty intimated, was about the size of it. She was a +Wandsworth girl, and they'd got, he supposed, all four of them, to get +there.</p> + +<p>He was trying to carry it off, to give an air of inevitability to his +preposterous proposal. But as young Ransome's face expressed his agony, +Booty became almost abject in supplication. He didn't know, Ranny +didn't, what it was to be situated like he, Booty, was. Booty wanted to +know how he'd feel if it was him. To be gone on a girl like he was and +only see her of an evenin' and then not be able to get any nearer her, +because of havin' to make polite remarks to that wretched kid she was +always cartin' round. At that rate he might just as well not be engaged +at all—to Maudie; better engage himself to the bloomin' kid at once. It +wasn't as if he had a decent chance of bein' spliced for good in a year +or two's time. His evenin's and his Sundays and so forth were jolly well +all he'd got. It was all very well for Ransome, <i>he</i> wasn't gone on a +girl, else he'd know how erritatin' it was to the nerves. And if Ranny +hadn't got the spunk to stand by a pal and see him through, why, then +he'd cut the Poly. and make Maudie cut it too.</p> + +<p>To most of this Ranny was silent, for it seemed to him that Boots was +mad, or near it. But at that threat, so terrible to him, so terrible to +the Polytechnic, so terrible to Booty, and so palpable a sign of his +madness, he gave in. He said it was all right, only he didn't know what +on earth he was to say to her.</p> + +<p>Booty recovered his natural airiness. "Oh," he threw it off, "you say +nothing."</p> + +<p>And for the first night or so, as far as Ransome could remember, that +was what he did say.</p> + +<p>And he wasn't really clever at collaring her, either. There was +something elusive, fugitive, uncatchable about Winny Dymond. It was +Booty, driven by love to that extremity, who collared Maudie and walked +off with her, with a suddenness and swiftness that left them stranded +and amazed. "Fair pace-makin'," Ransome called it.</p> + +<p>And Winny struggled and strove with those little legs of hers (jolly +little legs he knew they were, too, in their long black stockings), +strove and struggled, as if her life depended on it, to overtake them. +And it was then that Ransome felt the first pricking of that sense of +tenderness and absurdity.</p> + +<p>He felt it again after a long silence when, as they were going toward +Wandsworth Bridge, Winny suddenly addressed him.</p> + +<p>"You know," she said, "you needn't trouble about <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>"I'm not troublin'," he said. "Leastways—that is—" he hesitated and +was lost.</p> + +<p>"You are," said she, with decision, "if you think you've got to see me +home."</p> + +<p>He said he thought that, considering the lateness of the hour and the +loneliness of the scene, it was better that he should accompany her.</p> + +<p>"But I can accompany myself," said she.</p> + +<p>He smiled at the vision of Miss Dymond accompanying herself, at eleven +o'clock at night, too—the idea! He smiled at it as if he saw in it +something tender and absurd. He knew, of course, for he was not +absolutely without experience, that girls said these things; they said +them to draw fellows on; it was their artfulness. There was a word for +it; Ransome thought the word was "cock-a-tree." But Winny Dymond didn't +say those things—the least like that. She said them with the utmost +gravity and determination. You might almost have thought she was +offended but for the absence in her tone of any annoyance or +embarrassment. Her tone, indeed, suggested serene sincerity and a sort +of sympathy, the serious and compassionate consideration of his painful +case. It was as if she had been aware all along of the frightful +predicament he had been placed in by Fred Booty; as if she divined and +understood his anguish in it and desired to help him out. That was +evidently her idea—to help him out.</p> + +<p>And as it grew on him—her idea—it grew on him also that there was a +kind of fascination about the little figure in its long dark-blue coat.</p> + +<p>She wasn't—he supposed she wasn't—pretty, but he found himself +agreeably affected by her. He liked the queer look of her face, which +began with a sort of squarishness in roundness and ended, with a sudden +startling change of intention, in a pointed chin. He liked the clear +sallow and faint rose of her skin, and her mouth which might have been +too large if it had not been so firm and fine. He liked, vaguely, +without knowing that he liked it, the quietness of her brown eyes and +the faint, half-wondering arch above them; and quite definitely he liked +the way she parted her brown hair in the middle and smoothed it till it +lay in two long, low waves (just discernible under the brim of her hat) +upon her forehead. He did not know that long afterward he was never to +see Winny Dymond's eyes and parted hair without some vision of strength +and profound placidity and cleanness.</p> + +<p>All he said was he supposed there was no law against his occupying the +same pavement; and then he could have sworn that Winny's face sent a +little ghost of a smile flitting past him through the night.</p> + +<p>"Well, anyhow," she said, "you needn't talk to me unless you like."</p> + +<p>And at that he threw his head back and laughed aloud. And quite suddenly +the moon came out and stared at them; came bang up on their left above +the River (they were on the bridge now) out of a great cloud, a blazing +and enormous moon. It tickled him. He called her attention to it, and +said he didn't remember that he'd ever seen such a proper whopper of a +moon and with such a shine on him. They hadn't half polished him, he +said. Any one would think that things had all busted, got turned bottom +side upward, and it was the bally old sun that was up there, grinnin' at +them, through the hole he'd made.</p> + +<p>"The idea!" said Winny; but she laughed at it, a little shrill and +irresistible titter of delight always, as he was to learn, her homage to +"ideas." He had them sometimes; they came on him all of a sudden, like +that, and he couldn't help it; he couldn't stop them; he got them all +the worse, all the more ungovernably, when Booty lunged at him, as he +did, with his "Dry up, you silly blighter, you!" But that anybody should +take pleasure in his ideas, that <i>was</i> an idea, if you like, to +Ransome.</p> + +<p>They got on after that like a house on fire.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>But only for that night. For many nights that followed Winny proved more +fugitive, more uncatchable than ever. As often as not, when they arrived +in Oxford Street, she would be gone, fled half an hour before them, +accompanying herself all the way to Wandsworth. Once he pursued her down +Oxford Street, coming up with her as she boarded a bus in full flight; +and they sat in it in gravity and silence, as strangers to each other. +But nearly always she was too quick for him; she got away. And never (he +thanked Heaven for that, long afterward), never for a moment did he +misunderstand her. She made that impossible for him; impossible to +forget that in her and all her shyness there was no art at all of +"cock-a-tree," only her fixed and funny determination not "to put upon +him."</p> + +<p>And so the seeing home of Winny Dymond became a fascinating and +uncertain game, fascinating because of its uncertainty; it had all the +agitation and allurement of pursuit and capture; if she had wanted to +allure and agitate him, no art of "cock-a-tree" could have served her +better. He was determined to see Winny Dymond home.</p> + +<p>And all the time it grew, it grew on him, that sense of tenderness and +absurdity. He found it—that ineffable and poignant quality—in +everything about her and in everything she did—in the gravity of her +deportment at the Poly.; in her shy essaying of the parallel bars; in +the incredible swiftness with which she ran before him in the Maze; in +the way her hair, tied up with an immense black bow in a door-knocker +plat, rose and fell forever on her shoulders as she ran. He found it in +the fact he had discovered that her companions called her by absurd and +tender names; Winky, and even Winks, they called her.</p> + +<p>That was in the autumn of nineteen-one; and he was finding it all over +again now in the spring of nineteen-two.</p> + +<p>At last, he didn't know how it happened, but one night, having caught up +with her after a hot chase, close by the railings of the Parish Church +in Wandsworth High Street, in the very moment of parting from her he +turned round and said, "Look here, Miss Dymond, you think I don't like +seeing you home, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"To be sure I do. It must be a regular nuisance, night after night," she +answered.</p> + +<p>"Well, it isn't," he said. "I like it. But look here—if you hate it—"</p> + +<p>"Me?"</p> + +<p>She said it with a simple, naïve amazement.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you."</p> + +<p>He was almost brutal.</p> + +<p>"But I don't. What an idea!"</p> + +<p>"Well, if you don't, that settles it. Don't it?"</p> + +<p>And it did.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + + +<p>It was the night of the Grand Display of the spring of nineteen-two.</p> + +<p>To the Gymnasium of the London Polytechnic you ascended (in +nineteen-two) as to a temple by a flight of steps, and found yourself in +a great oblong room of white walls, with white pillars supporting the +gallery that ran all round it. The railing of the gallery was of iron +tracery, painted green, with a brass balustrade. The great clean white +space, the long ropes for the trapezes which hung from the ceiling and +were looped up now to the stanchions, the coarse canvas of the +mattresses, the disciplined lines, the tramping feet, the commanding +voices of the instructors, gave a confused and dreamlike suggestion of +the lower deck of a man-of-war. To-night, under the west end of the +gallery, a small platform was raised for the Mayor of Marylebone and a +score of guests. The galleries themselves were packed with members of +the Polytechnic and their friends.</p> + +<p>The programme of the Grand Display announced as its first item:</p> + + +<h4>PARALLEL BARS<br /> +<i>Tableau by</i><br /> +<span class="smcap">Messrs. Booty, Tyser, Buist, Wauchope, and</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">J. R. F. Ransome</span></h4> + +<p>There was a murmur of surreptitious, half-ironic applause. "Stick it, +Ransome; stick it, old boy!"</p> + +<p>The reference was to his extraordinary attitude.</p> + +<p>J. R. F. Ransome appeared as the apex and the crown of a rude triangular +structure whose base was formed by the high parallel bars, flanked at +each end by two bodies (Booty and Tyser front), two supple adolescent +bodies, bent backward like two bows. He stood head downward on his hands +that grasped and were supported by the locked arms of two solid +athletes, Buist and Wauchope, themselves mounted gloriously and +perilously on the straining bars.</p> + +<p>Considered as to his arms, and the white "zephyr" and flannels that he +wore, he was merely a marvelous young man balancing himself with +difficulty in an unnatural posture. But his body, uptilted, poised as by +a miracle in air, with the slender curve of its back, its flattened +hips, its feet laid together like wings folded in the first downrush, +might have been the body of a young immortal descending with facile +precipitancy to earth.</p> + +<p>He maintained for a sensible moment his appearance of having just flown +from the roof of the Gymnasium. Far below, the photographer fumbled +leisurely with his apparatus.</p> + +<p>"Hurry up, there!" "Stick it, Ransome!" "Half a mo!" "Stick it, Ranny; +stick it!" they whispered. "Steady does it."</p> + +<p>And Ranny stuck it. Ranny actually, from his awful eminence, sang out, +"No fear!"</p> + +<p>The flashlight immortalized his moment.</p> + +<p>That was his way—to stick it; to see it out; to go through with the +adventure alert and gay, wearing that fine smile of his, so +extravagantly uplifted at the corners. "Stick it!" was the motto of his +individual recklessness and of the dogged, enduring conservatism of his +class. It kept him in a mahogany pen, at a mahogany desk, for forty-four +hours a week, and it sustained him in his orgies of physical energy at +the Poly. Gym.</p> + +<p>Best of all, it sustained him in his daily and nightly encounters with +young Mercier.</p> + +<p>He was all the more determined to stick it by the knowledge that young +Mercier was up there in the gallery looking at him. He could see him +leaning over the balustrade and smiling at him atrociously. He took +advantage of an interval and joined him. He was half inclined to ask him +what he meant by it. For he was always at it. Whenever young Mercier +caught Ranny doing a sprint he smiled atrociously. At Wandsworth, behind +the counter, or in the little zinc-roofed dispensing-room at the back, +among the horribly smelling materials of his craft, he smiled, +remembering him.</p> + +<p>Mercier was a black-haired, thick-set youth with heavy features in a +heavy, pasty face, a face oddly decorated by immense and slightly +prominent blue eyes, a face where all day long the sensual dream brooded +heavily. His black eyebrows gave it a certain accent and distinction. It +was because of his dream that Leonard Mercier could afford to smile.</p> + +<p>He was one of those who wanted to know what Ranny did it for. He +couldn't see what fun the young goat got out of his evenings. Not half, +no, nor a quarter of what he, Mercier, could get from one night at the +Empire or when he took his girl to Earl's Court or the Wandsworth +Coliseum. And, though up there in the gallery he had said "By Jove!" and +that he was blowed, and that that young Ransome was a corker, though he +boasted to three entire strangers that that young fellow was a friend of +his, his curiosity was still unsatisfied. He still wanted to know what +the young goat did it for.</p> + +<p>He wanted to know it now. And at his insistence young Ransome was +abashed. How could he explain to old Eno what he did it for or what it +felt like? He couldn't explain it to himself, he had no words for it, +for that ecstasy of living, that fusion of all faculties in one rhythm +and one vibration, one continuous transport of physical energy. Take +sprinting alone. How could he convey to Jujubes in his disgusting +flabbiness any sense of the fine madness of running, of the race of the +blood through the veins, of the hammer strokes of the heart, of the soft +pad of the feet on the highway? To Jujubes, who went in like a cushion +no matter where you prodded him, how describe the feel of a taut muscle, +the mounting swell of it, the resistance, and the small, almost +impalpable ripple and throb under the skin? He couldn't have described +it to himself.</p> + +<p>So he gave Jujubes his invariable casual answer. You did it because it +kept you fit and because (he let old Eno have it) it kept you decent. +Old Eno would be a lot decenter if he went in for it. It would do him +worlds of good.</p> + +<p>To which old Eno replied that he thought he saw himself! As for joining +Ranny's precious old Poly., why, for all the Life you were likely to see +there, you might as well be in a young ladies' boarding-school. And +Ransome said that that was where Jujubes ought to be. He liked young +ladies. Among them (he intimated) his flabbiness might not excite +remark. Girls (he pondered it) were flabby things.</p> + +<p>Chivalry constrained him to a mental reservation: Winny Dymond and the +young ladies of the Poly. Gym. excepted.</p> + +<p>But he was glad that Mercier didn't stay to see them. Young Leonard +(whose smile was growing more and more atrocious) had declared that the +young ladies of the Empire ballet were a bit more in his line, and he +had made off, elbowing his way through the crowded gallery and crooning +"Boys of the Empire!" as he went, while Ransome pursued him with the +scornful adjuration to "Go home and take a saline draught!"</p> + +<p>But you couldn't shame old Eno. He triumphed and exulted in his +flabbiness. For he was a Boy of the Empire. He had seen Life, and would +see more and more of it.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Ransome went down again into the hall. He removed himself from the crowd +and leaned against a pillar, in abstraction, arms folded, showing the +great muscles; a splendid figure in his white "zephyr" trimmed with +crimson, with the crimson sash of leadership knotted at his side. Thus +withdrawn, he watched, half furtively, the performance of the young +ladies of the Polytechnic Gymnasium.</p> + +<p>One by one, with an air incorruptibly decorous, the young ladies of the +Polytechnic Gymnasium hurled themselves upon the parallel bars; they +waggled themselves by their hands along them; they swung themselves from +side to side of them, and outstretched themselves between them with a +foot and a hand upon each bar; they raised their bodies, thus supported, +like an arch; they slackened them and flung themselves (with a crescendo +of decorous delirium) from side to side again, and over; alighting on +their feet in a curtseying posture and with the left arm extended in a +little perfunctory gesture of demonstration to the audience, as much as +to say, "There you are, and nothing could be easier!"</p> + +<p>Nothing could be more conventional and more unspeakably correct. Only +when Winny Dymond did it there was a difference, or it seemed so to +young Ransome. Winny approached the bars with shyness and a certain +earnestness and gravity of intent. She hesitated; for a moment she was +adorable in vacillation. She shook her head at the bars, she bit her lip +at them; she set her face at them in defiance; then, with a sudden +amazing celerity she gave a little run forward and leaped upon them; she +swung herself in perfect rhythm and motion onward and upward and from +side to side; she arched her sturdy but exquisitely supple body like a +bridge, flung herself over as if in pure abandonment of joy and lighted +on her feet, curtseying correctly but with something piteous in the +gesture of the outstretched arm, and upon her face an expression of +great surprise and wonder at herself, as if Winny said, not "There you +are!" but "Here I am, and oh, I never thought I should be!"</p> + +<p>And from his place by the pillar Ransome gave the little inarticulate +murmur he reserved for Winny. It was charged with his sense of +tenderness and absurdity.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>A quarter to ten. His own performances—his wonderful performances on +the horizontal bar—were over; and over the demonstration by F. Booty +with the Indian clubs, where young Fred, slender and supple as a faun, +played on his own muscles in faultless rhythm. And now with an eye upon +the Mayor the order was given for the last item on the programme:</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p>THE COMBINED MAZE</p></div> + +<p>There was a rush of energetic young men who flung themselves upon the +properties of the Gymnasium. They ran them—the parallel bars, the +horses, the mattresses—in under the galleries; they uprooted the posts +of the horizontal bar; they cleared the whole of the vast oblong space +bounded by the pillars.</p> + +<p>An attendant then appeared with a bit of chalk in his hand, and with the +chalk he drew upon the floor certain mystic circles, one at each corner +of the oblong, one in the center, the heart of the Maze, and facing it +two smaller circles, one at each side on a visionary line. Seven mystic, +seven sacred circles in all did he draw, and vanished, unconscious of +the sanctity and symbolism of his deed.</p> + +<p>For he, with his bit of white chalk, had marked the course for the great +running, for the race that the young men and the young girls run +together with the racing of the stars, for the unloosening of the holy +primal energies in a figure and a measure and a ritual old as time.</p> + +<p>It was all very well for the instructor (blind instrument of unspeakably +mysterious forces) to pretend that he invented it, that august figure of +the seven-circled Maze; to explain it, as he does to the inquiring, by +the analogy of a billiard table with its pockets. For never yet, on any +billiard table, was a race run and a contest waged like that in which +these young men and girls ran and contended. Drawn up at the far end of +the hall under the east gallery in two ranks, four-breasted, the men on +the one side and the women on the other, they waited, and the leader of +each rank had a foot on a corner circle. They waited, marking time with +their feet, first, to the thudding beat of the barbell on the floor and +then to an unheard measure, secret and restrained, the murmur of life in +the blood, the rhythm of the soundless will, the beat of the unseen, +urging energy, that gathered to intensity, desirous of the race.</p> + +<p>As yet the soul of it slept in their rigid bodies, their grave, +forward-looking faces, their behavior, so excessively correct. Somebody +whispered the word, and on a sudden they let themselves go; they +started. Young Tyser, breasting the wind of his own speed, his head +uplifted and thrown backward, led the men, and she with the questing +face and wide-pointing breasts of Artemis led the girls; and he had +young Ransome on his heels and she Winny; and behind them the fourfold +serried ranks thinned and thinned out and spun themselves in two lines +of single file, two threads, one white, one dark blue, both flecked with +crimson, two threads that in their running were wound and unwound and +woven in a pattern, dark blue and white and crimson, that ran and never +paused and never ended and was never the same. For first, each line was +flung slantwise from the corner circle whence it had started, and where +the two met, point by point perpetually, in the center circle, they as +it were intersected, men and women wriggling, sliding, and darting with +incredible dexterity through each other's ranks; and the pattern was a +cross, a tricolor. Then they wheeled round the circle that was and was +not their goal, and did it all over again; but instead of intersecting +at the center circle they struck off there at a tangent, and the +pattern, blue by blue divided from white by white, and all red-flecked, +was two wide V's set point to point, a pattern that ran away and +vanished as each thread, returning, wheeled round the circle whence the +other thread had started.</p> + +<p>And all this at the top speed set by Tyser, and with the thud of the +men's feet and the pad of the women's; all this with a secret challenge +and defiance of one sex to the other, with separation and estrangement, +with a never-ending, baffling approach and flight, with the furtive +darting of man from woman and of woman from man, whirled in their +courses from each other as they met.</p> + +<p>And now the lines doubled; they were running two abreast, slantwise; and +as they intersected in the sacred center circle it was with a mingling +of the threads, a weaving of blue with white, and white with blue; so +that each man had in flight before him a maiden, and so that at their +circles, east and west, where they wheeled they wheeled together, side +by side, as the Maze flung them. And now they were circling and +serpentining up and down, and down and up, with contrary motion, in a +double figure of eight; they were winding in and out among the pillars +and wheeling round the middle circles north and south, side by side, +till they split there and parted and met again in the center and were +flung from it, to wheel again deliriously, double-ringed, round all the +six outermost circles at once.</p> + +<p>And now, as if they were torn from the ends of the earth by the +irresistible attraction of the seventh circle, they were whirling round +the center in a double ring, a ring of young men round a ring of girls; +and then, as by some mysterious compulsion, they divided and cast +themselves off in rows of two couples, man and girl by man and girl, +linked with arms on each other's shoulders, eight rows in all, eight +spokes that sprang from the sacred circle ringed with eight, four men +and four girls, who were the felly of the wheel, all running, all +revolving. Such was the magic of the Maze, and the unconscious genius of +the instructor, that the pattern of the running wound and unwound and +knit itself together in the supreme symbol of the great Wheel of Eight +Spokes, the Wheel of Life.</p> + +<p>And the ancient rhythmic rush and race of the worlds, and the wheeling +of all stars, the swinging and dancing of all atoms, the streaming and +eddying of the ancestral stuff of life was in the whirling of that +living Wheel; it was one immortal motion, continuous and triumphant in +the bodies of those men and maidens as they ran. And they, shop-girls +and shop-boys and young clerks, slipped off their memories of the desk +and counter, and a joy, an instinct, and a sense that had no memory woke +in them, savage, virgin, and shy; the pure and perfect joy of the young +body in its own strength and speed; the instinct of the hunter of the +hills and woodlands; the sense of feet padding on grass and fallen +leaves, of ears pricking alert, of eyes that face the dawn on the high +downs and go glancing through the coverts. And as this radiant and +vehement life rose in them like a tide their gravity and shyness and +severity passed from them; here and there hair was loosened, combs were +shed, and nobody stopped to gather them; for frenzy seized on the young +men, and their arms pressed on the girls' shoulders, urging the pace +faster and faster; and light, swift as their flying feet, shot from +their eyes, and they laughed each to the other as they ran. So divine +was now the madness of their running, so inspired the whirling of the +Wheel, that the thing showed plainly as the undying, immemorial ecstasy; +showed as the secret dance of magic and of mystery, taken over by the +London Polytechnic, and, at the very moment when its corybantic nature +most declared itself, constrained to an order and a beauty tremendous +and austere.</p> + +<p>So wise and powerful was the London Polytechnic.</p> + +<p>For Ransome, mixed with that joy of the running, there was a joy of his +own, an instinct and a sense, virgin and shy, absolved from memory. He +found it, when Winny Dymond ran before him, in the slender, innocent +movement of her hips under her thin tunic, in the absurd flap-flapping +of the door-knocker plat on her shoulders, in the glances flicked at him +by the tail of her eye as she wheeled from him in the endless pursuit +and capture and approach and flight, as she was parted, was flung from +him and returned to him in the windings of the Maze. He found it to +perfection in the pressure of each other's arms as the Maze wed them and +whirled them running, locked together in the pattern of the wheel. It +was not love so much as some inspired sense of comradeship mingled +inextricably with that other sense of absurdity and tenderness.</p> + +<p>Not love, not passion, even when in the excitement of the running she +swerved to the wrong side and he had to turn her with his two hands upon +her waist. For it was the law of their running that, though it was one +with the movement of life itself, mysteriously, while the thing lasted, +it precluded passion.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + + +<p>Ransome left Winny Dymond at St. Ann's Terrace, and went home along the +High Street. He went very slowly, as if in thought.</p> + +<p>At the railings of the Parish Church he paused, recalling something. Low +and square-towered, couchant in the moonlight behind its railings, the +Parish Church guarded under its long flank its huddled graves.</p> + +<p>He smiled for very Youth. It was here that he had run Winny to earth and +caught her. The Parish Church had been his accomplice in that capture.</p> + +<p>Wandsworth High Street twists and winds with the waywardness of a river. +The first turn brought him to the old stone bridge over the Wandle. On +the bridge before him, in the crook of the street, were the booths and +stalls of the night market, lit by blazing naphtha, color heaped on +color in a leaping, waving flare as of torches. On either side was a +twisted and jagged line of houses—brown-brick, flat-fronted, +eighteenth-century houses, and houses with painted fronts. Here a tall, +red-brick modern Parade shot up the gables of its insolent facade. +There, oldest of all, a yellow house stooped forward on the posts that +propped it. Somewhere up in the sky a tall chimney and a cupola. All +beautiful under the night, all dark or dim, with sudden flashes and +pallors and gleams, lamplit and moonlit; and all impressed upon +Ransome's brain with an extraordinary vividness and importance, as if he +had suddenly discovered something new about Wandsworth High Street.</p> + +<p>What he had discovered was the blessedness of living as he did in +Wandsworth High Street within three minutes' walk of St. Ann's Terrace.</p> + +<p>To be sure, what with the shop and the storage for drugs, Ransome's +father's house, with Ransome and his father and his mother and Mercier +and the maid in it, was somewhat cramped. And neither Ransome nor his +father nor his mother knew how beautiful it was with its brown-brick +front, its steep-pitched roof, and the two dormer windows looking down +on the High Street like two sleepy eyes under drooping lids. A narrow +slip of a house, it stood a foot or two back between the wine merchant's +and John Randall the draper's shop, and had the air of being squeezed +out of existence by them. Yet the name of Fulleymore Ransome, in gold +letters on a black ground, and with Pharmaceutical Chemist under it in a +scroll, more than held its own beside John Randall. The chemist's +dignity was further proclaimed by the immense bottles, three in a row +(the Carboys, Mr. Ransome called them), holding the magic liquids, a +blue, a red, and a yellow, wide-bellied at the base, and with pyramids +for stoppers. Under them, dividing the window pane, a narrow gold band +with black lettering advertised three distinct mineral waters.</p> + +<p>A yellow-ochre blind now screened the lower half of that window. Drawn +down unevenly and tilted at the bottom corner, it suffered a vague +glimpse of objects that from his earliest years had never ceased to +offend Ranny's sense of the beautiful and fit.</p> + +<p>He had not as yet considered very deeply the problems of his life. +Otherwise, in returning every night to his father's house, it must have +struck him that he was not what you might call a free man. For his +father's house had no door except the shop door, and it was the +peculiarity of that shop door that it did not admit of any latch key. +Every night young Ransome had to ring, and it was usually Mercier, with +his abominable smile, who let him in.</p> + +<p>To-night the door was opened cautiously on the chain and somebody +whispered, "Is that you, Ranny?"</p> + +<p>The chain was slipped, and he entered.</p> + +<p>A small bead of gas burned on a bracket somewhere behind the counter. +The light slid, pale as water, over the glass and mahogany of the +show-cases, wherein white objects appeared as confused and disconnected +patches. The darkness effaced every object in the shop that was not +white, with the queer effect that rows upon rows of white jars showed as +if hanging on it unsupported by their shelves. Very close, turned up to +him out of the darkness, was Ranny's mother's face. He kissed it.</p> + +<p>"Where's that Mercier?" said Ranny's mother.</p> + +<p>"What? Isn't he back yet?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Ranny's mother. "And your father's got the Headache."</p> + +<p>By a tender and most pardonable confusion between the symptoms and its +cause Ranny's mother had hit upon a phrase that made it possible for +them to discuss his father's affliction without the smallest, most +shadowy reference to its essential nature. For Ranny's mother, such +reference would have been the last profanity, a sacrilege committed +against the divinities of the hearth and of the marriage bed. But for +that phrase Mr. Ransome's weakness must have been passed in silence as +the unspeakable, incredible, unthinkable thing it was.</p> + +<p>At the phrase, more frequent in his mother's mouth than ever, Ranny drew +in his lips for a whistle; but instead of whistling he said, "Poor old +Humming-bird."</p> + +<p>"It's one of His bad ones," said Ranny's mother.</p> + +<p>He raised the flap of the counter, and they went through. He turned up +the gas so that the outlines of things asserted themselves and the +labels on the white jars gave out their secret gold. On one of these +labels, Hydrarg. Amm., which had no meaning for him, Ranny fixed a +fascinated gaze, thus avoiding the revelations of his mother's face.</p> + +<p>For Ranny's mother's face showed that she had been crying.</p> + +<p>Plump, and yet not large, her figure and her face were formed for gaiety +and charm. Her little nose was uptilted like Ranny's; but something that +was not gaiety, but pathos, had dragged down and made tremulous the +corners of a mouth that had once been tilted too—a flowerlike mouth, of +the same tender texture as her face, a face that was once one wide-open, +innocent pink flower. Now it was washed out and burnt with the courses +of her tears. Worry had fretted her soft forehead into lines and twisted +her eyebrows in an expression as of permanent surprise at life's +handiwork. And under them her dim-blue eyes, red-lidded, looked out with +the same sorrow and dismay. There was nothing left of her beauty but +her exuberant light-brown hair, which she dressed high on her head with +a twist and a topknot piteously reminiscent of gaiety and charm.</p> + +<p>She laid her hand on the knob of the left-hand inner door.</p> + +<p>"He's in the dispensin'-room," she said.</p> + +<p>Ranny turned round. His features tilted slightly, compelled by something +preposterous in the vision she had evoked.</p> + +<p>"Whatever game is he playin' there?"</p> + +<p>A faint flicker passed over his mother's face, as if it pleased her that +he could talk in that way.</p> + +<p>"Prescription," she said, and paused between her words to let it sink +into him. "Makin' it up, he is. Old Mr. Beesley's heart mixture."</p> + +<p>"My Hat!" said Ranny. He was impressed by the gravity of the situation.</p> + +<p>There were all sorts of things, such as toothbrushes, patent medicines, +babies' comforters, that Ranny's father with a Headache, or Ranny +himself or his mother could be trusted to dispense at a moment's notice. +But the drug strophanthus, prescribed for old Mr. Beesley, was not one +of them. It was tricky stuff. He knew all about it; Mercier had told +him. Whether it was to do Mr. Beesley good or not would depend on the +precise degree and kind of Ranny's father's Headache.</p> + +<p>"I've never known your father's Headache so bad as it is to-night," said +Ranny's mother. "As for makin' up prescriptions, sufferin' as He is, +He's not fit for it. He's not fit for it, Ranny."</p> + +<p>That was as near as she could go.</p> + +<p>"Of course he isn't."</p> + +<p>(They had to keep it up together.)</p> + +<p>But Ranny's mother felt that she had gone too far.</p> + +<p>"He ought to be in His bed—"</p> + +<p>"Of course he ought," said Ranny, tenderly.</p> + +<p>"And He would be if it wasn't for that Mercier."</p> + +<p>Thus subtly did she intimate that it was not his father but Mercier +whose behavior was reprehensible.</p> + +<p>"P'r'aps you'll go to him, Ranny?"</p> + +<p>"Hadn't we better wait for Mercier?"</p> + +<p>(Old Mr. Beesley's mixture was a case for Mercier.)</p> + +<p>"Him? Goodness knows when he'll be in. And it's not likely that y'r +father'll have him interferin' with him. They're sendin' at ten past +eleven, and it's five past now."</p> + +<p>Thus and thus only did she suggest the necessity for immediate action. +Also her fear lest Mercier should find Mr. Ransome out. As if Mercier +had not found him out long ago; as if he hadn't warned Ranny, time and +again, of what might happen.</p> + +<p>"All right, I'll go."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He went by the right-hand door at the back of the shop, and down a short +and exceedingly narrow passage, lined with shallow shelves for the +storage of drugs.</p> + +<p>Another door at the end of the passage led straight into the +dispensing-room outside, a long shed of corrugated iron run up against +the garden wall and lined with honey-colored pine. Under a wide stretch +of window was a work table. At one end of this table was a slab of +white marble; at the other a porcelain sink fitted with taps and sprays +for hot and cold water. From the far end of the room where the stove was +came a smothered roar of gas flames. On the broken inner wall were +shelves fitted with drawers of all sizes, each with its label, and above +them other shelves with row after row of jars. Near the stove, more +shelves with more and more jars, with phials, kettles, pannikins, and +pipkins. Everywhere else shelves of medicine bottles, innumerable +medicine bottles of all sorts and sizes, giving to the honey-colored +walls a decorative glimmer of sea-blue and sea-green.</p> + +<p>All this was brilliantly illuminated with gas that burned on every +bracket.</p> + +<p>To Ransome's senses it was as if the faint, the delicate colors of the +place gave a more frightful grossness and pungency to its smell. Dying +asafetida struggled still with gas fumes, and was pierced by another +odor, a sharp and bitter odor that he knew.</p> + +<p>At the long table, under the hanging gaselier, in shirt sleeves and +apron, Mr. Ransome stood. The light fell full on his sallow baldness and +its ring of iron-gray hair; on his sallow, sickly face; on his little +long, peaked nose with its peevish nostrils; even on his thin and +irritable mouth, unhidden by the scanty, close-trimmed iron-gray +mustache and beard. He was weedy to the last degree.</p> + +<p>Ranny came near and gazed inscrutably at this miracle of physical +unfitness. Under his gaze the pitiful and insignificant figure bore +itself as with a majesty of rectitude.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ransome had before him a prescription, a medicine bottle, a large +bottle of distilled water, two measuring-glasses, and a smaller bottle +half full of a pale-amber liquid. He had been standing motionless, +staring at these objects with a peculiar and intent solemnity. Now, as +if challenged and challenging, he drew the smaller measuring-glass +toward him with one hand. He held it to the light and moved his finger +nail slowly along the middle measuring line. Then with two hands that +trembled he poured into it a part of the infusion. The liquid went +tink-tinkling in a succession of little jerks. He held it to the light; +it rose a good inch above the line he had marked. He shook his head at +it slowly, with an air of admonition and reproof, and poured it back +into the bottle.</p> + +<p>This process he repeated seven times, always with the same solemn +intentness, the same reproving and admonitory air.</p> + +<p>At his seventh failure he turned with the dignity of a man overmastered +by outrageous circumstance.</p> + +<p>"Mercier not in?" he asked, sternly. (You would have said it was his son +Randall that he admonished and reproved.)</p> + +<p>"Not yet," said Ranny. And as he said it he possessed himself very +gently of the measuring-glass and bottle. (Mr. Ransome affected not to +notice this man[oe]uver.)</p> + +<p>"What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Tincture of strophanthus, sodæ bicarb., and spirits of chloroform. Just +you mind how you handle it."</p> + +<p>"Right-O!" said Ranny.</p> + +<p>The chemist's small, iron-gray eyes were fixed on him with severity and +resentment.</p> + +<p>"How much?" said Ranny.</p> + +<p>"Up to three." Mr. Ransome's head was steadier than his hand.</p> + +<p>Ranny poured the dose.</p> + +<p>"Ac-acqua distillata—to eight ounces," said Mr. Ransome, disjointedly, +but with an extreme incision.</p> + +<p>Ranny poured again, and decanted the medicine into its bottle through a +funnel, corked it, tied on the capsule, labeled, addressed, wrapped, and +sealed it. The long-drawn, subtle corners of Ranny's eyes and mouth were +lifted in that irrepressible smile of his, while Mr. Ransome asserted +his pharmaceutical dignity by acrimonious comment. "<i>Now</i> then! You +might have club feet instead of hands. Tha's right—mess the +sealin'-wax, waste the string, spoil anything you haven't got to pay +for. That'll do."</p> + +<p>Mr. Ransome took the parcel from his son's hand, turned it round and +round under the gaslight, laid it down, and dismissed it with a flick as +of contempt for his incompetence. At that Ranny gave way and giggled.</p> + +<p>Ten minutes later he and his mother stood in the doorway of the back +parlor and watched the master's superb and solitary ascent to his +bedroom on the first floor back. It was then that Ranny; still smiling, +delivered his innermost opinion.</p> + +<p>"Queer old Humming-bird. Ain't he, Mar?"</p> + +<p>His mother shook her head at him. "Oh, Ranny," she said, "you shouldn't +speak so disrespectful of your father."</p> + +<p>But she kissed him for it, all the same.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + + +<p>That was how they kept it up together.</p> + +<p>Not that Mrs. Ransome was conscious of keeping it up, of ministering to +an illusion as monstrous as it was absurd. She had married Mr. Ransome, +believing with a final and absolute conviction in his wisdom and his +goodness. What she was keeping up had kept up for twenty-two years, and +would keep up forever, was the attitude of her undying youth. It was its +triumph over life itself.</p> + +<p>In her youth the draper's daughter had been dazzled by Mr. Ransome, by +his attainments, his position, his distinction. Fulleymore Ransome had +about him the small refinement of the suburban shopkeeper, made finer by +the intellectual processes that had turned him out a Pharmaceutical +Chemist.</p> + +<p>In her world of Wandsworth High Street his grave, fastidious figure had +stood for everything that was superior. He was superior still. He had +never offered his Headache as a spectacle to the public eye. Born in +secrecy and solitude, it remained unseen outside the sacred circle of +his home. Even there he had contrived to create around it an atmosphere +of mystery. So that it was open to Mrs. Ransome to regard each Headache +as an accident, a thing apart, solitary and miraculous in its +occurrence. Faced with the incredible fact, she found a certain +gratification in the thought that Mr. Ransome's position enabled him to +order the best spirit wholesale, and with a professional impunity. So +inviolate was his privacy that not even the wine and spirit merchant +next door could gage the amount of his expenditure in this item.</p> + +<p>Thus, in Mrs. Ransome's eyes, the worst Headache he had ever had could +not impair his innermost integrity. Her vision of him was inspired by an +innocence and sincerity that were of the substance of her soul. And in +this optimism she had brought up her son.</p> + +<p>Ranny, with his venturesomeness, had carried it a step further. For +Ranny, not only did Mr. Ransome's inebriety conceal itself under the +name of Headache, but in those hours when the Headache cast its +intolerable gloom over the household Ranny persisted—from his childhood +he had persisted—in regarding his father, perversely, as the source and +fount of joy.</p> + +<p>It was in this happy light he saw him on Sunday morning, when Mrs. +Ransome came into the back parlor, where he was hiding his paper, <i>The +Pink 'Un</i>, behind him under the sofa cushions. She was wearing her new +slaty-gray gown with the lace collar, and a head-dress that combined the +decorum of the bonnet with the levity and fascination of the hat. Black +it was, with a spray of damask roses and their leaves, that spring +upward from Mrs. Ransome's left ear.</p> + +<p>"Your father's goin' to church," she said.</p> + +<p>Ranny sat up among his cushions and said: "Oh, Lord! That Humming-bird's +a fair treat."</p> + +<p>He took it as a supreme instance of his father's humor.</p> + +<p>But that was not the way Mrs. Ransome meant that he should take it. +Ranny's admiration implied that the Humming-bird was carrying it off, +successfully, if you like, but still carrying it. Whereas what she +desired him to see was that there was nothing to be carried off. +Obviously there could not be, when Mr. Ransome was prepared to go to +church.</p> + +<p>For the going to church of Mr. Ransome was itself a ritual, a high +religious ceremony. Hitherto he had kept himself pure for it, abstaining +from all Headache overnight. It was this habitual consecration of Mr. +Ransome that made his last lapse so remarkable and so important, while +it revealed it as fortuitous. Ranny had missed the deep logic of his +mother's statement. Mr. Ransome was sidesman at the Parish Church, and +at no time was the Headache compatible with being sidesman.</p> + +<p>Nothing had ever interfered with the slow pageant of Mr. Ransome's +progress toward church. Outside in the passage he was lingering over his +preparations: the adjustment of his tie, the brushing of his tall hat, +the drawing on of the dogskin gloves he wore in his office. It was not +easy for Mr. Ransome to exceed the professional dignity of his frock +coat and gray trousers, and yet every Sunday, by some miracle, he did +exceed it. Each minute irreproachable detail of his dress accentuated, +reiterated, the suggestion of his perpetual sobriety.</p> + +<p>Still, there remained the memory of last night. Mrs. Ransome did not +evade it; on the contrary, she used it to demonstrate the indomitable +power of Mr. Ransome's will.</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> say he ought to be layin' down," she said. "But there—He won't. +You know what He is since He's been sidesman. It's my belief He'd rise +up off his deathbed to hand that plate. It's his duty to go, and go He +will if He drops. That's your father all over."</p> + +<p>"That's Him," Ranny assented.</p> + +<p>His mother looked him in the face. It was the look, familiar to Ranny on +a Sunday morning, that, while it reinstated Ranny's father in his +rectitude, contrived subtly, insidiously, to put Ranny in the wrong.</p> + +<p>"You're going, too," his mother said.</p> + +<p>Well, no, he wasn't exactly going. Not, that was to say, to any church +in Wandsworth. (He had, in fact, a pressing engagement to meet young +Tyser at the first easterly signpost on Putney Common, and cycle with +him to Richmond.)</p> + +<p>"It's only a spin," said Ranny, though the look on his mother's face was +enough to tell him that a spin, on a Sunday, was dissipation, and he, +recklessly, iniquitously spinning, a prodigal most unsuitably descended +from an upright father.</p> + +<p>And then (this happened nearly every Sunday) Ranny set himself to charm +away that look from his mother's face. First of all he said she was a +tip-topper, a howling swell, and asked her where <i>she</i> expected to go to +in that hat, nippin' in and cuttin' all the girls out, and she a married +woman and a mother; and whether it wouldn't be fairer all around, and +much more proper, if she was to wear something in the nature of a veil? +Then he buttoned up her gloves over her little fat wrists and kissed her +in several places where the veil ought to have been; and when he had +informed her that "the Humming-bird was a regular toff," and had +dismissed them both with his blessing, standing on the doorstep of the +shop, he wheeled his bicycle out into the street, mounted it, and +followed at the pace of a walking funeral until his parents had +disappeared into the Parish Church.</p> + +<p>Then Ranny, in his joy, set up a prolonged ringing of his bicycle bell, +as it were the cry of his young soul, a shrill song of triumph and +liberation and delight. And in his own vivid phrase, he "let her rip."</p> + +<p>Of course he was a prodigal, a wastrel, a spendthrift. Going the pace, +he was, with a vengeance, like a razzling-dazzling, devil-may-care young +dog.</p> + +<p>A prodigal driven by the lust of speed, dissipating his divine energies +in this fierce whirling of the wheels; scattering his youth to the sun +and his strength to the wind in the fury of riotous "biking." A +drunkard, mad-drunk, blind-drunk with the draught of his onrush.</p> + +<p>That was Ranny on a Sunday morning.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He returned, at one o'clock, to a dinner of roast mutton and apple tart. +Conversation was sustained, for Mercier's benefit, at the extreme pitch +of politeness and precision. It seemed to Ranny that at Sunday dinner +his father reached, socially, a very high level. It seemed so to Mrs. +Ransome as she bloomed and flushed in a brief return of her beauty above +the mutton and the tart. She bloomed and flushed every time that Mr. +Ransome did anything that proved his goodness and his wisdom. Sunday was +the day in which she most believed in him, the day set apart for her +worship of him.</p> + +<p>By what blindfolded pieties, what subterfuges, what evasions she had +achieved her own private superstition was unknown, even to herself. It +was by courage and the magic of personality—some evocation of her lost +gaiety and charm—but above all by courage that she had contrived to +impose it upon other people.</p> + +<p>The cult of Mr. Ransome reached its height at four o'clock on this +Sunday afternoon, when Ranny's Uncle John Randall (Junior) and Aunt +Randall dropped in to tea. Both Mr. and Mrs. Randall believed in Mr. +Ransome with the fervent, immovable faith of innocence that has once for +all taken an idea into its head. Long ago they had taken it into their +heads that Mr. Ransome was a wise and good man. They had taken it on +hearsay, on conjecture, on perpetual suggestion conveyed by Mrs. +Ransome, and on the grounds—absolutely incontrovertible—that they had +never heard a word to the contrary. Never, until the other day, when +that young Mercier came to Wandsworth. And, as Mrs. Randall said, +everybody knew what he was. Whatever it was that Mr. Randall had heard +from young Mercier and told to Mrs. Randall, the two had agreed to hold +their tongues about it, for Emmy's sake, and not to pass it on. Wild +horses, Mrs. Randall said, wouldn't drag it out of her.</p> + +<p>Not that they believed or could believe such a thing of Mr. Ransome, who +had been known in Wandsworth for five-and-twenty years before that young +Mercier was so much as born. And by holding their tongues about it and +not passing it on they had succeeded in dismissing from their minds, for +long intervals at a time, the story they had heard about Mr. Ransome. +"For, mind you," said Mr. Randall, "if it got about it would ruin him. +Ruin him it would. As much as if it was true."</p> + +<p>Long afterward when she thought of that Sunday, and how beautifully +they'd spoken of Mr. Ransome; that Sunday when they had had tea upstairs +in the best parlor on the front; that Sunday that had been half pleasure +and half pain; that strange and ominous Sunday when poor Ranny had +broken out and been so wild; long afterward, when she thought of it, +Mrs. Ransome found that tears were in her eyes.</p> + +<p>She had no idea then that they had heard anything. Family affection was +what you looked for from the Randalls, and on Sundays they showed it by +a frequent dropping in to tea.</p> + +<p>John Randall, the draper, was a fine man. A tall, erect, full-fronted +man, a superb figure in a frock coat. A man with a florid, handsome +face, clean-shaved for the greater salience of his big mustache (dark, +grizzled like his hair). A man with handsome eyes—prominent, slightly +bloodshot, generous eyes. He might have passed for a soldier but for +something that detracted, something that Ranny noticed. But even Ranny +hesitated to call it flabbiness in so fine a man.</p> + +<p>Mr. Randall had married a woman who had been even finer than himself. +And she was still fine, with her black hair dressed in a prominent +pompadour, and her figure curbed by the tightness of her Sunday gown. +Under her polished hair Mrs. Randall's face shone with a blond pallor. +It had grown up gradually round her features, and they, becoming more +and more insignificant, were now merged in its general expression of +good will. Ranny noted with wonder this increasing simplification of +his Aunt Randall's face.</p> + +<p>She entered as if under stress, towing her large husband through the +doorway, and in and out among the furniture.</p> + +<p>The room that received them was full of furniture, walnut wood, +mid-Victorian in design, upholstered in rep, which had faded from +crimson to an agreeable old rose. Rep curtains over Nottingham lace hung +from the two windows. There was a davenport between them, and, opposite, +a cabinet with a looking-glass back in three arches. It was Mr. +Ransome's social distinction that he had inherited this walnut-wood +furniture. Modernity was represented by a brand-new overmantle in +stained wood and beveled glass, with little shelves displaying Japanese +vases. The wall paper turned this front parlor into a bower of gilt +roses (slightly tarnished on a grayish ground).</p> + +<p>And as Mrs. Ransome sat at the head of the oval table in the center you +would never have known that she was the woman with red eyes, the +furtive, whispering woman who had opened the door to her son Randall +last night. She sat in a most correct and upright attitude, she looked +at John Randall and his wife, and smiled and flushed with gladness and +with pride. It took so little to make her glad and proud. She was glad +that Bessie was wearing the black and white which was so becoming to +her. She was glad that there was honey as well as jam for tea, and that +she had not cut the cake before they came. She was proud of her teapot, +and of the appearance of her room. She was proud of Mr. Ransome's +appearance at the table (where he sat austerely), and of her brother, +John Randall, who looked so like a military man.</p> + +<p>And John Randall talked; he talked; it was what he had come for. He had +a right to talk. He was a member of the Borough Council, an important +man, a man (it was said of him) with "ideas." He was a Liberal; and so, +for that matter, was Mr. Ransome. Both were of the good, safe middle +class, and took the good, safe, middle line.</p> + +<p>They sat there; the Nottingham lace curtains veiled them from the gazes +of the street, but their voices, raised in discussion, could be most +distinctly heard; for the window was a little open, letting in the +golden afternoon. They sat and drank tea and abused the Tory Government. +Not any one Tory Government, but all Tory Governments. Mr. Ransome said +that all Tory Governments were bad. Mr. Randall, aiming at precision, +said he wouldn't say they were bad so much as stupid, cowardly, and +dishonest. Stupid, because they were incapable of the ideas the Liberals +had. Cowardly, because they let the Liberals do all the fighting for +ideas. Dishonest, because they stole the ideas, purloined 'em, carried +them out, and sneaked the credit.</p> + +<p>And when Ranny asked if it mattered who got the credit provided they +<i>were</i> carried out, Mr. Randall replied solemnly that it did matter, my +boy. It mattered a great deal. Credit was everything, the nation's +confidence was everything. A Government lived on credit and on nothing +else. And his father told him that he hadn't understood what his uncle +had been saying.</p> + +<p>"If anybody asks <i>me</i>—" said Mr. Ransome. He interrupted himself to +stare terribly at Mrs. Ransome, who was sending a signal to her son and +a whisper, "Have a little slice of gingercake, Ran dear."</p> + +<p>"If anybody asks me <i>my</i> objection to a Tory Government, I'll put it for +'em," said Mr. Ransome, "in a nutshell."</p> + +<p>"Let's have it, Fulleymore," said Mr. Randall.</p> + +<p>And Mr. Ransome let him have it—in a nutshell.</p> + +<p>"With a Tory Government you always, sooner or later, have a war. And +who," said Mr. Ransome, "<i>wants</i> war?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Randall bowed and made a motion of his hand toward his +brother-in-law, a complicated gesture which implied destruction of all +Tory Governments, homage to Mr. Ransome, and dismissal of the subject as +definitively settled by him.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ransome seized the moment to raise her eyebrows and the teapot +toward Mrs. Randall, and to whisper again, surreptitiously, "Jest +another little drain of tea?"</p> + +<p>Then Ranny, who had tilted his chair most dangerously backward, was +heard saying something. A bit of scrap, now and then, with other nations +was, in Ranny's opinion, a jolly good thing. Kept you from gettin' +Flabby. Kept you Fit.</p> + +<p>Mr. Randall, in a large, forbearing manner, dealt with Ranny. He wanted +to know whether he, Ranny, thought that the world was one almighty Poly. +Gym.?</p> + +<p>And Mr. Ransome answered: "That's precisely what he does think. Made for +his amusement, the world is."</p> + +<p>Ranny was young, and so they all treated him as if he were neither good +nor wise.</p> + +<p>And Ranny, desperately tilted backward, looked at them all with a smile +that almost confirmed his father's view of his philosophy. He was +working up for his great outbreak. He could feel the laughter struggling +in his throat.</p> + +<p>"I don't say," said Mr. Ransome, ignoring his son's folly, "that I'm +complaining of this Boer War in especial. If anything"—he weighed it, +determined, in his rectitude, to be just even to the war—"if anything +we sold more of some things."</p> + +<p>"Now what," said Mrs. Randall, "do you sell most of in time of war?"</p> + +<p>"Sleepin' draughts, heart mixture, nerve tonic, stomach mixture, and so +forth."</p> + +<p>"And he can tell you," said Mr. Randall, "to a month's bookin' what +meddycine he'll sell."</p> + +<p>"What's more," said the chemist, with a sinister intonation, "I can tell +who'll want 'em."</p> + +<p>"Can you reelly now?" said Mrs. Randall. "Why, Fulleymore, you should +have been a doctor. Shouldn't he, Emmy?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ransome laughed softly in her pride. "He couldn't be much more than +He is. Why, He doctors half the poor people in Wandsworth. They all come +to Him, whether it's toothache or bronchitis or the influenza, or a +housemaid with a whitlow on her finger, and He prescribes for all. If +all the doctors in Wandsworth died to-morrow some of us would be no +worse off."</p> + +<p>"Many's the doctor's bill he's saved me," said Mr. Randall.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but it's a tryin' life for Him, sufferin' as He is in 'is own +'ealth. Never knowin' when the night bell won't ring, and He have to get +up out of his warm bed. He doesn't spare Himself, I can tell you."</p> + +<p>And on they went for another quarter of an hour, boldly asserting, +delicately hinting, subtly suggesting that Mr. Ransome was a good man; +as if, Ranny reflected, anybody had ever said he wasn't. Mr. Ransome +withdrew himself to his armchair by the fireplace, and the hymn of +praise went on; it flowed round him where he sat morose and remote; and +Ranny, in the window seat, was silent, listening with an inscrutable +intentness to the three voices that ran on. He marveled at the way they +kept it up. When his mother's light soprano broke, breathless for a +moment, on a top note, Mrs. Randall's rich, guttural contralto came to +its support, Mr. Randall supplying a running accompaniment of bass. And +now they burst, all three of them, into anecdote and reminiscence, +illustrating what they were all agreed about, that Mr. Ransome was a +good man.</p> + +<p>Nobody asked Ranny to join in; nobody knew, nobody cared what he was +thinking, least of all Mr. Ransome.</p> + +<p>He was thinking that he had asked Fred Booty in to tea, and that he had +forgotten to say anything about it to his mother, and that Fred was +late, and that his father wouldn't like it.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He didn't. He didn't like it at all. He didn't like Fred Booty to begin +with, and when the impudent young monkey arrived after the others had +gone, and had to have fresh tea made for him, thus accentuating and +prolonging the unpleasantly, the intolerably festive hour, Mr. Ransome +felt that he had been tried to the utmost, and that courtesy and +forbearance had gone far enough for one Sunday. So he refused to speak +when he was spoken to. He turned his back on his family and on Booty. He +impressed them with his absolute and perfect disapproval.</p> + +<p>For, as the Headache worked in Mr. Ransome, all young and gay and +innocent things became abominable to him. Especially young things with +spirits and appetites like his son Randall and Fred Booty. This +afternoon they inspired him with a peculiar loathing and disgust. So did +the malignant cheerfulness maintained by his wife. Escape no doubt was +open to him. He might have left the room and sat by himself in the back +parlor. But he spared them this humiliation. Outraged as he was, he +would not go to the extreme length of forsaking them. He was a good man; +and, as a good man, he would not be separated from his family, though he +loathed it. So he hung about the room where they were; he brooded over +it; he filled it with the spirit of the Headache. Young Booty became so +infected, so poisoned with this presence that his nervous system +suffered, and he all but choked over his tea. Young Booty, with his +humor and his wit, the joy of Poly. Ramblers, sat in silence, miserably +blushing, crumbling with agitated fingers the cake he dared not eat, and +all the time trying not to look at Ranny.</p> + +<p>For if he looked at Ranny he would be done for; he would not be able to +contain himself, beholding how Ranny stuck it, and what he made of it, +that intolerable, that incredible Sunday afternoon; how he saw it +through; how he got back on it and found in it his own. For, as Mr. +Ransome went from gloom to gloom, Ranny's spirit soared, indomitable, +and his merriment rose in him, wave on wave.</p> + +<p>What he could make of it Booty saw in an instant when Mr. Ransome left +the room at the summons of the shop-bell. Ranny, with a smile of +positive affection, watched him as he went.</p> + +<p>"Queer old percher, ain't he?" Ranny said.</p> + +<p>Then he let himself go, addressing himself to Booty.</p> + +<p>"The old Porcupine may seem to you a trifle melancholy and morose. You +can't see what's goin' on in his mind. You've no ideer of the glee he +bottles up inside himself. Fair bubblin' and sparklin' in him, it is. +Some day he'll bust out with it. I shouldn't be surprised if, at any +moment now, he was to break out into song."</p> + +<p>Booty, very hot and uncomfortable under Mrs. Ransome's eyes, affected to +reprove him. "You dry up, you young rotter. Jolly lot of bottlin' up +there is about you."</p> + +<p>But there was that in Ranny which seemed as if it would never dry up. He +hopped a chair seven times running, out of pure light-heartedness. The +sound of the hopping brought Mr. Ransome in a fury from the shop below. +He stood in the doorway, absurd as to his stature, but tremendous in the +expression of the gloom that was his soul.</p> + +<p>"What's goin' on here?" he asked, in a voice that would have thundered +if it could.</p> + +<p>"It's me," said Ranny. "Practisin'."</p> + +<p>"I won't 'ave it then. I'll 'ave none of this leapin' and jumpin' over +the shop on a Sunday afternoon. Pandemonium it is. 'Aven't you got all +the week for your silly monkey tricks? I won't 'ave this room used, +Mother, if he can't behave himself in it of a Sunday."</p> + +<p>And he slammed the door on himself.</p> + +<p>"On Sunday evenin'," said his son, imperturbably, as if there had been +no interruption, "eight-thirty to eleven, at his residence, High Street, +Wandsworth, Mr. Fulleymore Ransome will give an Entertainment. Humorous +Impersonations: Mr. F. Ransome. Step Dancin': Mr. F. Ransome. Ladies are +requested to remove their hats. Song: <i>Put Me Among the Girls</i>, Mr. F. +Ransome—"</p> + +<p>"For shame, Ranny," said his mother, behind her pocket handkerchief.</p> + +<p>"—There will be a short interval for refreshment, when festivities will +conclude with a performance on the French Horn: Mr. F. Ransome."</p> + +<p>His mother laughed as she always did (relieved that he could take it +that way); but this time, through all her laughter, he could see that +there was something wrong.</p> + +<p>And in the evening, when he had returned from seeing Booty home, she +told him what it was. They were alone together in the front parlor.</p> + +<p>"Ranny," she said, suddenly; "if I were you I wouldn't bring strangers +in for a bit while your father's sufferin' as he is."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say, Mother—"</p> + +<p>Ranny was disconcerted, for he had been going to ask her if he might +bring Winny Dymond in some day.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "it isn't as if He was one that could get away by +Himself, like. He's always in and out."</p> + +<p>"Yes. The old Hedgehog scuttles about pretty ubiquitous, don't he?"</p> + +<p>That was all he said.</p> + +<p>But though he took it like that, he knew his mother's heart; he knew +what it had cost her to give him that pitiful hint. He was balancing +himself on the arm of her chair now, and hanging over her like a lover.</p> + +<p>He had always been more like a lover to her than a son. Mr. Ransome's +transports (if he could be said to have transports) of affection were +violent, with long intermissions and most brief. Ranny had ways, soft +words, cajoleries, caresses that charmed her in her secret desolation. +Balancing himself on the arm of her chair, he had his face hidden in the +nape of her neck, where he affected ecstasy and the sniffing in of +fragrance, as if his mother were a flower.</p> + +<p>"What do you <i>do</i>?" said Ranny. "Do you bury yourself in violets all +night, or what?"</p> + +<p>"Violets indeed! Get along with you!"</p> + +<p>"Violets aren't in it with your neck, Mother—nor roses neither. What +did God Almighty think he was making when he made you?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you dare to speak so," said his mother, smiling secretly.</p> + +<p>"Lord bless you! <i>He</i> don't mind," said Ranny. "He's not like Par."</p> + +<p>And he plunged into her neck again and burrowed there.</p> + +<p>"Ranny, if you knew how you worried me, you wouldn't do it. You reelly +wouldn't. I don't know what'll come to you, goin' on so reckless."</p> + +<p>"It's because I love you," said Ranny, half stifled with his burrowing. +"You fair drive me mad. I could eat you, Mother, and thrive on it."</p> + +<p>"Get along with you! There! You're spoiling all my Sunday lace."</p> + +<p>Ranny emerged, and his mother looked at him.</p> + +<p>"Such a sight as you are. If you could see yourself," she said.</p> + +<p>She raised her hand and stroked, not without tenderness, his rumpled +hair.</p> + +<p>"P'r'aps—If you had a sweetheart, Ran, you'd leave off makin' a fool of +your old mother."</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't leave off kissin' her," said he.</p> + +<p>And then, suddenly, it struck him that he had never kissed Winny. He +hadn't even thought of it. He saw her fugitive, swift-darting, +rebellious rather than reluctant under his embrace; and at the thought +he blushed, suddenly, all over.</p> + +<p>His mother was unaware that his kisses had become dreamy, tentative, +foreboding. She said to herself: "When his time comes there'll be no +holding him. But he isn't one that'll be in a hurry, Ranny isn't."</p> + +<p>She took comfort from that thought.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + + +<p>Ranny had received his first intimation that he was not a free man. And +it had come upon him with something of a shock. He had made his burst +for freedom five years ago, when he refused to be a Pharmaceutical +Chemist in his father's shop, because he could not stand his father's +ubiquity. And yet he was not free to leave his father's house; for he +did not see how, as things were going, he could leave his mother. He was +not free to ask his friends there either; not, that was to say, friends +who were strangers to his father and the Headache. Above all, he was not +free to ask Winny Dymond. He had thought he was, but his mother had made +him see that he wasn't, because of his father's Headache; that he really +ought not to expose the poor old Humming-bird to the rude criticism of +people who did not know how good he was. That was what his mother, bless +her! had been trying to make him see. And if it came to exposing, if +this was to be a fair sample of their Sundays, if the Humming-bird was +going to take the cake for queerness, what right had he to expose little +Winny?</p> + +<p>And would she stand it if he did? She might come once, perhaps, but not +again. The Humming-bird would be a bit too much for her.</p> + +<p>Then how on earth, Ranny asked himself, was he going to get any further +with a girl like Winny? His acquaintance with her was bound to be a +furtive and a secret thing. He loathed anything furtive, and he hated +secrecy. And Winny would loathe and hate them, too. And she might turn +on him and ask him why she was to be made love to in the streets when +his mother had a house and he lived in it?</p> + +<p>It was the first time that this idea of making love had come to him. Of +course he had always supposed that he would marry some day; but as for +making love, it was his mother who had put into his head that +exquisitely agitating idea.</p> + +<p>To make love to little Winny and to marry her, if (and that was not by +any means so certain) she would have him—no idea could well have +agitated Ranny more. It blunted the fine razorlike edge of his appetite +for Sunday supper. It obscured his interest in <i>The Pink 'Un</i>, which he +had unearthed from under the sofa cushion in the back parlor, whither he +had withdrawn himself to think of it. And thinking of it took away the +best part of his Sunday night's sleep.</p> + +<p>For, after all, it was impossible; and the more you thought of it the +more impossible it was. He couldn't marry. He simply couldn't afford it +on a salary of eight pounds a month, which was a little under a hundred +a year. He couldn't even afford it on his rise. Fellows did. But he +considered it was a beastly shame of them; yes, a beastly shame it was +to go and tie a girl to you when you couldn't keep her properly, to say +nothing of letting her in for having kids you couldn't keep at all. +Ranny had very fixed and firm opinions about marrying; for he had seen +fellows doing it, rushing bald-headed into this tremendous business, +for no reason but that they had got so gone on some girl they couldn't +stick it without her. Ranny, in his decency, considered that that wasn't +a reason; that they ought to stick it; that they ought to think of the +girl, and that of all the beastly things you could do to her, this was +the beastliest, because it tied her.</p> + +<p>He had more than ever decided that it was so, as he lay in his attic +sleepless on his narrow iron bedstead, staring up at the steep slope of +the white-washed ceiling that leaned over him, pressed on him, and +threatened him; watching it glimmer and darken and glimmer again to the +dawn. He had put away from him the almost tangible vision of Winny lying +there, pretty as she would be, in her little white nightgown, and her +hair tossed over his pillow, perhaps, and he vowed that for Winny's sake +he would never do that thing.</p> + +<p>As for the feeling he had unmistakably begun to have for Winny, he would +have to put that away, too, until he could afford to produce it.</p> + +<p>It might also be wiser, for his own sake, to give up seeing her until he +could afford it; but to this pitch of abnegation Ranny, for all his +decency, couldn't rise.</p> + +<p>Besides, he had to see her. He had to see her home.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>And so he took his feeling and put it away, together with a certain +sachet, scented with violets, and having a pattern of violets on a +white-satin ground, and the word Violet going slantwise across it in +embroidery. He had bought it (from his mother) in the shop, to keep (he +said) in his drawer among his handkerchiefs. And in his drawer, among +his handkerchiefs, he kept it, wrapped tenderly in tissue paper. He +tried hard to forget that he had really bought it to give to Winny on +her birthday. He tried hard to forget his feeling, wrapped up and put +away with it. But he couldn't forget it; because every day his +handkerchiefs, impregnated with the scent of violets, gave out a whiff +that reminded him, and his feeling was inextricably entangled with that +whiff.</p> + +<p>It was with him as he worked in his mahogany pen at Woolridge's. All day +a faint odor of violets clung to him and spread itself subtly about the +counting-house, and the fellows noticed it and sniffed. And, oh, how +they chaffed him. "Um-m-m. You been rolling in a bed of violets, Ranny?" +And "Oo-ooh, what price violets?" And "You might tell us her name, old +chappie, if you <i>won't</i> give the address." Till his life was a burden to +him.</p> + +<p>So to end the nuisance he took that sachet wrapped in tissue paper, and +put it in the round, japanned tin box where he kept his collars, and let +his collars run loose about the drawer. He shut the lid down tight on +the smell and took the box and hid it in the cupboard where his boots +were, where the smell couldn't possibly get out, and where the very next +day his mother found it and received some enlightenment as to Ranny's +state of mind. But, like a wise woman, she kept it to herself.</p> + +<p>And the smell departed gradually from the region of Ranny's breast +pocket, and he had peace in his pen. His fellow-clerks suspected him of +a casual encounter and no more. A matter too trivial for remark.</p> + +<p>The counting-house at Woolridge's was an immense long room under the +roof, lit by a row of windows on each side and a skylight in the middle. +The door gave on a passage that ran the whole length of the room, +dividing it in two. Right and left the space was partitioned off into +pens more or less open. On Ransome's right, as he entered, was the pen +for the women typists. On his left the petty cashier's pen, overlooking +the women. Next came the ledger clerks, then the statement clerks; and +facing these the long desk of the checking staff. At the back of the +room, right and left, were the pens of the very youngest clerks, who +made invoices. From their high desks they could see the bald spot on the +assistant secretary's head. He, the highest power in that hierarchy, had +a special pen provided for him behind the ledger and the statement +clerks; a little innermost sanctuary approached by a short passage. +Surrounded entirely by glass, he could overlook the whole of his +dominion, from the boys at the bottom to the gray-headed cashier and the +women typists at the top.</p> + +<p>And in between, scattered and in rows, the tops of men's heads: heads +dark and fair and grizzled, all bowed over the long desks, all +diminished and obscured in their effect by the heavy mahogany of their +pens, by the shining brass trellis-work that screened them, by the +emerald green of the hanging lampshades, by the blond lights and clear +shadows of the walls, and by the everlasting streaming, drifting, and +shifting of the white paper that they handled.</p> + +<p>The whole place was full of sounds: the hard clicking of the +typewriters, and under it the eternal rustling of the white papers, the +scratching of pens, the thud of ledgers on desks, the hiss of their +turning leaves, and the sharp smacking and slamming as they closed.</p> + +<p>And, in the middle of that stir and motion made by hands, all those tops +of heads were still, as if they took no part in it; through the +intensity of their absorption they were detached. Every now and then one +of them would lift and hold up a face among those tops of heads, and it +was like the sudden uncanny insurgence of an alien life.</p> + +<p>That stillness was abhorrent to young Ransome. So was the bowing of his +head, the cramping of his limbs, and his sense of imprisonment in his +pen.</p> + +<p>And all his life he would go on sitting there in that intolerable +constraint. He had no hope beyond exchanging a larger pen at the bottom +of the room for a smaller one at the top. He had begun at the very +bottom as an invoice clerk at a pound a week. He was now a statement +clerk at eight pounds a month. Working up through all his grades, he +would become a ledger clerk at twelve pounds a month. He might stick at +that forever, but if he had luck he might become a petty cashier at +sixteen pounds. That couldn't happen before he was thirty, if then. He +was bound to get his rise in the autumn. But that was no good. It +wouldn't be safe, not really safe, to marry until he had become a petty +cashier. To end in the petty cashier's narrow pen by the door, that was +the goal and summit of his ambition.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Day in day out he worked now with desperate assiduity. He bowed his +young head; he cramped his glorious limbs; he steeped his very soul in +statements of account for furniture. Furniture bought with hideous +continuity by lucky devils, opulent beasts, beasts that wallowed +inconsiderately; worst of all by beasts, abominable beasts, who couldn't +afford it and were yet about to marry and to set up house. Woolridge's +offered a shameless encouragement to these. It lured them on; it laid +out its nets for them and caught and tangled them and flung them to +their ruin. All over London and the provinces Woolridge's posters were +displayed; flaunting yet insidious posters where a young man and a young +woman with innocent, idiotic faces were seen gazing, fascinated, into +Woolridge's windows. Woolridge's artist had a wild humor that gave the +show away by exaggerating the innocence and idiocy of Woolridge's +victims. It appealed to Ransome by the audacity with which it had defied +Woolridge's to see its point. Woolridge's itself was a perpetual +tempting and solicitation. Ranny wondered how in those days he ever +resisted its appeal to him to be a man and risk it and make a home for +Winny.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>And as the months went on he kept himself fitter than ever. He did +dumb-bell practice in his bedroom. He sprinted like mad. He rowed hard +on the river. He was so fit that in June (just before stock-taking) he +entered for the Wandsworth Athletic Sports, and won the silver cup +against Fred Booty in the Hurdle Race. He was more than ever punctual at +the Poly. Gym.</p> + +<p>And sometimes, on a Sunday afternoon, he would take Winny for a bicycle +ride into the country. He liked pushing her machine up all the hills; +still more he liked to help her in her first fierce charging of them, +with a strong hand at the back of her waist. That was nothing to the joy +of scorching on the level with linked hands. And it was best of all when +they rested, sitting side by side under a birch tree on the Common, or +lying in the long grass of the fields.</p> + +<p>Thus on a Sunday afternoon in June they found themselves alone in a +corner of a meadow in Southfields. All day Ransome had been overcome by +a certain melancholy which Winny for some reason affected to ignore.</p> + +<p>They had been silent for a perceptible time, Ransome lying on his back +while Winny, seated beside him, gathered what daisies and buttercups +were within her reach. And as he watched her sidelong, it struck him all +at once that Winny's life was worse even than his own. Winny was clever, +and she had a berth as book-keeper in Starker's, one of the smaller +drapers' shops in Oxford Street, near Woolridge's. Her position was as +good as his, yet she only earned five pounds a month to his eight. And +he hated to think of Winny working, anyway.</p> + +<p>"Winny," he said, suddenly, "do you like book-keeping?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I do," said Winny. She didn't, but she was not going to say +so lest he should think that she was discontented.</p> + +<p>"They—are they decent to you at Starker's?"</p> + +<p>"Of course they are. I would like," said Winny, in her grandest manner, +"to see anybody trying it on with <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, I suppose it's all right if you like it. But I +thought—perhaps—you didn't."</p> + +<p>"You'd no business to think."</p> + +<p>"Can't help it. Born thinkin'."</p> + +<p>"Well—it shows how much you know. I mean to enjoy life," said Winny. +"And I do enjoy it."</p> + +<p>Ranny, lying on his back with his face turned up to the sky, said that +that was a jolly sight more than he did; that for his part he thought it +a pretty rotten show.</p> + +<p>Winny stared, for this utterance was most unlike him.</p> + +<p>"My goodness! What ever in the world's wrong with you?"</p> + +<p>Everything, he answered, gloomily, was wrong.</p> + +<p>"What an idea!" said Winny.</p> + +<p>It <i>was</i> an idea, he said, if it was nothing else. At any rate, it was +his idea. And Winny wanted to know what made him have it.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I dunno. There are things a fellow wants he hasn't got."</p> + +<p>"What sort of things?"</p> + +<p>"All sorts."</p> + +<p>"Well—don't think about them. Think," said Winny, "of the things you +<i>have</i> got."</p> + +<p>"What things?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Winny, counting them off on her fingers, "you've got a +father—and a mother—and new tires to your bike. Good boots" (she had +stuck buttercups in their laces) "and a most beautiful purple tie." (She +held another buttercup under his chin.)</p> + +<p>"It <i>is</i> a tidy tie," Ranny admitted, smiling because of the buttercups. +"But me hat's a bit rocky."</p> + +<p>"Quite a good hat," said Winny, looking at it with her little head on +one side. "And you've won the silver cup for the Wandsworth Hurdle Race. +What more do you want?"</p> + +<p>"It's what a fellow hasn't got he wants."</p> + +<p>"Well, what haven't you got, then?"</p> + +<p>"Prospects," said Ranny. "I've no prospects. Not for years and years."</p> + +<p>"No," said Winny, with decision. "And didn't ought to have. Not at your +age."</p> + +<p>She had no sympathy for him and no understanding of his case.</p> + +<p>Ranny sat up, stared about him, and sighed profoundly.</p> + +<p>And because he could think of nothing else to say he suggested that it +was time to go.</p> + +<p>Winny sprang to her feet with a swiftness that implied that if it was to +go he wanted, she was more than ready to oblige him. As she mounted her +bicycle, the shut firmness of her mouth, the straightness of her back, +and the grip of her little hands on the handle bars were eloquent of her +determination to be gone. And her face, he noticed, was pinker than he +ever remembered having seen it.</p> + +<p>And he wondered what it was he had said.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + + +<p>It was after that evening that he observed a change in her, a change +that he could neither account for nor define. It seemed to him that she +was trying to avoid him, and that he was no longer agreeably affected by +her behavior, as he had been in the beginning by her fugitive, evasive +ways. Then she had, indeed, led him a dance, but he had thoroughly +enjoyed the fun of it. Now the dancing and the fun were all over. At +least, so he was left to gather from her manner; for the strangeness of +it was that she said nothing now. There was about her a terrible +stillness and reserve, and in her little face, once so tender, the +suggestion of a possible hardness.</p> + +<p>He was not aware that the stillness and reserve were in himself, nor +that the hardness was in his own face as it set in his indomitable +determination to stick it, and not to do the beastly thing, nor yet that +there were moments when that stillness and that set look terrified +Winny. Neither was he aware that Winny, under all her terror, had an +instinct that divined him and understood.</p> + +<p>And as the months went on he saw less and less of her. Though he was +punctual at their corner in Oxford Street, he was always too late to +find Winny there. He gave that up, and began to haunt the door in +Starker's iron shutter at closing-time. He had found out that girl +clerks, what with chattering and putting on their hats and things, were +always a good ten minutes later than the men. He had seen fellows +(fellows from Woolridge's, some of them) hanging round the shutters of +the big draperies to meet the girls. By making a dash for it from +Woolridge's he could reach Starker's just in time to catch Winny as she +came out, delicately stepping through the little door in the great iron +shutter.</p> + +<p>Evening after evening he was there and never caught her. She was off +before he could get through the door in his own shutter.</p> + +<p>Then (it was one evening in August) he saw her. He was not making a dash +for it; he was strolling casually and without hope in the direction of +Starker's, and he saw her walking away, arm in arm with another girl, a +girl he had never seen before. He would have overtaken them but that the +presence of the girl deterred him.</p> + +<p>He followed, losing them in the crowd, recovering, losing them again; +then they turned northward up a side street and were gone. He noticed +that the strange girl was taller than Winny by the head and shoulders, +and that she went lazily, deliberately, with sudden lingerings, and +always with a curious swinging movement of her hips. He had been close +upon Winny at the corner as they turned, so close that he could have +touched her. He thought she had seen him, but he could not be sure. He +was also aware of a large eye slued round toward him in a pretty profile +that lifted itself, deep-chinned, above Winny's head. Their behavior +agitated him, but he forbore to track them further. Decency told him +that that would be dishonorable.</p> + +<p>The next evening and the next he watched the door in the iron shutter, +and was too late for Winny. But the third evening he saw her standing by +the door and talking to the same strange girl. The girl had her back to +him, but Winny faced him. She was not aware of him at first; but, at the +signal that he gave, she turned sharply and went from him, drawing the +girl with her, arm in arm.</p> + +<p>They disappeared northward up the same side street as before.</p> + +<p>That was on a Friday. On Sunday he called at St. Ann's Terrace and saw +Maudie Hollis, who told him that Winny had gone up Hampstead way. No, +not for good, but with a friend. She had been very much taken up lately +with a friend.</p> + +<p>"You know what she is when she's taken up," said Maudie.</p> + +<p>He sighed unaware, and Maudie answered his sigh.</p> + +<p>"It isn't a gentleman friend."</p> + +<p>"No?" It was wonderful the indifference Ranny packed into that little +word.</p> + +<p>"Catch <i>her</i>!" said Maudie.</p> + +<p>She smiled at him as he turned away, and in the middle of his own misery +it struck him that poor Maudie would have to wait many years before +Booty could afford to marry her, and that already her proud beauty was a +little sharpened and a little dimmed by waiting.</p> + +<p>On Monday he refrained from hanging round the door in Starker's iron +shutter. But on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday he was at his post, and +remained there till the door was shut almost in his face.</p> + +<p>On Friday he was late, and he could see even in the distance the shut +door.</p> + +<p>But somebody was there, somebody was standing close up against the +shutter; somebody who moved forward a step as he came, somebody who had +been waiting for him. It was not Winny. It was the tall girl.</p> + +<p>He raised his hat in answer to the movement that was her signal, and +would have passed on, but she stopped him. She stood almost in front of +him, so that he should not pass. And the biggest and darkest blue eyes +he had ever seen arrested him with a strange bending on him of black +brows.</p> + +<p>The strange girl was saying something to him, in a voice full and yet +low, a voice with a sort of thick throb in it, and in its thickness a +sweet and poignant quality.</p> + +<p>"Please," it was saying, "excuse me, you're Mr. Ransome, aren't +you—Winny Dymond's friend?"</p> + +<p>With a "Yes" that strangled itself and became inarticulate, he admitted +that he was Mr. Ransome.</p> + +<p>The girl lowered her eyelids (deep white eyelids they were, and hung +with black fringes, marvelously thick and long); she lowered them as if +her own behavior and his had made her shy.</p> + +<p>"I'm Winny's friend, too," she said. "That's why I'm here."</p> + +<p>And with that she looked him in the face with eyes that shot at him a +clear blue out of their darkness. Her eyes, as he expressed it +afterward, were "stunners," and they were "queer"; they were the +"queerest" thing about her. That was his word for their +half-fascinating, half-stupefying quality.</p> + +<p>"Are you waiting for her?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"No. It's no good waiting for her. She's gone."</p> + +<p>"Gone?"</p> + +<p>"Gone home."</p> + +<p>He rallied. "Then what are you waiting for?"</p> + +<p>"I was waiting for you," she said, "to tell you that it's no good."</p> + +<p>He had moved a little way out of the stream of people, so that he was +now placed with his back against the shutter, and she with her shoulder +to the stream. As she stood thus a man jostled her, more to attract her +attention than to move her from his path. She gave a little gasp and +shrank back with a movement that brought her nearer to Ransome and to +his side. And as she moved there came from her, from her clothes, and +from her hair, a faint odor of violets, familiar yet wonderful.</p> + +<p>"You don't mind my speaking to you?" she said.</p> + +<p>"No," said he, "but let's get out of this first."</p> + +<p>He put his hand lightly on her arm to steer her through the stream. +There was something about her—it may have been in her voice, or in the +way she looked at him—something helpless that implored and entreated +and appealed to his young manhood for protection. Her arm yielded to his +touch, yet with a slight pressure that made him aware that its tissue +was of an incredible softness. Somehow, for the moment while this touch +and pressure lasted, he found it impossible to look at her. Some +instinct held his eyes from her, as if he had been afraid.</p> + +<p>They moved on slowly, aimlessly it seemed to Ransome; yet steering he +was steered, northward, up the side street where he had seen her +disappear with Winny. It was quiet there. He no longer touched her. He +could look at her now.</p> + +<p>He looked. And what he saw was a girl well grown and of incomparable +softness. She could not have been much more than twenty, but her body +was already rounded to the full flower of its youth. This body was +neither tall nor slender nor particularly graceful. Yet it carried +itself with an effect of tallness and slenderness and grace.</p> + +<p>In the same way she impressed him as being well dressed. Yet she only +wore a little plain black gown cut rather low, with a broad lace collar. +There was a black velvet band round her waist and another on her wide +black hat. And yet another and a narrower band of black velvet round her +full white neck.</p> + +<p>The face above that neck was not beautiful, for her little straight nose +was a shade too blunt, her upper lip a shade too long and too flat; her +large mouth, red and sullen-sweet, a shade too unfinished at the edges. +There was, moreover, a hint of fullness about the jaw and chin. But the +color and the texture of this face made almost imperceptible its flaws +of structure. It was as if it had erred only through an excess of +softness that made the flesh of it plastic to its blood, to the subtle +flame that transfused the white of it, flushing and burning to rose-red. +A flame that even in soaring knew its place; for it sank before it could +diminish the amazing blueness of her eyes; and it had left her forehead +and her eyelids to the whiteness that gave accent to eyebrows and +eyelashes black as her black hair.</p> + +<p>That was how this girl's face, that was not beautiful, contrived to give +an impression of strange beauty, fascinating and stupefying as her +voice.</p> + +<p>Her voice had begun again.</p> + +<p>"It really isn't any good," it said.</p> + +<p>"What isn't?"</p> + +<p>"Your hanging about like this. It won't help you. It won't, really. You +don't know Winny."</p> + +<p>"I say, did she ask you to tell me that?"</p> + +<p>"Not she! 'Tisn't likely. And if she did, you don't suppose I'd let on. +I'm giving you the straight tip. I'm telling you what I know about her. +I'm her friend, else I couldn't do it."</p> + +<p>"But—why?"</p> + +<p>"Don't ask me—how do I know? I suppose I couldn't stand seeing you +waiting outside there, night after night, all for nothing."</p> + +<p>She drew herself up, so that she seemed to be looking down at him; she +seemed, with all her youth, to be older than he, to be no longer +childlike and innocent and helpless. And her voice, her incomparable +voice, had an edge to it; it was the voice of maturity, of experience, +of the wisdom of the world.</p> + +<p>"You can take it from me," said this voice, "that it doesn't do a man a +bit of good to go on hanging about a girl and worrying her when she +doesn't want him."</p> + +<p>"You mean—she doesn't like me?"</p> + +<p>"Like you? As far as I know she likes you well enough."</p> + +<p>"Then—for the life of me I can't see why—"</p> + +<p>"Liking a man isn't wanting him. And you're not going the way to make +Winny want you."</p> + +<p>"Oh—"</p> + +<p>He had drawn up in the middle of the pavement just to consider whether, +after all, there wasn't something in it.</p> + +<p>"You're—you're not offended?" Her voice implored now and pleaded.</p> + +<p>"That's all right."</p> + +<p>"Well—if you're sure you're not—would you mind seeing me home?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly. With pleasure."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>She was all helpless again and childlike, and he liked her that way +best.</p> + +<p>"I don't like the streets," she explained. "I'm afraid of them. I mean +I'm afraid of the people in them. They stare at me something awful. So +horribly rude, isn't it, to stare?"</p> + +<p>"Rude?" said Ransome. "It's disgustin'."</p> + +<p>"As if there was something peculiar about me. Do <i>you</i> see anything +peculiar about me? Anything, I mean, to make them stare?"</p> + +<p>He was silent.</p> + +<p>"<i>Do</i> you?" she insisted, poignantly.</p> + +<p>They were advancing headlong toward intimacy and its embarrassments.</p> + +<p>"Well, no," he said, "if you ask me—no, I don't. Except that, don't you +know, you're—"</p> + +<p>"I'm what?"</p> + +<p>"Well—"</p> + +<p>"Oh!" (She became more poignant than ever.) "You <i>do</i>, then—"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't—on my honor I—I only meant that—well, you <i>are</i> a bit +out of the way, you know."</p> + +<p>Her large gaze interrogated him.</p> + +<p>"Out of the way all round, I should fancy. Something rather wonderful."</p> + +<p>"Something—rather—wonderful—" she repeated, drowsily.</p> + +<p>"Strikes me so—that's all."</p> + +<p>"Strange?"</p> + +<p>"Sort of—"</p> + +<p>"It <i>is</i> strange that we should be talking this way—when you think— +Why, you don't even know my name."</p> + +<p>"No more I do," said Ransome.</p> + +<p>"My name is Violet. Violet Usher. Do you like it?"</p> + +<p>"Very much," said Ransome.</p> + +<p>He did not know if this was "cock-a-tree"; but if it was he found +himself enjoying it.</p> + +<p>"And yours is Randall. Mr. Randall Ransome, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"I say, you know; how did you get hold of that?"</p> + +<p>"Why—Winny told me."</p> + +<p>In the strangeness of it all he had forgotten Winny.</p> + +<p>"Then she told you wrong. Now I think of it, Winny doesn't know my real +name. My real name would take your breath away."</p> + +<p>"Tell it me."</p> + +<p>"Well—if you will have it—stand well back and hold your hat on. Don't +let it catch you full in the face. John—Randall—Fulleymore—Ransome. +Now you know me."</p> + +<p>She smiled enchantingly. "Not quite. But I know something about you +Winny doesn't know. That's strange, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>It was, if you came to think of it.</p> + +<p>They had crossed the Euston Road now, and Miss Usher turned presently up +another side street going north. She stopped at a door in a long row of +dingy houses.</p> + +<p>"This is me," she said, "I've got a room here. It was awfully good of +you to bring me."</p> + +<p>"Not at all," he murmured.</p> + +<p>"And you're sure you didn't mind my speaking to you like that? I +wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been Winny's friend."</p> + +<p>"Of course not."</p> + +<p>She was not sure whether he were answering her question or assenting to +her statement.</p> + +<p>"And now," she said, "you're going home?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose so." But he remained rooted to the doorstep, digging into a +crevice in it with his stick.</p> + +<p>From the upper step she watched him intently.</p> + +<p>"And we sha'n't see each other again."</p> + +<p><i>He</i> was not sure whether it was a statement or a question.</p> + +<p>"Sha'n't we?" He said it submissively, as if she really knew.</p> + +<p>She was opening the door now and letting herself in. Miss Usher had a +latch key.</p> + +<p>"Where?" said Miss Usher, softly, but with incision. She had turned now +and was standing on her threshold.</p> + +<p>"Oh—anywhere—"</p> + +<p>"Anywhere's nowhere." Miss Usher was smiling at him, but as she smiled +she stepped back and shut the door in his excited face.</p> + +<p>He turned away, more stupefied than ever.</p> + +<p>For the first time in his life he had encountered mystery. And he had no +name for it.</p> + +<p>But he had made a note of her street, and of the number of her door.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + + +<p>That night Ransome was more than ever the prey of thought, if you could +call it thought, that mad racing and careering of his brain which +followed his encounter with Miss Usher. The stupefaction which had been +her first effect had given way to a peculiar excitement and activity of +mind. When he said to himself that Miss Usher had behaved queerly, he +meant that she had acted with a fine defiance of convention. And she had +carried it off. She had compelled him to accept her with her mystery as +a thing long known. She had pushed the barriers aside, and in a moment +she had established intimacy.</p> + +<p>For only intimacy could have excused her interference with his innermost +affairs. She had given him an amount of warning and advice that he would +not have tolerated from his own mother. And she had used some charm that +made it impossible for him to resent it. What could well be queerer than +that he should be told by a girl he did not know that his case was +hopeless, that he must give up running after Winny Dymond, that he was +only persecuting a girl who didn't care for him. Ransome had no doubt +that she had spoken out of some secret and mystic knowledge of her +friend.</p> + +<p>He supposed that women understood each other.</p> + +<p>And after all what had she done that was so extraordinary? She had only +put into words—sensible words—his own misgivings, his own profound +distrust of the event.</p> + +<p>What <i>was</i> extraordinary, if he could have analyzed it, was the calmness +that mingled with his disturbance. Calmness with regard to Winny and to +the issue taken out of his hands and decided for him; calmness, and yet +a pain, a distinct pain that he was not subtle enough to recognize as +remorse for a disloyalty. And, under it all, that nameless, inexplicable +excitement, as if for the first time in the affairs of sex, he had a +sense of mystery and of adventure.</p> + +<p>He did not ask himself how it was that Winny had not stirred that sense +in him. He did not refer it definitely to Violet Usher. It had moved in +the air about her; but it remained when she was gone.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>So far was he from referring it to Miss Usher that when it died down he +made no attempt to revive it by following the adventure. He was +restrained by some obscure instinct of self-preservation, also by the +absurd persistence with which in thought he returned again and again to +Winny Dymond. That recurrent tenderness for Winny, a girl who had no +sort of tenderness for him, was a thing he did not mean to encourage +more than he could help. Still, it kept him from running after any other +girl. He was not in love with Violet Usher, and so, gradually, her magic +lost its hold upon his memory.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Autumn came, and with it another Grand Display at the Polytechnic +Gymnasium, the grandest he had yet known. As if it had been some great +civic function, it was attended by the Mayor of Marylebone in his robes. +To be sure, the Mayor, who was "going on" that night, left some time +before the performance of Mr. J. R. F. Ransome on the Horizontal Bar.</p> + +<p>But Ranny was not aware of the disappearance of the Mayor. He was not +perfectly aware of his own amazing evolutions on the horizontal bar. He +was not perfectly aware of anything but the face and eyes of Violet +Usher fixed on him from the side gallery above. The gallery was crowded +with other faces and with other eyes, all fixed on him; but he was not +aware of them. The gallery was for him a solitude pervaded by the +presence of Violet Usher.</p> + +<p>She was seated in the front row directly opposite him; her arms were +laid along the balustrade, and she leaned out over them, bending her +dark brows toward him, immovable and intent. He did not know whether she +was alone there. To all appearance she was alone, for her face remained +fixed above her arms, and it was as if her eyes never once looked away +from him.</p> + +<p>And under their gaze an exultation seized him and a fierce desire, not +only to exceed and to excel all other performers on the horizontal bar, +but to go beyond himself; beyond his ordinary punctual precision; beyond +the mere easy swing and temperate rhythm. Instead of the old +good-natured rivalry, it was as if he struggled and did battle in some +supreme and terrible fight. Each movement that he made fired his blood; +from the first flinging of his lithe body upward, and the sliding of its +taut muscles on the bar, to the frenzy of his revolving, triumphal, +glorious to behold. Each muscle and each nerve had its own peculiar +ecstasy.</p> + +<p>And when he dropped from the high bar to the floor he stood tingling and +trembling and breathless from the queer violence with which his heart +threw itself about. So utterly had he gone beyond himself. And he knew +that his demonstration had not been quite so triumphal, so glorious as +he had thought it. There had been far too much hurry and excitement +about it. And Booty told him he was all right, but perhaps not quite up +to his usual form.</p> + +<p>It was with the air of a conqueror that Ranny pushed his way through the +packed line of spectators in the gallery. It was with a crushed and +nervous air, as of some great artist, conscious of his aim and of his +failure, that he presented himself to Violet Usher, sliding slantwise +into the place she made for him.</p> + +<p>It was as if she had known that he would come to her. They shook hands +awkwardly. And with the stirring of her body there came from her that +faint warm odor of violets.</p> + +<p>"I didn't expect to see you here," he said, at last.</p> + +<p>"Winny brought me; else I shouldn't have come."</p> + +<p>She was very precise in making Winny responsible for her appearance. He +gathered that that was her idea of propriety.</p> + +<p>"Well—anyhow—it's a bit of all right," he said. Then they sat silent +for a while.</p> + +<p>And the girl's face turned to Ranny with a flying look; and it was as if +she had touched him with her eyes, lightly and shyly, and was gone. Then +her eyes began slowly to look him up and down, up and down, from his +bare neck and arms, white against the thin crimson binding of his +"zephyr," from his shoulders and from his chest where the lines and +bosses of the muscles showed under the light gauze, and from his crimson +belt, down the firm long slopes to his knees; and it was as if her eyes +brushed him, palpably, with soft feather strokes. They rested on his +face; and it was as if they held him between two ardent hands. And over +her own face as she looked at him there went a little wave of change. +Her rich color stirred and deepened; her lips parted for the quick +passage of her breath; and her blue eyes looked gray as if veiled in a +light vapor.</p> + +<p>Ranny was seized with an overpowering, a terrible consciousness of +himself and of his evolutions on the horizontal bar.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, as if in apology, "you've seen me figuring queerly."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's all right for men," she said. "Besides, I've seen <i>you</i> +before."</p> + +<p>"Why, you weren't here last time?"</p> + +<p>"No. Not here."</p> + +<p>"Where, then? Where on earth can you have seen me?"</p> + +<p>She bent her brows at him in that way she had, under the brim of her +wide hat. "I saw you at Wandsworth—at the Sports—running in that race. +When you won the cup."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord," said Ranny, expressing his innermost confusion.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm sure you ran beautifully."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I <i>ran</i> all right."</p> + +<p>"And you jumped!"</p> + +<p>"Anybody can jump," said Ranny.</p> + +<p>"Can they?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord, yes. You should see Fred Booty."</p> + +<p>"I did see him. You won the cup off him."</p> + +<p>She drew herself up, in that other way she had, as if challenged.</p> + +<p>"And he'll win it off me next year. You bet. Look—here they are."</p> + +<p>Some instinct, risen he knew not whence, compelled him to divert her +gaze.</p> + +<p>From below in the great hall came the sound of the rhythmic padding and +tramping of feet. The Young Ladies of the Polytechnic were marching in. +Right and left they wheeled, and right and left ranged themselves in two +long lines under the galleries. Now they were marking time with the +stiff rise and fall of black stockings under the short tunics. Facing +them, at the head of her rank, was Winny Dymond, very upright and +earnest. And with each movement of her hips the crimson sash of +leadership swung in rhythm at her side.</p> + +<p>Miss Usher turned to him. "Is Winny with them?"</p> + +<p>"Rather. There she is. Right opposite. Jolly she looks, doesn't she?"</p> + +<p>Miss Usher looked at Winny. The bent black brows bent lower, and a large +blue eye slued round into her profile, darting a sudden light at him.</p> + +<p>"Don't ask <i>me</i>," she said, "I'm sure <i>I</i> don't know." And she turned +her shoulder on him and sat thus averted, gazing at her own hands folded +in her lap.</p> + +<p>Ransome leaned out over the balustrade and watched Winny. And for a +moment, as he watched her, he felt again the old sense of tenderness and +absurdity, mingled, this time, with that mysterious pain.</p> + +<p>A barbell struck on the floor. A feminine voice gave the sharp word of +command, and the Young Ladies formed up for their performance on the +parallel bars.</p> + +<p>Miss Usher still sat averted.</p> + +<p>"Look," he said, at last, "it's Winny's turn."</p> + +<p>She turned slowly, reluctantly almost, and looked.</p> + +<p>Winny Dymond, shy, but grave and earnest, was going through her little +preliminary byplay at the bars. Then, with her startling suddenness, she +rushed at them, and swung herself, it seemed to Ransome, with an +increased abandonment, a wilder rhythm and motion; and when she raised +her body like an arch, far-stretching and wide-planted, it seemed to him +that it rose higher and stretched farther and wider than before, that +there was, in fact, something preposterous in her attitude. For as Miss +Usher looked at Winny she drew herself up and her red mouth stiffened.</p> + +<p>Ranny's tension relaxed when Winny flung herself from side to side again +and over, and lighted on her feet in the little curtseying posture, +perfunctory and pathetic.</p> + +<p>He clapped his hands. "'Jove! That's good!" He was smiling tenderly.</p> + +<p>He turned to Miss Usher, eager and delighted. "Well—what'd you think of +it?"</p> + +<p>The eyes he gazed into were remote and cold. Miss Usher did not answer +him. And he gathered from her silence that she disapproved profoundly of +the performance. He wondered why.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come," he said. "She's the best we've got. There's not one of those +girls that can touch her on the bars. Look at them."</p> + +<p>"I don't want to look at them. I didn't think it would be like that. I'm +not used to it. I've never been to a Gymnasium in my life before."</p> + +<p>"You ought to come. You should join us, Miss Usher. Why don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Mr. Ransome, I'd rather not. I don't see myself!"</p> + +<p>He didn't see her either. Some of his innocence had gone. She had taken +it away from him. He was beginning to understand how Winny's performance +had struck her. It was magnificent, but it was not a thing that could be +done by a nice woman, by a woman who respected herself and her own +womanhood and her own beauty; not a thing that could be done by Violet +Usher. He was not sure that in her view it was consistent with +propriety, with reticence, with a perfect purity. And he began to wonder +whether his own view of it had not been a little shameless.</p> + +<p>He rushed, for sheer decency, into a stuttering defense.</p> + +<p>"Well, but—well, but—but it's all right, don't you know?"</p> + +<p>"It's all right for men. They're different. But—"</p> + +<p>"Not right for women?"</p> + +<p>"If you reelly want to know—no. I don't think it is. It isn't pretty, +for one thing."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say—how about Winny?"</p> + +<p>"Winny's different. It doesn't seem to matter so much for her."</p> + +<p>"Why not—for her?"</p> + +<p>"Well—she's a queer creature anyhow."</p> + +<p>"How d'you mean—queer?"</p> + +<p>"Well—more like a boy, somehow, than a girl. She doesn't care. She'll +do anything. And she's plucky. If she's taken a thing into her head +she'll go through with it whatever you say."</p> + +<p>"Yes, she's got pluck," he assented. "<i>And</i> cheek."</p> + +<p>"Mind you, she's as good as gold, with all her queerness. But it <i>is</i> +queer, Mr. Ransome, if you're a woman, not to care what you do, or what +you look like doing it. And she's so innocent, she doesn't reelly know. +She couldn't do it if she did. All the same, I wish she wouldn't."</p> + +<p>She seemed to brood over it in beautiful distress.</p> + +<p>"It's a pity that the boys encourage them. Boys don't mind, of course. +But <i>men</i> don't like it."</p> + +<p>And with every word of her strange, magical voice there went from him +some shred of innocence and illusion. It was, of course, his innocence, +his ignorance that had made him tolerant of a Grand Display, that had +filled him with admiration for the Young Ladies of the Polytechnic +Gymnasium, and that had attracted him to Winny Dymond. Everything he had +thought and felt about Winny was illusion. It was illusion, that sense +she gave him of tenderness and of absurdity. Gymnastics were all very +well in their way. But nice women, the women that men cared about, women +like Violet Usher, did not make of their bodies a spectacle in Grand +Displays. Little Winny, whatever she did, was all right, of course; but +now he came to think of it, he began to wish, like Violet Usher, that +she wouldn't do it. It was as a boy and her comrade that he had admired +her. It was as a man that he criticized her now, looking at her through +Violet Usher's eyes. And it was as a boy that he had cared, and as a man +that he had ceased to care.</p> + +<p>In one night Ranny had suddenly grown up.</p> + +<p>Of course, it might have been different if she had cared for <i>him</i>.</p> + +<p>"What does it mean, the Combined Maze? What is it?"</p> + +<p>Miss Usher was studying her programme.</p> + +<p>The Combined Maze? That wasn't so easy to explain. But Ranny explained +it. It was, he said, a maze, because you ran it winding in and out like, +and combined, because men and women ran in it all mixed up together. +They made patterns accordin' as they ran, and the patterns were the plan +of the maze. You didn't see the plan. You didn't know it, unless you +were leader. You just followed.</p> + +<p>"I see. Men and women together."</p> + +<p>"Men and women together."</p> + +<p>"Are you running in it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Does Winny run in it?"</p> + +<p>"Rather. We run together. You'll see how it's done."</p> + +<p>Miss Usher thought she saw.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>And they ran in it together, Ransome with Winny before him, turning from +him, parting from him, flying from him, and returning to him again. +Always with the same soft pad of her feet, the same swaying of her +sturdy, slender body, the same rising and falling on her shoulders of +her childish door-knocker plat.</p> + +<p>Winny was a child; that was all that could be said of her; and he, he +was a man, grown up suddenly in a single night.</p> + +<p>He ran, perfunctorily, through all the foolish turnings and windings of +the maze. He put his hands on Winny's waist to guide her when, in her +excitement, she went wrong. He linked his arm with hers when they ran +locked, shoulder to shoulder, in the Great Wheel; but it was as if he +held and caught, and was locked together with a child. Winny's charm was +gone; and with it gone the sense of tenderness and absurdity; gone the +magic and the madness of the running. For in Ranny's heart there was +another magic and another madness. And it was as if Life itself had +caught him and locked him with a woman in the whirling of its Great +Wheel.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + + +<p>He haunted that door in the shutter more than ever in the hope of seeing +Violet Usher. Not that he wanted to haunt it. It was as if, set his feet +southward as he would, they were turned back irresistibly and drawn +eastward in the direction of the door.</p> + +<p>There was nothing furtive and secret in his haunting. He had a right to +hang about Starker's, for he knew Miss Usher now. He had been formally +introduced to her by Winny as they left the Polytechnic together, on the +night of the Grand Display. Winny, preoccupied with her own performance +on the parallel bars, had remained unaware of their communion in the +gallery, and Violet Usher had evidently judged it best to say nothing +about their previous interviews.</p> + +<p>The introducing, of course, made all the difference in the world; for +Ransome, reckless as he was, respected the conventions where women were +concerned. He had seen too much of the secret and furtive ways of other +fellows, and he knew what their hanging about meant. It meant in nine +cases out of ten that they wanted kicking badly. And Ranny would have +told you gravely that, in his experience, it was the "swells" who wanted +kicking most of all. The "fellows," the shop assistants, and the young +clerks, like himself, were fairly decent, but sometimes they wanted +kicking, too, and in any case the "flabby" way they fooled about with +girls, and their "silly goats' talk" outraged Ranny. It made a girl +cheap, and kept other fellows off her. It didn't give her her chance. It +wasn't cricket.</p> + +<p>He was prepared to kick, personally, any fellow he found making Winny +Dymond or Violet Usher cheap.</p> + +<p>Not that Winny lent herself to cheapness, but about Violet he was not +quite sure. And if you had asked why not, he would have told you it was +because she was so different. By which he meant so dangerously, so +disastrously feminine and innocent and pretty. He knew now (she had +"jolly well shown him") that Winny could take care of herself; but +Violet, no; she was too impulsive, too helpless, too confiding. To think +of her waiting for him like that—for a fellow she'd never met +before—in Oxford Street at closing-time! How did she know that he +wasn't a blackguard? Supposing it had been some other fellow? Ranny's +muscles quivered as he thought of Violet's innocence and Violet's +danger.</p> + +<p>All this was luminously clear to Ranny.</p> + +<p>But when he asked himself why, and to what end he himself desired to +cultivate her acquaintance, it was there that obscurity set in. One +thing he was sure about. He did not intend to marry her. If he couldn't +afford to marry Winny he most certainly could not afford to marry +Violet, not for years and years, so many years that you might just as +well say never, and have done with it. Violet was not the sort of girl +you could ask to wait for you years and years. His youth was not too +sanguine to divine in her the makings of a more expensive woman than +even a petty cashier could afford.</p> + +<p>To be sure, Ranny did not enter into any sordid calculations, neither +did he think the thing out in so many words; for in this matter of +Violet Usher he was incapable of any sustained and connected thought. It +came to him—the utter hopelessness of it—in glimpses and by flashes, +as he sat at his high desk in the counting-house.</p> + +<p>But no flashes came to him with the question, Why, then, did he keep on +running after Violet Usher? He ran because he couldn't help it; because +of the sheer excitement of the running; because he was venturesome, and +because of the very mystery and danger of the adventure.</p> + +<p>But, though he hung round Starker's evening after evening, from the +middle to the very end of October, he never once caught sight of Violet +Usher. Winny he caught, as often as not, now that he had given up trying +to catch her; sometimes he caught her at Starker's, sometimes at their +old corner by the Gymnasium; and whenever he caught her he walked home +with her. If Winny did not positively seek capture, she no longer +positively evaded it. She was no longer afraid of him, recognizing, no +doubt, that he wanted nothing of her, that he would never worry her +again. It was as if she had given him his lesson, and was content now +that he had learned it.</p> + +<p>One night, early in November, as they were going over Wandsworth Bridge, +the question that had been burning in him suddenly flared up.</p> + +<p>"What has become of your friend Miss Usher?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing," said Winny, "has become of her. She's gone home. Her father +sent for her."</p> + +<p>"What ever for?"</p> + +<p>"To look after her. She never should have left home."</p> + +<p>Then she told him what she knew of Violet, bit by bit, as he drew it out +of her. She was very fond of Violet. Violet had pretty ways that made +you fond of her. Everybody was fond of Violet. Only her people—they'd +been a bit too harsh and strict with her, Winny fancied. Not that she +knew anything but what Violet had told her.</p> + +<p>Where was her home?</p> + +<p>In the country. Down in Hertfordshire. Her father was a farmer, a small +farmer. The trouble was that Violet couldn't bear the country. She +wouldn't stay a day in it if she could help it. She was all for life. +She'd been about a year in town. No, Winny hadn't known her for a year. +Only for a few months really, since she came to Starker's. She'd been in +several situations before that. She was assistant at the ribbon counter +at Starker's. The clerks didn't have anything to do with the shop girls +as a rule: but Winny thought the custom silly and stuck up. Anyhow, +she'd taken a fancy to Violet, seeing her go in and out. And Violet +needed a deal of looking after. She was like a child. A spoiled child +with little ways. Winny had tried her best to take care of her, but she +couldn't be taking care of her all the time. She was glad she had gone +home, though she was so fond of her. But she was afraid she wouldn't +stay long.</p> + +<p>"You think," said Ransome, "she'll come back?"</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't be surprised if she turned up any day."</p> + +<p>"And you'll take care of her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I shall take care of her."</p> + +<p>He looked at her, and for a moment it revived, it stirred in his heart, +that odd mingled sense of absurdity and tenderness.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>She would come back, he told himself; she would come back. Meanwhile he +could call his soul his own, to say nothing of his body. Under all the +shock of it Ransome felt a certain relief in realizing that Violet Usher +had gone. It was as if some danger, half discerned, had been hanging +over him and had gone with her.</p> + +<p>But winter and spring passed, and she did not come back. They passed +monotonously, like all the springs and winters he had known. He had got +his rise at Michaelmas; but he was free from the obsession of the +matrimonial idea and all that he now looked forward to was an indefinite +extension of the Athletic Life.</p> + +<p>In June of nineteen-four he entered for the Wandsworth Athletic Sports. +He hoped to win the silver cup for the Hurdle Race, against Fred Booty, +as he had done last year.</p> + +<p>Wandsworth was sure of its J. R. F. Ransome. Putney and Wimbledon, +competing, were not sending any better men than they had sent last year. +And this year, as Booty owned, Ransome was "a fair masterpiece," a young +miracle of fitness. His admirable form, hitherto equal to young Booty's, +was improved by strenuous training, and at his worst he had what Booty +hadn't, a fire and a spirit, a power, utterly incalculable, of sudden +uprush and outburst, like the loosening of a secret energy. When he +flagged it would rise in him and sting him to the spurt. But, while it +made him the darling of the crowd, it was apt to upset the betting of +experts at the last minute.</p> + +<p>There is a level field not far from Wandsworth which is let for football +matches and athletic sports. Railings and broken hedges and a few elm +trees belt the field. All round the space marked out for the contest, a +ring of ropes held back the straining crowd; and all round, within the +ring, went the course for the mile-flat race. Down one side of the +field, facing the Grand Stand, was the course for the jumping, for the +hundred yards' flat race, and for the hurdle race, which was the last +event. On this side, where the crowd was thickest, the rope was +supplemented by a wooden barrier.</p> + +<p>The starting-post was on the right near the entrance to the field; the +winning-post on the left directly opposite the Grand Stand. Those who +could not buy tickets for the Grand Stand had to secure front places at +the barrier if they wished to see anything.</p> + +<p>Here, then, there was a tight-packed line of men and women, youths and +girls, with an excited child here and there squeezed in among them, or +squatting at their feet under the barrier. Here were young Tyser and +Buist and Wauchope of the Polytechnic, who had come to cheer. And here, +by the winning-post, well in the front, having been there since the +gates were open, were Maudie Hollis and Winny Dymond, in flower-wreathed +hats and clean white frocks. Behind, conspicuous in their seats on the +Grand Stand as became them, were Mr. and Mrs. Randall, and with them was +Ranny's mother.</p> + +<p>For all these persons there was but one event—the Hurdle Race. For all +of them, expectant, concentrated on the imminence of the Final Heat, +there was but one distraction, and that was the remarkable behavior of a +young woman who had arrived too late for a satisfactory place among the +crowd.</p> + +<p>She had wriggled and struggled through the rear, with such success that +her way to the front row was obstructed only by the bodies of two small +children. They were firmly wedged, yet not so firmly but that a +determined young woman could detach them by exerting adequate pressure. +This she did; and having loosened the little creatures from their +foot-hold, she partly lifted, partly shoved them behind her and slipped +into their places at the barrier. This high-handed act roused the +resentment of a young man, the parent or guardian of the children. He +wanted to know what she thought she was doing, shoving there, and told +her that the kids had as much right to see the blooming show as she had, +and he'd trouble her to give 'em back the place she'd taken. And it was +then that the young woman revealed herself as remarkable. For she turned +and bent upon that young man a pair of black brows with blue eyes +smiling under them, and said to him in a vivid voice that penetrated to +the Grand Stand, "Excuse me, but I <i>do</i> so want to see." And the young +man, instead of making the obvious retort, took off his hat and begged +her pardon and gave her more room than she had taken.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Randall (for he had been observing her for some time +with sidelong appreciation), "some people have a way with them."</p> + +<p>"Some people have impudence," said Mrs. Randall.</p> + +<p>"And if it was you or me, Bessie," Mrs. Ransome said, "it wouldn't have +been made so easy for us."</p> + +<p>"I see you wanting to shove anybody, Emmy," said her brother.</p> + +<p>"If I did, I shouldn't begin with little innocent children. I should +shove some one of my own size."</p> + +<p>Then they were silent and paid no more attention to the young woman and +her ways.</p> + +<p>For far down at the end of the course the racers, the winners of the +first four heats, were being ranged for the start, four abreast; the two +young men from Putney and Wimbledon on the inside of the course, Fred +Booty in the middle, and Ransome outside. Booty knew that, starting even +with his rival, he hadn't much of a chance. As for the young men from +Putney and Wimbledon, they would be nowhere.</p> + +<p>Of those four young bodies, Ransome's was by far the finest. Even Booty, +with his wild slenderness and faunlike grace, could not be compared with +Ransome, so well knit, so perfect in every limb was he. Beside him the +two young men from Putney and Wimbledon were distinctly weedy. He stood +poised, with head uplifted, his keen mouth tight shut, his nostrils +dilated, his eyes gazing forward, intent on the signal for the start. +His brown hair, soaked in the sweat of the first heat and then +sun-dried, was crisped and curled about his head. Under his white gauze +"zephyr" and black running-drawers the charged muscles quivered. His +whole body was a quivering vehicle for the leashed soul of speed.</p> + +<p>The pistol-shot was fired. They let themselves go. From far up the +course by the winning-post, where Winny leaned out over the barrier, it +was as if at the first row of hurdles four bodies leaped into the air +like one and wriggled there. At the sixth row, well in sight, two +bodies, Booty and Ransome, soared clean and dropped together. Putney and +Wimbledon rose wriggling close behind their drop. At the seventh row +Ransome was in front, divided from Booty by an almost imperceptible +interval. Putney and Wimbledon were several yards behind. At the eighth +and the ninth hurdles he rose gloriously and alone; Booty dropped with a +dull thud a yard behind him. Putney and Wimbledon were nowhere. Nobody +looked at them as they went lolloping, unevenly, dejectedly, over their +seventh hurdle.</p> + +<p>And now Booty was catching up, but the race was Ransome's. He knew it. +Booty knew it. The field knew it.</p> + +<p>Ranny's mother knew it. Little shivers went up and down her back; there +was a painful constriction in her throat, and tears of excitement in her +eyes; her hand was clenched convulsively over her pocket handkerchief +which had rolled itself into a ball. She had been holding herself in; +for she knew that these symptoms would increase when she saw Ranny, her +boy, come running.</p> + +<p>Below, at the barrier, there were hoarse cries, shrill cries, deep +shouting. "Go it, Ransome! Go it, old Wandsworth! Wandsworth wins!" +Tyser and Buist and Wauchope were yelling "Stick it, Ranny! Stick it!" +"Stick it!" "Stick—it!" The last voice, which was Wauchope's, died away +in a groan.</p> + +<p>Somebody was leaning over the barrier, on a line with the last hurdles. +Somebody stretched out an arm and shook a little white handkerchief at +him as he came on. Somebody caught his eyes and struck him with a blue +flash under black brows. She struck and fixed him as he ran to his last +leap.</p> + +<p>He looked at her and started and stood staggering with checked speed. +And as he staggered Booty rose slenderly and dropped and rushed on to +the tape-line at the winning-posts. The white tape fluttered across him +as he breasted it. Booty had won the race.</p> + +<p>They cheered him; they were bound to cheer the winner. But at the +barrier and from the Grand Stand there burst forth a more frantic uproar +of applause as Ransome recovered himself and took his last hurdle at a +stand.</p> + +<p>It was all very well to cheer him; but he was beaten, beaten in the race +that was his.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He staggered out of the course. Hanging his head, and heedless of his +friends, and of Booty's hand on his bent shoulder, he went and hid +himself in the dressing-tent.</p> + +<p>And there in the dressing-tent, his faunlike face more sanguine than +ever in his passion, Booty burst out like a young lunatic. He swore most +horribly. He swore at the umpire. He swore at Ransome. He swore at +everybody all round. The more Ranny congratulated him, the more he swore +at him. He called Ranny a blanky young fool, and asked him what the +blank he did it for. He said it was a blanky shame, and that if anybody +tried to give <i>him</i> a blanky cup, he'd throw it at 'em. Even when they'd +calmed him down a bit, he still swore that he'd give Ranny the cup, for +Ranny'd given him the race. He explained to them in his hoarsest tones +that it stood to reason he could never have got in with the pace Ranny'd +got on him. It wasn't fair, he said. It was a fluke, a blanky fluke.</p> + +<p>And round him Tyser and Buist and Wauchope clamored in the tent and +agreed with him, declaring that it wasn't fair. Of course it was a +fluke, a blanky fluke.</p> + +<p>And Ranny, though he told Booty to dry up and stow it; though he put it +to Tyser and Buist and Wauchope that it wasn't any blanky fluke, that it +couldn't well be fairer, seeing how he'd funked it at the finish, Ranny +knew in his heart that somewhere there was something queer about it. He +couldn't think why on earth he'd funked it.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>That night, in her little room in St. Ann's Terrace, Winny lay awake and +cried.</p> + +<p>Violet Usher had come back.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + + +<p>It was from the next day, Sunday, that he dated it—what happened. It +followed as a sequel to the events of Sunday.</p> + +<p>For Ransome was convinced that it never could have happened if he had +not gone with Wauchope on Sunday evening to that Service for Men. He +used to say that if you traced it back far enough, poor old Wauchope was +at the bottom of it. It was poor old Wauchope who had "rushed" him for +the Service (in calling him poor old Wauchope, he recognized him as the +unknowing and unwilling thing of Destiny). Thus it had its root and rise +in the extraordinary state of Wauchope's soul.</p> + +<p>Wauchope had realized that he <i>had</i> a soul, and was beginning to take an +interest in it. That, of course, was not the way he put it when he +approached Ransome on Saturday night after the Sports Dinner at the +"Golden Eagle." All he said was that he was "in for it." Been let in by +a curate johnnie who'd rushed him for a Service for Men to-morrow night +at Clapham. Wauchope wasn't going because he wanted to, but because the +curate was such a decent chap he didn't like to disappoint him. He ran a +Young Men's Club in St. Matthias's, Clapham, and Wauchope helped him by +looking in now and then for a knock-up with the gloves. The curate was +handy with the gloves himself. A bit cumbrous, but fancied himself as a +featherweight, in a skipping, dodging, dance-all-round-you, +land-you-one-presently sort of style. Well, the curate johnnie had been +handing round printed invitations for this Service. "All Welcome," don't +you know? "Come, and bring a Friend." Wauchope had promised, Honor +Bright, he'd come and bring a friend. And Ransome, in a weak moment, had +consented to be brought.</p> + +<p>The Service would be at eight, and would last, say, till nine. Half past +nine was the very earliest hour he could fix for his appointment with +Miss Usher.</p> + +<p>For he had seen her. She had risen up before him, to his amazement, on +that Sunday evening, as he turned out of his own door on his way to +supper with Wauchope at Clapham. He had walked with her for five +minutes, wheeling his bicycle in the gutter, while they settled how and +where they were to meet.</p> + +<p>She was living in Wandsworth, lodging in St. Ann's Terrace, near to +Winny Dymond, so that Winny could take care of her. She had got another +situation at Starker's, in the millinery department.</p> + +<p>He proposed that he should meet her at closing-time to-morrow, and she +smiled at him and said she didn't mind; but Winny would be there (he had +forgotten Winny). Then he suggested next Saturday afternoon or Sunday +about three; and she said she really couldn't say. Saturday and Sunday +were such a long way off, and things might be different now that she was +in the millinery. And she smiled again, and in such a manner that he had +a vision, a horrible vision, of other fellows crowding round her on +Saturdays and Sundays. He more than suspected that this was +"cock-a-tree"; but it made him desperate, so that he said, "Well—how +about to-night?"</p> + +<p>Well—<i>to-night</i> she'd promised Winny she'd be good and go to church.</p> + +<p>If he had been madder, if he'd been more set on it, he would have gone +off with her that minute; he would have persuaded her to give up church; +he himself would have broken his promise to old Wauchope. But he did +none of these things, and his abstention was the sign and measure of his +coolness, of his sanity. He only said, as any cool and sane young man +might say: How about after church? And if he called when he got back +from Clapham? He wouldn't be a minute later than half past nine.</p> + +<p>And Violet had said: Oh, well—she didn't know about calling. You see, +she only had one room. And he had reckoned with that difficulty; for +Winny Dymond only had one room which she shared with Maudie. By calling, +he'd meant, of course, on the doorstep, to take her for a walk.</p> + +<p>But Violet, for some reason, didn't care about the doorstep. She'd +rather, if he didn't mind, that he met her somewhere out of doors.</p> + +<p>And so they had been drawn into an assignation at the old elm tree by +the Causeway on Wandsworth Plain.</p> + +<p>Thus, if it had done nothing else to him, the Service for Men could be +held responsible for throwing that meeting with Violet much too late.</p> + +<p>Still, he had no misgivings. It was June; and in June nine o'clock was +still daytime. And when he went to the Service he hadn't any idea what +it would do to him.</p> + +<p>No more, of course, had poor old Wauchope. Wauchope was grateful and +apologetic; before they got there he said he didn't know what he might +be letting Ransome in for. The curate johnnie was bossing the Service, +but he understood they'd engaged another joker for the Address. What he, +Wauchope, funked, personally, more than anything was the Address. And +Ransome, generously, declared that whatever it was like, he'd stick it. +He'd stand by Wauchope to the finish, like a man.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>They left their bicycles in Wauchope's rooms, and walked the few hundred +yards to St. Matthias's Mission Church.</p> + +<p>St. Matthias's Mission Church was a brand-new yellow-brick building in +the latest Gothic, with a red-tiled roof, where a shrill little bell +swung tinkling under the arch in the high west gable.</p> + +<p>Inside, cream distempered walls with brown stencilings; in the roof, +bare beams of pitch pine, stained and varnished; north and south, clear +glass windows shedding a greenish light; one brilliant stained-glass +window above the altar at the east end.</p> + +<p>Up and down the aisles between the open pews of pitch pine went the +workers of the Mission, marshaling the men into their seats. By the west +door, Wauchope's friend, the cumbrous curate, who fancied himself as a +featherweight, stood smiling and shaking hands with each man as he came, +and thanking him for coming, thus carrying out the idea that it was an +entertainment. He had his largest smile, his closest grip for Wauchope +and for Ransome, for they were men after his own heart. Ransome observed +the curate critically, and without committing himself irretrievably to +an opinion, he owned that he looked fit enough. There was not about him +any sign that you could see of flabbiness or weediness. He was evidently +a decent johnnie, and for all that happened afterward Ransome forbore to +hold him personally responsible.</p> + +<p>The service, conducted by the curate, was extremely brief. Everything +was left out that could be left, to make room for hymns wherever it was +possible to place a hymn. The Psalms were chanted, and the curate +intoned the Prayers in a voice that was not his natural voice, but +something far more poignant and impressive.</p> + +<p>There were no boys in the choir, and the singing, that lacked their +purifying and clarifying treble, had a strange effect, somber yet +disturbing. It acted on Ranny like an incantation.</p> + +<p>Of course, if he had known what it was going to do to him, he would have +kept away.</p> + +<p>For though there was nothing in his flesh and blood and muscle that +suggested an inebriate father, yet in his profounder and obscurer being +he was Fulleymore Ransome's son. The secret instability that made +Fulleymore Ransome drink had had its effect on Ranny's nervous system. +His nerves, though he was not aware of it, were finely woven and highly +strung. He had a tendency to be carried away and to be excited, exalted, +and upset. Since Saturday afternoon Ranny had remained more or less in a +state of tension induced by the hurdle race, by the shock of seeing +Violet Usher, and by the dinner at the "Golden Eagle." And, coming +straight from Violet, he had entered St. Matthias's Mission Church keyed +up to his highest pitch. So that the Service for Men which subdued +Wauchope and made him humble and ashamed and sent him away trying to be +a better man, that very same Service worked Ranny up to a point when +anything became possible to him.</p> + +<p>First of all, then, the intoning and the chanting acted on him exactly +like an incantation. Ranny's will, the spiritual part of him, was lulled +to sleep by the rhythmic voices, and as his sense of decency had no +reason whatever to expect an outrage, it was also off its guard, +quiescent, passive to the charm. The rest of Ranny was exposed, +piteously, to the rhythm that swelled, that accentuated, accelerated the +vibration of his inner tumult.</p> + +<p>Then the obvious safety-valve was closed to him. A sense of strangeness +and of sudden shyness prevented him from joining as he should have +joined in the Service. Ranny could not take it out all at once in +singing. That silence and passivity of his left him open at every pore +to the invasion of the powers of sound. These young, intensely vibrant +bass and tenor voices sang all round him, they sang at him and into him +and through him. There was a young man close behind him with a tenor +voice that pierced him like a pain. There was Wauchope at his right ear +thundering in a tremendous barytone.</p> + +<p>First of all it was a trumpet call that shook him.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sold-ier-ers o-of Christ! a-arise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And put your armor on,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>sang Wauchope. The sound of that singing made Ransome feel noble; and +there is nothing more insidiously destructive than feeling noble.</p> + +<p>And then, later on, it was a strange and a more poignant cry that melted +him, so that his very soul dissolved in tenderness and yearning.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Jesu, Lover o-of my soul,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>sang the young man with the tenor.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Let me to Thy bosom fly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the gathering wa-ters roll.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the tempest sti-ill is high."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>(Ranny felt them about him, the waters and the tempest.)</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Other refuge ha-ave I none,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hangs my helpless soul on Thee;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leave—ah! leave me no-ot alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still support and co-omfort me."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And as the infinite pathos and pleading of the tenor voice played on +him, Ranny sank, lost and shelterless and alone, till at the word "Life" +he rose again and exulted, he rose above himself, even to the point of +singing.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thou of Life the fountain art,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Freely let me take of Thee;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spring Thou up with-in my heart;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>sang Ranny.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Rise to all eternity."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There was something about that hymn, and his own sudden crying out in +it, that made him peculiarly susceptible to the influences of the +Address. When the preacher rose in the pulpit, when he looked about him +with ardent and earnest eyes in a face ravaged by emotion, when his wide +and somewhat loose and mobile lips gave out the text, Ranny had an +obscure foreknowledge of what would happen to him.</p> + +<p>For he was not altogether virgin to the experience he was undergoing. It +belonged to certain moods of his childhood and his adolescence when more +than once, in Wandsworth Parish Church, he had been stirred mysteriously +by the tender music of the Evening Service, and by the singing of +certain hymns. There were layers upon layers of emotion sunk beyond +memory in Ranny's soul. So that what happened to him now had the +profound and vehement, though secret, force of a revival. The submerged +feelings rose in him; they were swollen, intensified, dominated beyond +recognition by the virile and unspiritual passion that leaped up and ran +together with them and made them one. It gave them an obscure but superb +sanction and significance.</p> + +<p>For that incantation not only called up the past; with a still greater +magic and mystery it evoked the future. It was a prophecy, a premonition +of the things to be. It cried upon the secret, unseen powers of life. It +brought down destiny.</p> + +<p>"'Know ye not that your bodies,'" said the preacher—and he leaned out +and looked to the young men on the right—"'your bodies'"—and he looked +to the young men on the left—"'are the temples, of the Holy +Ghost'"—and he looked straightforward and paused as if he saw invisible +things.</p> + +<p>He may have drawn a bow at a venture, but he seemed to have singled out +Ranny from among all those young men. He leaned over his pulpit, and +fixed his kindled and penetrating eyes on Ranny. He adjured Ranny to +remember that Sin which he had never committed; he implored him to +recall the shame which he had never felt, and at the same time to purge +himself of that unholy memory, and put away from him the sensual +thoughts that had never occurred to him and the abominable intentions +that he had never had.</p> + +<p>Then, with a subtle and plastic inflection of his voice, like the poise +of wings descending, he dropped from that almost inspired height of +emotion, and became shrewd and practical, thoroughly informed and +competent, a physician with a flair for the secret of disease, a surgeon +of the Soul, relentless in his handling of the knife, a man of the world +who spoke to them of what he knew, in all sincerity, as man to man. And +then he soared again, flapping his great wings that fanned emotion to a +flame.</p> + +<p>And through it all the young curate who had brought them there sat +folded more and more within his surplice, and became more and more red +as to his face, more and more dubious as to his eyes. He was like some +young captain, wise though intrepid, who sees his brave battalions +routed through the false move of his general.</p> + +<p>The magic worked. A man behind Ransome was heard breathing heavily. The +gentle drowsiness habitually expressed by Wauchope's broad and somewhat +flattened features was intensified to stupefaction. His head had sunk +slightly forward, but he looked up, lowering at the preacher with his +little innocent eyes, half sullen, half afraid.</p> + +<p>Wauchope was merely uncomfortable. He suffered on the surface. But Ranny +was disturbed profoundly, shaken, excited, and most curiously uplifted.</p> + +<p>He and Wauchope compared notes afterward on the preacher, whom they +called "that imported josser." They thought he rather fancied himself at +that particular job, and supposed that he was some sort of a "pro" who +had spoiled his "form" by overdoing it, and had lost the confidence of +his backers. They agreed that if Wauchope's friend the curate had given +them a straight talk it would have been much straighter. As it was, +nothing could have been more devious, more mysterious and serpentine +than the discourse that turned and wound and wormed its way into the +last obscurities and secrecies of Ranny's being.</p> + +<p>In the Mission Church of St. Matthias's Ranny underwent illumination. It +was as if all that was dark and passionate in him had been interpreted +for him by the preacher. Interpreted, it became in some perverse way +justified. Over and above that innermost sanction and recognition it had +the seal outside it of men's acknowledgment, it took its place among the +existent, the normal, the expected. Ranny was not alone in his passion +and confusion. He was companioned, here and now, in the great +enlightenment.</p> + +<p>But even Ranny could not have foretold the full extent of his reaction +to that sinuous and evocative Address.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, so carried away was Ranny that he joined Wauchope in a +furious singing of the final hymn, "Onward, Christian so-o-oldier-ers!"</p> + +<p>He had felt noble; he had felt tender; now he was triumphant.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + + +<p>Wauchope, who hadn't a nerve in his composition, recovered soon after he +got into the open air. But in Ransome, without intermission, the magic +of that incantation worked.</p> + +<p>The symptoms of its working were a frightful haste, anxiety, and fear. +He left Wauchope without any explanation, and rode off to his +appointment at a dangerous speed and with a furious ringing of his bell. +He was afraid that if he were late by five seconds Violet Usher would be +gone. It was incredible to him that she should be there. It was +incredible that it should have come to this, that he should be flying in +haste and anxiety and fear unspeakable to meet her at the elm tree by +the Causeway on Wandsworth Plain. The whole adventure was incredible.</p> + +<p>Yet there could not be a better place for it than Wandsworth Plain, a +three-cornered patch of bare ground, bounded on one side by the river +Wandle, and on the other by a row of brown cottages and two little old +inns, with steep tiled roofs and naked walls, "The Bell" and "The +Crane." They were pure eighteenth century, and they give to Wandsworth +Plain its lonely and deserted air as of a little riverside hamlet +overlooked by time and the Borough Council. On a Sunday evening in +summer they stand as if in perpetual peace, without rivalry, without +regret, very bright and clean and simple, one washed yellow and the +other chalk-white. The river runs under brown walls, shaded on one side +by espalier limes, on the other over-hung with elder bushes in flower. +Lower down, on the banks, are willows and alders, and the wild hemlock +grows there, lifting up its great white whorls. Beyond the farther wall +and the limes there is a vast yard, stacked with timber; beyond the +banks a dock; and beyond all, on the great River, unseen, a distance of +crowded warehouses and gray wharves.</p> + +<p>The elm tree, muffled in green, leans out over the stream as the +lightning bowed it long ago, propped by wooden stays, mutilated to the +merest torso of a tree. A sacred thing, the elm tree is inclosed and +guarded by a wooden railing as in a shrine.</p> + +<p>Ransome was ten minutes too early, and it was impossible that she should +be there. Yet there she was, in her white dress, leaning up against the +wooden railing, as if swept and then left there in her detachment, so +inaccessible, so isolated was she, so unaware or so disdainful of the +couples, the young devotees of passion, who had made the elm tree their +meeting-place. She was there too soon, yet about her there was no air of +haste, but rather of brooding and delay. You would have said of her in +her stillness that she could afford to wait, she was so certain of her +end.</p> + +<p>She scarcely stirred from her place to greet Ransome as he came. He +leaned up against the railing close beside her.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry," he said. "I tore like mad. Did you think I was never +coming?"</p> + +<p>She smiled with a curious smile.</p> + +<p>"No," she said. "I knew that you would come."</p> + +<p>And they stayed there. (Some instinct had impelled him to call at the +shop, and leave his bicycle with Mercier. A bicycle was an encumbrance, +a thing inappropriate to the adventure.) They stayed while the couples, +the young devotees of passion, stood locked in each other's arms, or +moved away, slowly, like creatures in an enchantment, linked together, +and passed into the dusk. And in the end his hand sought and found hers, +secretly, behind the shelter of her gown, and they too passed, hand in +hand and slowly, like creatures in an enchantment; they were drawn into +the dusk, beyond the barrier at the Causeway, to the footpath by the +river.</p> + +<p>When they returned to the elm tree it was all dark and secret there. +They stood as those others had stood, creatures of the enchantment, +locked, with hands on shoulders and faces looking close and seeing each +other's eyes large and strange in the darkness.</p> + +<p>Over Wandsworth Plain came the sound of the Parish Church clock striking +ten.</p> + +<p>When they reached St. Ann's Terrace the little brown house where Violet +lodged was shut up, asleep behind drawn blinds.</p> + +<p>Violet could let herself in. She had a key. At least, she thought she +had. She could have been almost sure she had brought it. But no, it was +not in her purse, nor yet in her pocket. She turned the pocket inside +out and shook it, and there was no key. Oh, dear, she was afraid she had +lost it, or else—perhaps—she hadn't brought it after all. She was that +careless. She thought she must have left it in her room on the +dressing-table.</p> + +<p>They knocked three times, and nobody answered. Nobody was there. They +had all gone out early in the evening, and evidently they had not come +back. Sometimes, Violet said, they weren't back till eleven or past it.</p> + +<p>Well, she didn't want to stand out there much longer. She wondered how +she was ever going to get in.</p> + +<p>They looked at each other and laughed at their helplessness. There is +always something funny about being locked out. Ranny said, "What a +lark!"</p> + +<p>Then he thought of the window.</p> + +<p>It was low. He stepped on to the ledge, and stood there. He slipped the +latch with the blade of his pocket knife. He raised the sash and dropped +into the room. He groped about in it till he found his way into the +passage and opened the door and let Violet in.</p> + +<p>She said she was all right now. Her candle would be left there for her, +on the shelf. But it wasn't, and Violet didn't like the dark. She was +afraid of it. So Ranny lit a match. He lit several matches and lighted +her all the way up the narrow staircase to the door of her little +bedroom at the back. She took the matches from him and went in to look +for the candle, leaving the door ajar and Ranny standing outside it on +the mat.</p> + +<p>He heard her soft feet moving about the room; he heard the spurt of the +matches, and her little smothered cry of impatience as they went out one +by one. It seemed ages to Ranny as he waited.</p> + +<p>At last she found the candle and lit it and set it down somewhere where +it was hidden behind the door.</p> + +<p>And then she came to him with her eyes all shining in the dusk.</p> + +<p>She filled the half-opened doorway; and round and about her and in the +room beyond there hung, indescribable but perceptible, palpable almost +as a touch, the thick scent of her hair. And they stood together on the +threshold as they had stood by the elm tree in the dark.</p> + +<p>She closed her eyes, and his hold tightened. She called his name +thickly, "Ranny!" and suddenly it was as if his very nerves and the +strength of his knees dissolved and flowed like water, and drawing he +was drawn over the threshold.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Don't worry about it, Ranny. It had got to be."</p> + +<p>She said it, clinging to him with soft hands, as he parted from her. For +a moment she was moved beyond herself by his compunction, his passion of +tenderness for the helpless thing she seemed.</p> + +<p>What would have surprised him if he could have thought about it was +that, above it all, above the tenderness and the compunction, he still +felt that triumphant sense of sanction and completion, of acquiescence +in an end foreappointed and foreseen.</p> + +<p>But before he could think about it he was overtaken by an astounding, an +incredible drowsiness.</p> + +<p>He dragged himself home to his attic and his bed, where, astoundingly, +incredibly, he slept.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + + +<p>It was about nine o'clock of another Sunday evening a week later.</p> + +<p>Winny Dymond was sitting on the edge of Violet's bed in the little back +room in St. Ann's Terrace. Violet, in a white petticoat and camisole, +overcome by the heat, lay stretched at length, like a drowsy animal, in +the hollow of the bed where she had flung herself. Her head, tilted +back, lay in the clasp of her hands. Her breasts, drawn upward by the +raised arms, left her all slender to the waist. The soft-folded, finely +indented crook of her elbows made a white frame for her flushed face. +She was looking at Winny with eyes narrowed to the slits of the sleepy, +half-shut lids.</p> + +<p>In a thick, sweet voice, a voice too drowsy for anything beyond the bare +statement of the fact, she had been telling Winny that she was engaged +to be married to Mr. Ransome.</p> + +<p>Now she was looking at Winny (all her intelligence narrowed to that +thread-fine glint of half-shut eyes), looking to see how Winny would +take it.</p> + +<p>Winny took it with that blankness that leaves the brain naked to all +irrelevant impressions, and with a silence that made all her pulses +loud. She heard the rattle and roar of a distant tram and the clock +striking the hour in the room below. She saw the soiled lining and the +ugly warp of Violet's shoes kicked off and overturned beside the bed. +Beyond the shoes, a stain that had faded rose and became vivid on the +carpet. Then a film came over Winny's eyes, and on the far border of the +field of vision, somewhere toward the top of her head, a yellow chest of +drawers with white handles grew dim and quivered and danced like the +yellow and white specter of a chest of drawers.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you're surprised," said Violet.</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not. Not at all."</p> + +<p>And she wasn't. But she was amazed at her own calmness.</p> + +<p>"I knew it," she said.</p> + +<p>"Knew it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>Of course she had known it. If she hadn't, how could she have endured it +now?</p> + +<p>"When did you know?"</p> + +<p>"Last week. When you came back."</p> + +<p>That was not true. She had known it before last week. She had known it +as long as she had known Violet. And she had known that because of it +Violet would come back.</p> + +<p>She hadn't blamed Violet for coming back. Even now, as she sat on +Violet's bed and was tortured by those lights under Violet's eyelids, +even now she didn't blame her. And if she turned her shoulder it was not +because she minded Violet looking at her (she was past minding that), +but because she was afraid to look at Violet. She didn't want to see her +lying there. It was almost as if she were afraid of hating her.</p> + +<p>Behind her Violet was stirring. She had drawn up her outstretched limbs +and raised herself on the pillows. Winny felt her behind her, restless +and alert.</p> + +<p>Then she spoke again.</p> + +<p>"You needn't mind, Winny. It's got to be."</p> + +<p>"Mind? What makes you think I'm minding?"</p> + +<p>"The way you sit there with your mouth shut, saying nothing."</p> + +<p>"There's nothing to say. I'm not surprised. You've not told me anything +I didn't know."</p> + +<p>"Well, any one would think you didn't approve of it. Why can't you get +up and say you hope we'll be happy, or something?"</p> + +<p>"Of course, I hope you'll be happy. I want you to be happy."</p> + +<p>(Of course she did.)</p> + +<p>"Look here"—Violet was sitting up now—"<i>was</i> there anything between +you and him?"</p> + +<p>Winny rose straight and turned and looked at her.</p> + +<p>"You've no business to ask that," she said.</p> + +<p>"Yes I have." She rose slowly, twisted herself, slid her foot to the +floor, and stood up facing Winny. "If I'm going to marry him I've a +right to know. Not that it'll make a scrap of difference."</p> + +<p>"Who told you there was anything between us?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody told me. I mean—<i>was</i> there—before I came?"</p> + +<p>"There was never anything—never. Any one who tells you anything +different's telling you a lie. I'm not saying we weren't friends—"</p> + +<p>Violet smiled.</p> + +<p>"I'm not saying you were anything else. You can go on being friends. <i>I</i> +sha'n't care. Only don't you go saying I came between you—that's all."</p> + +<p>At that Winny fired.</p> + +<p>"As if I'd do any such a thing! I don't know what can have put it into +your head."</p> + +<p>Violet laughed.</p> + +<p>"You should see <i>your face</i>," she said. "Why—any one could tell you +were gone on him. They've only got to look at you."</p> + +<p>There are some insults, some insolences that cannot be answered.</p> + +<p>"You can believe that," said Winny, "if you like—if it makes you any +happier. But your believing it won't make it true."</p> + +<p>She walked slowly, in her small dignity, to the chair where she had +thrown down her hat. She took up the hat and put it on, deliberately, +with a high bravery, before the glass.</p> + +<p>Then she turned to her friend and smiled at her.</p> + +<p>"It's all right," she said, "though you mightn't think it. Good-by."</p> + +<p>Whereupon Violet rushed at her and kissed her.</p> + +<p>"It isn't your fault, and it isn't mine, Winky," she whispered. "It's +got to be, I tell you."</p> + +<p>She drew herself from the embrace, erect and rosy, in a sudden passion +that had in it both triumph and despair.</p> + +<p>"Wild horses couldn't have torn him and me apart."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>And Winny didn't blame her; even in the pain of the night that followed, +when she lay awake in the bed she shared with Maudie Hollis, stifling +her sobs lest she should waken Maudie, clutching the edge of the +mattress where she had writhed out of Maudie's reach. For at the first +sound of crying the proud beauty had turned to her friend and put her +arms about her, and held her in a desolate and desolating embrace.</p> + +<p>"Don't cry, Winny; don't cry, dear. It isn't worth it," had been +Maudie's consolation. For, though Winny hadn't said a word to her, she +knew. And she had followed it up by declaring that she hated that Violet +Usher; and she hated Ransome; she hated everybody who made little Winky, +little darling Winky, cry.</p> + +<p>But Winky didn't hate them. It had to be. Nothing could be more +beautiful in its simplicity than her acceptance of the event.</p> + +<p>And she didn't blame them. She didn't blame anybody. She had brought it +on herself. The thing was as good as done last summer, when she had +stopped Ranny making love to her. She had stopped it on purpose. She +knew he couldn't afford to marry her, not for years and years; she knew +he had been trying to tell her so; and it didn't seem fair, somehow, to +let him get worked up all for nothing. That was how girls drove men mad. +She considered that she was there to take care of Ranny, and she had +seen, in her wisdom, that to keep Ranny well in hand would be less hard +on him than to let him lose his head.</p> + +<p>Violet hadn't seen it, that was all.</p> + +<p>Besides, Violet was different. She had ways with her which made it no +wonder if Ranny lost his head. In Winny's opinion the man didn't live +who could resist Violet and her ways. She got round you somehow. She had +got round Winny last year when she had come imploring her to take her to +the Grand Display at the Polytechnic Gymnasium, teasing her and +threatening that if she didn't take her she'd go off to the Empire by +herself. She had spoken as if going to the Empire was a preposterous and +unheard-of thing. Winny didn't know that Violet had gone there more than +once, not by herself, but with the foreman of her department.</p> + +<p>And she had had to take her, and that, of course, had done it. Though +she had been afraid of this thing and had foreknown it from the +beginning, she had taken her; though she had been afraid ever since she +had seen Violet's face and watched her ways. So afraid was she that she +had tried to keep Ranny from ever seeing Violet. Time and again she had +hurried her away when she had seen Ranny coming, while the fear in her +heart told her that those two were bound to meet. She had lived from +hand to mouth on her precarious happiness, contented if she could stave +off the evil day.</p> + +<p>And it was all worse than useless. Violet had been aware that she was +being hurried away when Ranny came in sight, and it had made her the +more set. As for Winny's hope that Violet would forget all about Ranny +when some other man appeared, it was futile as long as she took care of +Violet. Taking care of Violet meant keeping her as far as possible out +of the way of other men—so that there again! It seemed as if she had +arranged it so that Ranny should be the only one. For Winny had divined +her friend's disastrous temperament even while she maintained hotly that +there was no harm in her. And she had almost quarreled with Maudie +because the proud beauty had said, "Well, you'll see."</p> + +<p>Winny knew nothing about Violet and the foreman.</p> + +<p>And with the same innocence she never doubted that when Violet and +Ransome met that night at the Polytechnic it was for the first time.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>And so she stitched with a good will at a white muslin blouse for +Violet's wedding present, and folded it herself and put it away in the +yellow chest of drawers with the rest of Violet's wedding things. It lay +there, all snowy white, with a violet-scented sachet on the top of it, a +sachet (Winny had found it in the drawer) with a pattern of violets on a +white satin ground and the name "Violet" sprawling all across it in +embroidery.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + + +<p>Ransome had barely risen from that sleep of exhaustion when he realized +the disastrous character of the night's adventure. He was no longer +uplifted by any sense of sanction and of satisfaction. Of the pride of +life there remained in him only sufficient to prevent him from regarding +his behavior as in any sense a shame and a disaster to his own youth. +Otherwise his mood was entirely penitential. He could not look at the +thing as it affected himself. However it might be for him, he had +wronged Violet, and that was calamity enough for any man to face. +According to all his instincts and traditions, he had wronged her.</p> + +<p>Of course, he was going to marry her. He was going to marry her at once; +as soon as ever they could get their banns put up. It never occurred to +him that delay could, in such a case, be possible.</p> + +<p>For, from the very moment of that morning after, in Ranny's heart there +was an awful and a sacred fear, a fear of fatherhood. It was the first +thing he thought of as soon as he could think at all.</p> + +<p>He wanted to put Violet right at once, before a suspicion of that +possibility should have crossed her mind. It would have seemed to him +abominable to risk it, to wait on, as fellows did, on the off-chance of +a reprieve, till she came to him, poor child, with her whispered tale. +That, to Ranny's mind, was where the shame came in; not in the fact, +but in the compulsion of the fact. It was intolerable that any man +should have the right to say of his own wife that he had been forced to +marry her. Hence his desperate haste.</p> + +<p>Violet couldn't understand it. She didn't want to be married all at +once. She said there was no hurry; that he couldn't afford it; that +there was no rime nor reason in it; let them go on as they were a bit; +let them wait and see.</p> + +<p>In all this Ranny saw only a tenderness and a desire to spare him. But +he stood firm. He was not concerned with reasons and with rimes; he +wouldn't wait, he wouldn't see; and (this astonished Violet and secretly +enraged her) he absolutely refused to go on as they were.</p> + +<p>For his fear was always before him.</p> + +<p>It was no doubt to that refusal of his that he owed Violet's consent.</p> + +<p>His family were appalled at the news of Ranny's engagement. It was so +unexpected, so unlike him; and how it had happened Ranny's mother +couldn't think. She knew all his comings and goings for the last year. +His temperance and discretion had given her a sense of imperishable +security. She had made up her mind that Ranny wasn't one to be in a +hurry; and now she had been right only in her prophecy that when his +time came there would be no holding him.</p> + +<p>And there <i>was</i> no holding him.</p> + +<p>They had all tried it. They had all been at him; his Uncle Randall and +his Aunt Randall, and his mother and his father. For the first time in +his life Mr. Ransome was roused to take an interest in his son, to +acknowledge him as an adult, capable of formidably adult things. And +though they all told him that he was too young to know his own mind, +that he was doing foolish, and behaving silly, under the show of +disapproval and disparagement it was clear that they respected him, that +they realized his manhood, and that he was somehow important to them as +he had never been important in his life before.</p> + +<p>What was more, rage as they would at it, they were impressed by Ranny's +firmness, his unalterable and imperturbable determination to marry, and +to marry the unknown Violet Usher.</p> + +<p>And on the main issue they gave way. They owned that it was natural that +the boy should want to marry; they saw that he would have to marry some +day; and his mother went so far as to say she wanted him to marry and to +settle down. What they did not understand, and most certainly did not +approve of, what they did their best to talk him out of, was the awful +hurry he was in. There wasn't any hurry, they said, there shouldn't be, +when he was so young. He couldn't afford to marry now, but he could +afford it very well in two years' time. Why, he was only twenty-three, +and in two years' time he'd have got his next rise, and he'd have saved +more money.</p> + +<p>"If you'd wait, Ranny," said his mother, "but the two years." And his +father and his uncle said he <i>must</i> wait.</p> + +<p>But Ranny wouldn't. He wouldn't wait six months. No, and he wouldn't +wait three months and look about him. He wouldn't have waited three +weeks if it hadn't been for the banns. It was no use their talking.</p> + +<p>They knew it. It had been no use their talking seven years ago, when +Ranny had refused to become a Pharmaceutical Chemist, and had given no +reasons, because the only reason he could give was that life would be +intolerable if spent in the perpetual presence of his father. And he +didn't give them any reasons now.</p> + +<p>Before the Ransomes and the Randalls knew where they were the banns had +been put up in Wandsworth Parish Church and in the Parish Church of +Elstree, in Hertfordshire, and Violet had been twice to tea.</p> + +<p>He had looked for opposition down at Elstree, in Hertfordshire, fierce +and insurmountable opposition from Mr. Usher, that father who had been +so harsh to Violet. It was incredible that Violet's father would allow +him to marry her; it was incredible that her mother would allow it. He +would just have to marry her in spite of them.</p> + +<p>But, as it happened, the attitude of Mr. and Mrs. Usher surpassed +probability. Not only were they willing that he should marry Violet, +they desired that he should marry her at once. The sooner the better, +Mr. Usher said. If young Ransome could marry her to-morrow he'd be best +pleased. It was almost as if Mr. Usher knew. But, of course, he didn't, +he couldn't possibly know. He would have scouted the proposition +altogether if he hadn't had three other younger girls at home. It +wasn't, Ranny reflected, as if Violet was the only one. So far from +putting obstacles in Ranny's way, Mr. Usher positively smoothed it. +Understanding that the young man was not, as you might call it, rolling, +he said there wasn't much that they could do, but if at any time a +hamper of butter and eggs and fruit and vegetables should come in +handy, they'd send it along and welcome; he shouldn't even wonder if, in +case of necessity, they could rise to a flitch of bacon or a joint of +pork. Ranny was exquisitely grateful; though, as for the necessity, he +didn't see himself depending on his father-in-law for his food supplies. +He had no foreboding of the importance that hamper from Hertfordshire +was to assume in the drama of his after life. For the actual hour it +stood simply as the measure of Mr. Usher's approval and good will.</p> + +<p>He was much moved when at parting Mrs. Usher pressed him by the hand and +asked him to be gentle with her girl. There was no harm, Mrs. Usher +said, in poor Vi. She was a bit wilful and wildlike; all for life was +Violet—but there, she'd be as good as gold when she had a home and a +kind husband and children of her own. "Mark my words," said Mrs. Usher, +"once the babies come she'll settle down."</p> + +<p>And Ranny marked her words.</p> + +<p>This unqualified backing that he got from Violet's parents went far to +sustain Ransome in the conflict with his own. He could, indeed, have +embraced Mr. and Mrs. Usher when, in consequence of one Sunday +afternoon's communion with these excellent people, his mother declared +herself more reconciled than she had been to the idea of Ranny's +marrying. Between Ranny's mother and Mrs. Usher there was established in +one Sunday afternoon the peculiar sympathy and intimacy of parents who +live supremely in their children. With her rosy, full-blown, robust +benevolence, Mrs. Usher was a powerful pleader. She put it to Mrs. +Ransome that nothing mattered so long as the young people were happy. +If in the pursuit of happiness the young people failed in the first year +or two to make ends meet, surely among them all they could be given a +helping hand. She was sure that Mr. Usher would do anything he could, in +reason. The comfortable woman declared that she had taken a fancy such +as never was to Ranny, so had Mr. Usher, and he wasn't, she could assure +you, one to take a fancy every day. She had never had a boy (and it +wasn't for not wanting), but if she <i>had</i> had one she'd have wished him +to be just such another as Ranny. Ranny, she was certain, was that +clever he'd be sure to get along. To which argument Mrs. Ransome had to +yield. For she was confronted with a dilemma, having either to agree +with Mrs. Usher or to maintain that her Ranny was not clever enough to +get along. So that before Sunday evening she found herself partaking in +the large-hearted tolerance and optimism of Violet's parents, and +forcing her view upon Uncle and Aunt Randall.</p> + +<p>Only Mr. Ransome held out. He refused to be worked upon by argument. To +Ranny's amazement, the old Humming-bird bore himself in those days of +stress, not with that peculiar savage obduracy that distinguished his +more insignificant hostilities, but with a certain sad and fine +insistence. It was as if for the first time in his life he was aware +that he cared for his son Randall and was afraid of losing him. The +Humming-bird could hardly have suffered more if the issue had been +Randall's death and not his marriage. But when the thing was settled, +all he said was, "I don't like it, Mother, I don't like it."</p> + +<p>How profoundly it had disturbed him was shown in this, that for the +three weeks before Ranny's wedding-day he remained completely sober.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>So precipitate, so venturesome was Ranny, that in a month from that +memorable Sunday he found himself married and established in a house. A +house that in twenty years' time would become his own.</p> + +<p>That was incredible, if you like. Cowardly caution and niggardly +prudence had suggested rooms; two low-rented, unfurnished rooms such as +could be found almost anywhere in Wandsworth; whereas a house in +Wandsworth was impossible even if you sank as low as Jew's Row or Warple +Way. For the first two days of his engagement Ranny had devoted every +moment of his leisure to the drawing up and balancing of imaginary +household accounts; with the result that he wondered how he ever could +have regarded marriage as a formidable affair. Why, in the seven years +since he had begun to earn money he had been steadily putting money by. +Five pounds a year in the first three years, then ten, then twenty, and +a whole fifty in the year and a half since he had got his rise. With the +interest on his savings and his salary, his present income was not less +than a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year.</p> + +<p>In the night watches he grappled like a man with the financial problem. +Scheme after scheme did Ranny throw on the paper from his seething +brain. In the fifth—no, the thoroughly revised and definitive seventh, +he made out that, by a trifling reduction in his personal expenditure, +housekeeping on the two-room system would leave him with a considerable +margin. (In the first rough draft—even in the second—he had allowed +absurdly too much for food and clothing.) But, mind you, that margin +existed solely and strictly on the two-room system.</p> + +<p>And here Ranny's difficulties began; for neither Violet nor her parents +would hear of their living in two rooms. Violet, who had lived in one +room, said that living in two rooms was horrible, and Mrs. Usher said +that Violet was right. It was better for all parties to begin as you +meant to go on. Begin in hugger-mugger and you may end in it. But if he +gave Violet a home of her own that <i>was</i> a home at the very start, she'd +soon settle down in it. He needn't worry about the hard work it meant. +The only thing that would keep Violet steadylike was downright hard +work. No; she didn't mean anything cruel. They could have a char once a +fortnight for a scrub-down and the heavy washing.</p> + +<p>And Ranny began all over again and made out another set of accounts on +the house basis and allowing for the char.</p> + +<p>Impossible; even in Jew's Row or Warple Way. Skimp as he would in +personal expenditure, on the house basis the two ends of Ranny's income +simply <i>wouldn't</i> meet.</p> + +<p>All the same, he began looking for the house. The idea of the house, the +desire for the house worked in his brain like a passion; the more +impossible it was, the more ungovernable, the more irresistible he found +it.</p> + +<p>And, as he wandered forth on that adventure, seeking for a house, one +Saturday afternoon, accompanied by Violet, Ranny fell into the hands of +the Speculative Builder.</p> + +<p>Not very far from Wandsworth, in the green pasturelands of Southfields, +that great magician was already casting into bricks and mortar his +tremendous dream—the city of dreams, the Paradise of Little Clerks.</p> + +<p>As yet he had called into being only a few streets of his city, +stretching eastward and southward into the green plain. About it, +southward and eastward, there lay acres of naked earth upturned, torn +and tamed to his hand. Beyond were the fields with their tall elms, +unbroken, virgin, mournful in their last beauty, as they waited for the +ax and pick.</p> + +<p>He had done terrible things to the green earth, that speculative +builder, but you could not say of him that he had shut out the sky. The +city ran very low upon the ground in street after street of diminutive +two-storied houses. Each house was joined on to the next, porch to porch +and bow window to bow window, alternating in an endless series, a +machine-made pattern that repeated; a pattern monotonous and yet +fantastic in its mingling of purple, white, and red. Each had the same +little mat of grass laid before each bow window, the same little +red-tiled path from gate to front door, the same front door decorated +with elaborate paneling and panes of colored glass, the same little +machine-made iron gate, the same low red wall and iron railing and +privet hedge; so indistinguishably, so maddeningly alike were all these +diminutive houses. Each roof had the same purple slates, each roof tree +the same red earthwork edging it like a lace; the same red tiles roofed +each porch and faced each gable and the space between the stories. Only +when your eyes became accustomed to the endless running pattern could +you trace it clearly, grasp the detail, note that every two bow windows +were separated by one rain pipe, every two porches sustained by one +pillar, one diminutive magnificent purple pillar, simulating porphyry +and crowned with a rich Corinthian capital in freestone, the outline of +each porch being picked out and made clear and decisive with woodwork +painted white. Then, and not till then, did you see that the +all-important detail was the porphyry pillar, for it was as if every two +houses sprang from it as two flowers from one stem.</p> + +<p>Inside, each little house had the same narrow passage and steep stairs; +each had the same small room at the front and one still smaller at the +back; the same little scullery behind the same back door at the end of +the passage that led off into the garden; and upstairs the same bathroom +over the scullery, the same bedrooms back and front, and the same tiny +dressing-room with its little window looking out over the porch.</p> + +<p>"Quite enough, if we can run to it," Violet said.</p> + +<p>Violet, hitherto somewhat indifferent to the adventure, was caught by +the redness and whiteness, the brandnewness and compactness of the +little houses; she was seduced beyond prudence by the sham porphyry +pillar.</p> + +<p>"Quite enough. More than we want, really," said Ranny.</p> + +<p>But that was before they had seen the Agent and the Prospectus.</p> + +<p>They went to the Agent, not because they could afford to take a house, +but just for curiosity, just to say they'd been, just to supply Ranny +with that information that he craved for, now that the passion of the +house hunt was upon him.</p> + +<p>"No good going," said Violet. "The rent will be something awful—why, +that pillar alone—"</p> + +<p>And Ranny, too, said he was afraid the rent wouldn't be any joke.</p> + +<p>But that was precisely what the rent was—a joke. A joke so good that +Ranny took for granted it couldn't possibly be true. Ranny chaffed the +Agent; he told him he was trying to get at him; he said you didn't find +houses with bathrooms and gardens back and front, going for thirteen +shillings a week, not in this country.</p> + +<p>And the Agent, who was very busy and preoccupied with making notes in a +large notebook at his table, mumbled all among his notes that that was +right. Of course you didn't find 'em unless you knew where to look for +'em. And that was not because a good 'ouse couldn't be made to pay for +thirteen shillings a week, if there was capital and enterprise at the +back of the Company that built 'em. This here Estate was the only estate +in England—or anywhere—where you could pick up a house, a house built +in an up-to-date style with all the modern improvements, for thirteen +shillings a week.</p> + +<p>And Ranny with a fine shrewdness posed him. "Yes, but what about rates +and taxes?"</p> + +<p>They were included.</p> + +<p>And as the Agent said it calmly, casually almost, making notes in his +notebook all the time, Ranny conceived a ridiculous suspicion. He fixed +him with a stare that brought him up out of his notebook.</p> + +<p>"Included? <i>What's</i> included?"</p> + +<p>"District rate," said the Agent, "poor rate, water rate, the whole bag +of tricks for thirteen shillings."</p> + +<p>That took Ranny's breath away. As for Violet, she said instantly that +they must have the house.</p> + +<p>"Of course you must 'ave it," said the Agent. He might have been an +indulgent father. "Why not? Only thirteen shillings. And I can make you +better terms than that."</p> + +<p>It was then that he produced the Prospectus.</p> + +<p>By this time, as if stirred by Violet's beauty, he had thrown off the +mask of indifference; he was eager and alert.</p> + +<p>They spent twenty minutes over that Prospectus, from which it appeared +that the profit of the Estate Company, otherwise obscure, came from what +the Agent called the "ramifications" of the scheme, from the miles and +miles of houses they could afford to build. Whereas Ranny's profit was +patent, it came in on the spot, and it would come in sooner, of course, +if he could afford to purchase outright.</p> + +<p>"For how much?"</p> + +<p>"Two hundred and fifty."</p> + +<p>But there Ranny put his foot down. He said with decision that it +couldn't be done, an answer for which the Agent seemed prepared.</p> + +<p>Well, then—he could give him better terms again. Could he rise to +twenty-five?</p> + +<p>Ranny deliberated and thought he could.</p> + +<p>Well, then—only twenty-five down, and the balance weekly.</p> + +<p>The balance? It sounded formidable, but it worked out at exactly +tenpence a week less than the rent asked for (twelve and twopence +instead of thirteen shillings), and in twenty years' time—and he'd be a +young man still then—the house would be his, Ranny's, as surely as if +he had purchased it outright for two hundred and fifty pounds.</p> + +<p>It was astounding. Such a scheme could only have been dreamed of in the +Paradise of Little Clerks.</p> + +<p>And yet—and yet—it was impossible.</p> + +<p>Ranny said he didn't want to be saddled with a house. How did he know +whether he'd want that particular house in twenty years' time?</p> + +<p>Then he could let or sell, the Agent said. It was an investment for his +money. It was property. Property that was going up and up. Even +supposing—what was laughable—that he failed to sell—he would be +paying for his property—paying for house and land—less weekly than if +he rented it. Ordinarily you paid your rent out of income or +investments. He would be investing every time he paid his rent. People +made these difficulties because they hadn't grasped our system—or for +other reasons. Maybe (the Agent fired at him a glance of divination) he +was calculating the expense of furnishing?</p> + +<p>He was.</p> + +<p>Nothing simpler. Why—you furnished on the hire-purchase system.</p> + +<p>"Not much," said Ranny. He knew all about the hire-purchase system.</p> + +<p>So he backed out of it. He backed out of his Paradise, out of his dream. +But to save his face he said he would think it over and let the Agent +know on Monday.</p> + +<p>And the Agent smiled. He said he could take his time. There was no +hurry. The house wouldn't run away. And he gave Ranny a copy of the +Prospectus with a beautiful picture of the house on it.</p> + +<p>All the way home Violet reproached him. It was a shame, she said, that +he couldn't afford the furniture. There was nothing in the world she +wanted so much as that beautiful little house. She hung on his arm and +pleaded. Would he ever be able to afford the furniture? And Ranny said +he thought he could afford it in two years. Meanwhile the house wouldn't +run away. It would wait two years.</p> + +<p>And as if it had been waiting for him, motionless, from all eternity, +the house, with its allurements and solicitations, caught him before six +o'clock on the evening of that very day.</p> + +<p>Ranny's mother, as if she had known what the house was after, played +into its hands. Attracted by the Prospectus and the picture, she walked +over to Southfields directly after tea. She looked at the house and fell +in love with it at first sight. It had taken her no time to grasp the +system. You couldn't get a house like that in Wandsworth, not for fifty +or fifty-five, not counting rates and taxes. It was a sin, she said, to +throw away the chance. As for furnishing, she had seen to that. In fact, +Ranny without knowing it had seen to it himself. For the last five years +he had kept his father's books, conceiving that herein he was fulfilling +an essentially unproductive filial duty. And all the time his mother, +with a fine sense of justice, had been putting by for him the +remuneration that he should have had. Out of his seven years' weekly +payments for board and lodging she had saved no less than a hundred +pounds. Thus she had removed the one insurmountable obstacle from +Ranny's path.</p> + +<p>It might have been better for Ranny if she hadn't. Because, on any +scheme, on the lowest scale of expenditure, with the most dexterous +manipulation of accounts, the house left him without a margin. But who +would think of margins when he knew that he would grow steadily year by +year into a landlord, the owner of house property, and <i>that</i>, if you +would believe it, for less rent than if he didn't own it? So miraculous +was the power of twenty-five pounds down.</p> + +<p>As if he thought the house could, after all, run away from him, he +bicycled to Southfields with a letter for the Agent, closing with his +offer that very night.</p> + +<p>And by a special appointment with the Agent, made as a concession to his +peculiar circumstances, he and Violet went over before ten o'clock on +Sunday morning to choose the house.</p> + +<p>For after all they hadn't chosen it yet.</p> + +<p>It was difficult to choose among the houses where all were exactly +alike; but you could choose among the streets, for some were planted +with young limes and some with plane trees, and one, Acacia Avenue, with +acacias. Ransome liked the strange tufted acacias. "Puts me in mind of +palm trees," he said. And finally his fancy and Violet's was taken by +one house, Number Forty-seven Acacia Avenue, for it stood just opposite +a young tree with a particularly luxuriant tuft. It was really as if the +tree belonged to Number Forty-seven.</p> + +<p>Then they discovered that, outwardly uniform, these little houses had a +subtle variety within. All, or nearly all, had different wall papers. In +Number Forty-seven there were pink roses in the front sitting-room and +blue roses in the back, and, upstairs, quiet, graceful patterns of love +knots or trellis work. The love knots, blue with little pink rosebuds, +in the front room (<i>their</i> room) caught them. They were agreed in favor +of Number Forty-seven.</p> + +<p>Then—it was on the following Saturday—they quarreled. The Agent had +written inquiring whether Mr. Ransome wished to give his residence a +distinctive name. He didn't wish it. But Violet did. She wished to give +his residence the distinctive and distinguished name of Granville. She +said she couldn't abide a number, while Ranny said he couldn't stand a +name. Especially a silly name like Granville. He said that if he lived +in a house called Granville it would make him feel a silly ass. And +Violet said he was a silly ass already to feel like that about it.</p> + +<p>Then Violet cried. It was the first time he had seen her cry, and it +distressed him horribly. He held out against his pity all Saturday +evening. But on Sunday morning, when he thought of Violet, he relented. +He said he'd changed his mind about that old family seat. Violet could +call it what she liked.</p> + +<p>She called it Granville.</p> + +<p>The name, in large white letters, appeared presently in the fanlight +above the door.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>At Woolridge's, on Monday morning in his dinner-hour, Mr. Ransome of the +counting-house strolled with great dignity and honor through seven +distinct departments as a customer. He ear-marked, for a beginning, and +subject always to the approval of a Lady, three distinct suites of +furniture which he proposed, most certainly, to purchase outright. None +of your hire-purchase systems for Mr. Ransome.</p> + +<p>On Tuesday, accompanied by two ladies, he again appeared. Between two +violent blushes, and with an air which would have been light and offhand +if it could, Mr. Ransome presented to his friend, the foreman, his +mother—and Miss Usher. And as if the foreman had not sufficiently +divined her, Miss Usher's averted shoulders, burning cheeks, and lowered +eyelids made it impossible for him to forget that she was the Lady whose +approval was the ultimate condition of the deal.</p> + +<p>After an immensity of time, in which Mr. Ransome's dinner hour was +swallowed up and lost, Miss Usher decided finally on the suite in +stained walnut, upholstered handsomely in plush, with a pattern which +Ransome imagined to be Oriental, a pattern of indefinite design in a +yellowish drab and heavy blue upon a ground of crimson. A splendid +suite. The overmantle alone was worth the nineteen pounds nineteen +shillings he paid for it.</p> + +<p>The furnishing of the chamber of the love knots was arranged for, +decorously, between Mrs. Ransome and the foreman. Over every item, from +the wardrobe in honey-colored maple picked out with black, to the china +"set" with crimson reeds and warblers on it, Ranny's friend, the +foreman, communed with Ranny's mother in an intimate aside; and Ranny's +mother, in another aside of even more accentuated propriety, appealed to +flaming cheeks and lowered eyelids and a mouth that gave an almost +inarticulate assent. The eyelids refused to open on Ranny where he +stood, turning his back on the women, while he shook dubiously the +footrail of the iron double bedstead to test the joints; and the mouth +refused to speak when Ranny was heard complaining that the bedstead was +about three sizes too large for the room. Eyes and mouth recovered only +downstairs among the carpets, where they again asserted themselves by +insisting on a Kidderminster with a slender pattern of blue on a drab +ground; though Ranny's mother had advised the black and crimson. Ranny's +mother contended almost with passion that drab showed every stain. But +Violet would have that carpet and no other.</p> + +<p>And when by struggles and by prodigies of strength on Ranny's part, and +on the part of Woolridge's men, by every kind of physical persuasion, +and by coaxing, by strategy and guile, all that furniture from seven +distinct departments was at last squeezed into Granville—well, there +was hardly room to turn round. Granville, that would have held its own +under any treatment less severe, was overpowered by Woolridge's.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"What's wrong with it?" said poor Ranny, as they stood together one +Saturday evening and surveyed their front sitting-room. He couldn't see +anything wrong with it himself.</p> + +<p>They had been married that morning. Ranny had had to bring his bride +straight from her father's house to Granville. There could be no going +away for the honeymoon. Woolridge's wouldn't let Ranny go till the sales +were over.</p> + +<p>It was only a minute ago that he had had his arm round Violet's waist, +and that her face had pressed his. It seemed ages. And suddenly Violet +had shown sulkiness and irritation. He couldn't understand it. He +couldn't understand how she could have chosen their first hour of +solitude for finding fault with the arrangement of the room. He himself +had been distinctly pleased; proud, too, of having furnished throughout +from Woolridge's, in a style that would last, and at a double discount +which he owed to his payment in ready money, and to his connection with +the firm.</p> + +<p>Now he faced a young woman who had no understanding of his pride and no +pity.</p> + +<p>"It's <i>all</i> wrong," said she. "And I'll tell you for why. It's too +heavy. You should have furnished in bamboo."</p> + +<p>"Bamboo? Sham-poo! It wouldn't last," said Ranny.</p> + +<p>"Who wants the silly things to last?" said Violet.</p> + +<p>"Come to that, you never let on it was bamboo you wanted."</p> + +<p>"How could <i>I</i> know what I wanted? You rushed me so, you never gave me +time to think."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say," said Ranny, "what a tiresome kiddy!"</p> + +<p>With that he kissed her, and between the kisses he asked her, with +delirious rapidity: "Who gave you a drawing-room suite? Who gave you a +nice house? Who let you call it Granville?" But he knew. Nobody, indeed, +knew better than Ranny how tight a squeeze it was; and what a horrible +misfit for Granville.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly something in the idea of Granville tickled him.</p> + +<p>"Whether is it," he inquired, "that the drawing-room suite is too large +for Granville? Or that Granville is too small for the drawing-room +suite?"</p> + +<p>"It's too small for anything. And I think you might have waited."</p> + +<p>"Waited?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Why shouldn't we have gone on as we were?"</p> + +<p>He couldn't criticize her in a moment that was still so blessed; +otherwise it might have struck him that Granville was certainly too +small for Violet's voice.</p> + +<p>But it struck Ranny's mother as she heard it from the bedroom overhead, +where she labored, spreading with her own hands the sheets for her son's +marriage bed.</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't we?" Violet's voice insisted.</p> + +<p>"Because we couldn't."</p> + +<p>He drew her to him. Her eyes closed and their faces met, flame to flame.</p> + +<p>"Poor little thing," he said. "Is its head hot? And is it tired?"</p> + +<p>"Ranny," she said, "is your mother still upstairs?"</p> + +<p>"She'll be gone in a minute," he whispered, thickly.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + + +<p>Violet's connection with Starker's ceased on the day of her marriage. +Violet herself would have continued it; she had meant to continue it; +she had fought the point passionately with Ranny; but Ranny had put his +foot down with a firmness that subdued her. She had said, "Oh, +well—just as you like. If you think you can get along without my pound +a week." And Ranny, with considerable warmth, had answered back that he +hoped to Heaven he could. And then, again and again, with infinite +patience and gentleness, he explained that the privileges of acquiring +Granville entailed duties and responsibilities incompatible with her +attendance in Starker's Millinery Saloons. He pointed out that if they +were dependent upon Granville, Granville was also dependent upon them. +Granville, she could see for herself, was helpless—pathetic he was.</p> + +<p>And Violet would laugh. In those first days he could always make her +laugh by playing with the personality they had created. She would come +out into the roadway on an August morning, as Ranny was going off to +Woolridge's, and they would look at the absurd little house where it +stood winking and blinking in the sun; and morning after morning Ranny +kept it up.</p> + +<p>"Look at him," he would say, "sittin' there behind his little railin's, +sayin' nothing, just waitin' for you to look after him."</p> + +<p>And Violet would own that Granville was pathetic. But she triumphed. +"You wouldn't feel about him that way," she said, "if he was only Number +Forty-seven."</p> + +<p>Just at first there was no doubt that Violet was fond of Granville. Just +at first it was as if she couldn't do too much for him, to keep him +spick and span, clean from top to toe, and always with a happy polish. +Just at first he was, as Ranny said, "such a pretty little chap with his +funny purple pillar, and his little peepers winkin' at you kind of +playful, half the time." For the sun shone on him all that August +honeymoon. It streamed down the Avenue between the rows of young acacias +whose green tufts with that light on them put Ranny more and more in +mind of palm trees. He was more and more in love with the brand-new +Paradise. He expressed all the charm of Southfields, of Acacia Avenue, +when he said it was "so open, and so up-to-date." It made Wandsworth +High Street look old and tortuous and grimy by comparison.</p> + +<p>But Ranny was more and more in love with Violet; so much in love that he +could never have expressed her charm. And yet he couldn't hide the +effect it had on him. The neighbors knew it was their honeymoon. They +smiled when they saw Ranny and Violet come out of Granville every +morning wheeling the bicycle between them; they smiled when Violet ran +beside him as he mounted; most of all they smiled when Ranny, riding +slowly, turned right round in his saddle and the two young lunatics +waved and signaled to each other as if they would never have done.</p> + +<p>No doubt that in those first days Violet was in love with Ranny. No +doubt that she looked after him as much as Violet could look after +anything; every bit as much as she looked after Granville.</p> + +<p>But the hard fact was that Granville and all his furniture required a +great deal of looking after.</p> + +<p>Ranny too. To begin with, he had what Violet called an awful appetite. +Which meant that a joint and a loaf went twice as fast as Violet had +calculated; so that she found herself driven to pan bread and tinned +meat in self-defense. She had found that for some reason Ranny didn't +eat so much of these. What with his walking and his "biking," and his +sitting, Ranny's activities wore through his ordinary every-day clothes +at a frightful rate. And then his zephyrs and his flannels! Ranny's +mother had always seen to them herself. She had washed them with her own +hands. Ranny's wife sent them to the laundress, not too often. So that +Ranny, the splendid, immaculate Ranny she had fallen in love with, +appeared after his marriage a shade less immaculate, less splendid than +he had been before.</p> + +<p>It was not, of course, that Violet couldn't wash things. For, as Ranny's +mother said to Mrs. Randall, You should see her own white blouses. There +was washing for you! Mrs. Ransome owned quite handsomely that the girl +"paid for it." By which she meant that Violet's appearance justified the +extravagant amount of time she spent on it. And it was not that +Granville demanded from her the downright hard work Mrs. Usher had +considered salutary in her case. Ransome had seen to that. He had not +agreed with Mrs. Usher. If he couldn't keep a servant, he could, and +did, engage a charwoman for all the heavy work. It was not that the +light work Violet did was unbecoming to her. On the contrary, Violet +bloomed in Granville. She had had to own that the unaccustomed exercise +was a good thing, giving a fineness and a firmness to outlines that had +been a shade too lax. It was that you can have too much of a good thing +when you have it every day; too much of light washing and light cooking, +of the lightest of light sweeping, of dusting, and the making of even +one double bed.</p> + +<p>Ransome did his best to spare her. He thought that she was tired of +looking after Granville, when in reality she was only bored. As for her +fits of sullenness and irritation, he had been initiated into their +mystery on his wedding-day. The sullenness, the irritation had ceased so +unmysteriously that Ranny in his matrimonial wisdom was left in no doubt +as to its cause. There was even sweetness in it, for it proved that, +however tired Violet might be of things in general, she was by no means +tired of him.</p> + +<p>Ransome himself was never tired in those days, and never, never bored. +Granville as Number Forty-seven might have palled upon him; Granville as +a personality assumed for him an everlasting charm. It was astonishing +how right Violet had been there. Granville, after all, hadn't made him +feel a silly ass. It kept him in a state of being tickled. It tickled +Wauchope and Fred Booty. They met him with "What price Granville?" They +called him by turns Baron Granville of Granville, and the Marquis or the +Duke of Granville. They "ragged" while Ranny lunged at them and said, +"Cheese it"; until one day Booty, suddenly serious, asked, why on earth, +old chappie, he had called it Granville? When Ranny replied +significantly, "I didn't." Then they stopped.</p> + +<p>But Granville tickled him only, as it were, on one side. The other side +of Ransome was insensitive. His undeveloped taste was not aware of the +architectural absurdity of Granville, with its perky gable and its sham +porphyry pillar. He could look at it, and yet think of it quite gravely +and with a secret tenderness as his home, and more than all as the home +he had given Violet, the blessed roof and walls that sheltered her.</p> + +<p>And all the time, in secret, it was taking hold of him, the delicious +thought of property, of possession, of Granville as a thing that in +twenty years' time would be his own. Brooding over Granville, Ranny's +brain became fertile in ideas. He was always calling out to Violet: +"Vikes! I've got <i>another</i> idea! When he gets all dirty next year I'll +paint him green. That'll give him a distinctive character, if you like." +Or, "How would it be if I was to cover him up all over with creepers, +back and front?" Or, "Some day I'll whip off those tiles and clap him on +a balcony. He'd look O.K. if he only had a balcony over his porch."</p> + +<p>His porch was the one thing wrong with Granville, because it wasn't +absolutely and entirely his. The porphyry pillar for instance; he had +only half a share in it; the other half belonged to Number Forty-five; +and you couldn't rightly tell where Number Forty-five's share ended and +his began. Still it wasn't as if anybody ever wanted to swarm up the +pillar. But there was a party wall, and that was a serious thing. It +was so low that a child could clear it at a stride. And when the postman +and errand boys and tradespeople went their rounds, instead of going +down Forty-five's front walk and up Granville's, they all straddled +insolently over the party wall. Ransome said it was "like their bally +cheek," by which he meant that it was an insult to the privacy and +dignity of Granville. And he stopped it by setting a high box, planted +with a perfect little hedge of euonymus, on Granville's half of the top +of the party wall. And he and Violet hid behind the window curtains all +one Saturday afternoon, and watched "the poor johnnies being sold."</p> + +<p>There was no end to the fun he was getting out of Granville. Every +evening he hurried home from Woolridge's that he might put in an hour's +work in his garden before supper. He was never tired of digging and +planting and watering the long strip at the back, or of clipping the +privet hedge that screened his green mat at the front. Only Violet got +tired of seeing him doing it. More than once, when Ranny's innocent back +was turned she watched it, scowling. She was so far "gone on him" that +she couldn't bear to see him taken up with Granville. She hated the very +flowers as his hands caressed them. She hated the little tree he had +planted at the bottom of the back garden. For the little tree had kept +him out one night till nearly ten o'clock, after Violet had expressly +told him that she was going to bed at nine.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Violet was not tired; but she was tired of Granville.</p> + +<p>After six weeks of it she began to long secretly for Starker's +Millinery Saloons. In the saloon you walked looking beautiful through a +flowery and a feathery grove of hats. You had nothing to do but to try +hats on and to sell them, and each sale was a personal triumph for the +seller. Violet knew she could sell more hats than any other of the girls +at Starker's; she knew she had a pretty way of putting on a hat, of +turning slowly round and round in it to show the side and crown, of +standing motionless before a customer while her blue eyes made play that +advertised the irresistible fascinations of the brim. At Starker's she +went from one triumph to another.</p> + +<p>For gentlemen came to the Millinery Saloons, gentlemen whose looks said +plainly that they found her prettier than the ladies that they brought; +gentlemen who sometimes came again alone, who for two words would buy a +hat and give it you. At Starker's there was always a chance of something +happening.</p> + +<p>At Granville nothing happened, nothing ever could happen. Granville, +when it didn't keep you doing things, gave you nothing to look at, +nothing to think about, nothing to take an interest in, and nobody to +take an interest in you. It left you sitting in a lonely window looking +out into a lonely Avenue, an Avenue where nobody (nobody to speak of) +ever came. And not only did Violet long for Starker's Millinery Saloons, +she longed for Oxford Street, she longed for the adventurous setting +forth in bus or tram, with the feeling that anything might happen before +the day was over; she longed for the still more adventurous stepping out +of the little door in Starker's shutter into the amorously hovering +crowd, for the furtive looking round with eyes all bright for the +encounter; above all she longed for somebody, no matter who, to come, +somebody to meet her somewhere and take her to the Empire.</p> + +<p>And nobody but Ranny ever came.</p> + +<p>Sometimes, of course, he took her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum; but +going there with Ranny wasn't any fun. Ranny's idea of fun was not +Earl's Court or the Coliseum; it was to mount a bicycle and ride from +that lonely place, Acacia Avenue, into places that were more lonely +still. Sometimes they would have tea at a confectioner's, but what Ranny +loved best was to put bits of cake or chocolate in his pocket, and to +eat them in utter loneliness sitting in a field. In short, Ranny loved +to take her into places where there was nothing for them to do, nothing +for them to look at, and nobody to look at them. If Violet hadn't been +gone on Ranny she couldn't have endured it for a day.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Then in the late autumn the bicycle rides ceased. Violet was overtaken, +first, with a dreadful lassitude, then with a helplessness as great as +Granville's. And with it a sullenness that had no sweetness in it, for +Violet defied her fate. And now when she raised her old cry again, "I +can't see <i>why</i> I shouldn't have gone on at Starker's like I did," +instead of saying "Somebody's got to look after Granville" Ranny +answered, "<i>This</i> is why."</p> + +<p>All through the winter the charwoman came every day. And one midnight, +in the first week of March, nineteen-five, Violet's child was born. It +was a daughter.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + + +<p>On that night Ransome acquired a dreadful knowledge. Granville was not a +place where you could be born with any decency. It seemed to participate +horribly in Violet's agony, to throb with her tortures and recoils, to +fill itself shuddering with her cries, such cries as Ransome had never +heard or conceived, that he would have believed impossible. They were +savage, inhuman; the cries and groans of some outraged animal; there was +menace in them and rebellion, terror, and an implacable resentment.</p> + +<p>And as Ransome heard them his heart was torn with pity and with remorse +too, as though Violet's agony accused him. He could not get rid of the +idea that he had wronged her; an idea that he somehow felt he would +never have had if the baby had been born a month later. He swore that +she should never be put to this torture a second time; that if God would +only spare her he would never, never quarrel with her, never say an +unkind word to her again. He couldn't exactly recall any unkind words; +so he nourished his anguish on the thought of the words he had very +nearly said, also of the words he hadn't said, and of the things he +hadn't done for her. Casting about for these, he found that he hadn't +taken her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum half as often as he might. He +had been wrapped up in himself, that's what he had been; a selfish, low +brute. He felt that there was nothing he wouldn't do for Vi, if only +God would spare her.</p> + +<p>But God wouldn't. He wasn't sparing her now. God had proved that he was +capable of anything. It was incredible to Ransome that Violet should +live through that night. He wouldn't believe his mother and the doctor +and the nurse when they told him that everything was as it should be. He +knew that they were lying; they must be; it wasn't possible that any +woman would go through that and live.</p> + +<p>All this Ransome thought as he sat in the front parlor under the little +creaking room. He <i>would</i> sit there where he could hear every sound, +where it was almost as if he was by her bed and looking on.</p> + +<p>And he wouldn't believe it was all over when at midnight they came and +told him, and when he saw Violet lying in her mortal apathy, and when he +kissed her poor drawn face. He couldn't believe that Violet's face +wouldn't look like that forever, that it wouldn't keep forever its +dreadful memory, the resentment that smoldered still under its white +apathy.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>For there could be no doubt that that was Violet's attitude—resentment, +as of some wrong that had been done her. He didn't wonder at it. He +resented the whole business himself.</p> + +<p>It was a pity, though, that she didn't take more kindly to the baby, +seeing that, after all, the poor little thing was innocent, it didn't +know what it had done.</p> + +<p>Ranny would not have permitted himself this reflection but that a whole +fortnight had passed and Violet had not died. Ranny's fatherhood was +perturbed by Violet's indifference to the baby. He spoke of it to the +doctor, and suggested weakness as a possible explanation.</p> + +<p>"Weakness?" The doctor stared at him and smiled faintly. "What +weakness?"</p> + +<p>"I mean," said Ranny, "after all she's gone through."</p> + +<p>The doctor put his hand on Ranny's shoulder. "My dear boy, if half the +women went through as little and came out of it as well—"</p> + +<p>Ranny flared up.</p> + +<p>"I like that—your trying to make out she didn't suffer. Tortures +weren't <i>in</i> it. How'd you like—"</p> + +<p>But the doctor shook his head.</p> + +<p>"We can't alter Nature, my dear boy. But I'll tell you for your +comfort—in all my experience I've never known a woman have an easier +time."</p> + +<p>"D'you mean—d'you mean—she'll get over it?"</p> + +<p>"Get over it? She's got over it already. She's as strong as a horse."</p> + +<p>He turned from Ranny with a swing of his coat tails that but feebly +expressed his decision and his impatience. He paused before the closed +doorway for a final word.</p> + +<p>"There's no earthly reason why she shouldn't nurse that baby."</p> + +<p>"What's that, sir?" said Ranny, arrested.</p> + +<p>"She <i>must</i> nurse it. It's better for her. It's better for the child. If +I were her husband I'd insist on it—<i>insist</i>. If she tells you she +can't do it, don't believe her."</p> + +<p>"I say, I didn't know there'd been any trouble of that sort."</p> + +<p>"That's all the trouble there's been," the doctor said. And he entered +on a brief and popular exposition of the subject, from which Ranny +gathered that Violet was flying in the face of that Providence that +Nature was. Superbly and exceptionally endowed and fitted for her end, +Violet had refused the task of nursing-mother.</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>The doctor shrugged his shoulders, implying that anything so abstruse as +young Mrs. Ransome's reasons was beyond him.</p> + +<p>He left Ranny struggling with the question: If it isn't weakness—<i>what</i> +is it?</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>For Violet persisted in her strange refusal, in spite of Ranny's +remonstrances, his entreaties, his appeals.</p> + +<p>"It's been trouble enough," she said, "without that."</p> + +<p>She was sitting up in her chair before the bedroom fire. They were +alone. The nurse was downstairs at her supper. The Baby lay between them +in its cradle, wrapped in a white shawl. Ranny was watching it.</p> + +<p>"I should have thought," he said, at last, "you couldn't have borne to +let the little thing—"</p> + +<p>But she cut that short. "Little thing! It's all very well for <i>you</i>. You +haven't been through what I have; if you had, p'raps you'd feel as I +do."</p> + +<p>The Baby stirred in its shawl. Its eyes were still shut, but its lips +began to curl open with a queer waving, writhing movement.</p> + +<p>"What does it mean," said Ranny, "when it makes that funny face?"</p> + +<p>"How should <i>I</i> know?" said Violet.</p> + +<p>Little sounds, utterly helpless and inarticulate, came now from the +cradle.</p> + +<p>"What nice noises it makes," said Ranny. He was stooping by the cradle, +touching the Baby's soft cheek with his finger.</p> + +<p>"Look at it," he said.</p> + +<p>But Violet would not look.</p> + +<p>The Baby's face puckered and grew red. Its body writhed and stiffened. +It broke into a cry that frightened him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord!" said Ranny, "do you think I've hurt it? Hadn't you better +take it up or something?"</p> + +<p>But Violet did not take it up. He looked at her in astonishment. She +looked at him, and her face was sullen.</p> + +<p>The Baby screamed high.</p> + +<p>Ranny put his arm under the small warm thing and lifted it up out of its +cradle. He had some idea of laying it on its mother's lap.</p> + +<p>The Baby stopped screaming.</p> + +<p>Ranny held it, with the nape of its absurdly loose and heavy head +supported on his left wrist, and its little soft hips pressed into the +hollow of his right hand. And as he held it he was troubled with a +compassion and a tenderness unlike anything he had ever known before. +For the Baby's helplessness was unlike anything he had ever known.</p> + +<p>And its innocence! Why, its hand, its incredibly tiny hand, had found +his breast and was moving there for all the world as if he had been its +mother. And to Ranny's amazement, with the touch, a queer little +pricking pang went through his breast, as if a thin blood vessel had +suddenly burst there.</p> + +<p>"D'you see that, Vi? Its little hand? What a rum thing a baby is!"</p> + +<p>But even that didn't move Violet, or turn her from her purpose, though +she smiled.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>From that moment Ranny's paternal instinct raised its head again. It had +been crushed for the time being in his revolt against Violet's +sufferings. But now it was indescribable, the feeling he had for his +little daughter Dorothy. (Violet, since they <i>had</i> to call the Baby +something, had called it Dorothy.) Meanwhile, he hid his feeling. He +maintained a perverse, a dubious, a critical silence while his mother +and his mother-in-law and his Aunt Randall and the nurse overflowed in +praise which, if the Baby had understood them, must have turned its +head.</p> + +<p>Ranny was reassured when the other women were about him; because then +Violet did show signs of caring for the Baby, if only to keep them in +their places and remind them that it was her property and not theirs. +She would take it out of their arms, and smooth its hair and its +clothes, and kiss it significantly, scowling sullen-sweet, as if their +embraces had rumpled it and done it harm. For as long as the nurse was +there to look after it, the Baby's adorable person was kept in a +daintiness and sweetness so exquisite that it was no wonder if Ranny's +mother, in her transports, called it "Little Rose," and "Honeypot," and +"Fairy Flower"; when all that Ranny said was, "It's a mercy it's got +hair."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + + +<p>Just at first the miracle of the Baby drew a crowd of pilgrims from +Wandsworth to Acacia Avenue. Granville had become a shrine.</p> + +<p>People Ransome hardly knew and didn't care for, friends of his mother +and of his Aunt Randall, came over of a Sunday afternoon to see the +Baby. And Wauchope and Buist and Tyser of the Polytechnic came; and old +Wauchope got excited and clapped Ranny on the back and said: "Go it, +Granville! Steady does it. Here's to you and many more of them." And +Booty brought Maudie Hollis, who was not too proud and too beautiful to +go down on her knees before the Baby, while young Fred stood aloof in +awe, and grew sanguine to the roots of the hair that rose, tipping his +forehead like a monumental flame.</p> + +<p>As for the Humming-bird, he was amazing. He insisted on the Baby being +christened in Wandsworth Parish Church (marvelous, he was, throughout +the ceremony); and he actually appeared at Granville afterward with the +christening party.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>That Sunday afternoon Ransome saw Winny Dymond for the first time since +his marriage. He saw her, he could swear that he saw her, standing with +Maudie Hollis in a seat near the door. He was certainly aware of a +little figure in a long dark coat, and of a face startlingly like +Winny's, and of eyes that could only have been hers, profound and +serious eyes, fixed upon the Baby. But when he looked for her afterward +as the christening party passed out of the church, led by Mrs. Randall +carrying the Baby, Winny was nowhere to be seen. No doubt the +christening party scared her.</p> + +<p>He thought of Winny several times that week. He wondered what she had +been doing with herself all those months, and why it was she hadn't come +to see them.</p> + +<p>And the very next Saturday, as Ransome, on his return from Woolridge's, +was wheeling his bicycle with difficulty through the little gate, the +door of Granville opened, and Winny came out.</p> + +<p>Ransome was so surprised that he let the bicycle go, and it went down +with a horrid clatter, hitting him a malicious blow on the ankle as it +fell. He was so surprised that, instead of saying what a man naturally +would say in the circumstances, he said, "Winky!"</p> + +<p>It would have been like her either to have laughed at his clumsiness or +to have flown to help him, but Winky wasn't like herself. She stood in +an improbable silence and gravity and stared at him, while her lips +moved as if she drew back her breath, and her feet as if she would have +drawn herself back, but for the door she had closed behind her; so +inspired was she with the instinct of retreat.</p> + +<p>Her scare (for plainly she was scared) lasted only for a second; only +till he spoke again and came forward.</p> + +<p>"So it's little Winky, is it? Well, I never!" He laughed for pure +pleasure.</p> + +<p>She smiled faintly and came off her doorstep to take the hand he held +out to her.</p> + +<p>"I came," she said, "to see Violet and the Baby."</p> + +<p>At that he smiled also, half furtively. "And have you seen them?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes. I've been sitting with Violet for the last hour. I must be +going now."</p> + +<p>"Going? Why, what's the hurry?"</p> + +<p>"Well—"</p> + +<p>"Well—" He tried to sound the little word as she did. He remembered it, +the funny little word that summed up her evasiveness, her reluctance, +her absurdity.</p> + +<p>She was still standing by the doorstep, stroking the sham porphyry +pillar with her childish hand, as if she wanted to see what it was made +of.</p> + +<p>"It isn't <i>reelly</i> marble," Ransome said.</p> + +<p>She gazed at him, wondering. "<i>What</i> isn't?"</p> + +<p>"That pillar."</p> + +<p>"Oh—I wasn't thinking—" She took her hand away suddenly as if the +pillar had been a snake and stung her. Then she looked at it.</p> + +<p>"How beautiful they make them!" She paused, absolutely grave. Then, "Oh, +Ranny, you <i>have</i> got a nice house," she said.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen it?"</p> + +<p>"No. Not <i>all</i> of it." She spoke as if it had been a palace.</p> + +<p>"Come in and have a look round," said Ranny.</p> + +<p>"Well—"</p> + +<p>There was distinct yielding in her voice this time. Winny was half +caught.</p> + +<p>"I <i>do</i> love looking at houses."</p> + +<p>He lured her in. She came over the threshold as if on some delicious yet +perilous adventure, with eyes that shone and with two little teeth that +bit down her lower lip; a way she had when she attempted anything +difficult and at the same time exciting. He showed her everything except +the room she had seen already, the room with the love knots and the +rosebuds where Violet and the Baby were. Winny admired everything with +joy and yet with reverence, from the splendid overmantel in the front +sitting-room to the hot-water tap in the bathroom.</p> + +<p>"My word," Winny said, "what I'd give to have a bath like that!"</p> + +<p>"I say," said Ransome, suddenly moved, "you take a lot more interest in +it all than Virelet does."</p> + +<p>"She's used to it," said Winny. "Besides, I always take an interest in +other people's houses."</p> + +<p>She pondered. They were both leaning out of the back bedroom window now, +looking down into the garden.</p> + +<p>"Think of all those little empty houses, Ranny, and the people that'll +come and live in them. It seems somehow so beautiful their coming and +finding them and getting things for them; and at the same time it seems +somehow sad." She paused.</p> + +<p>"I don't mean that <i>you're</i> sad, Ranny. You know what I mean."</p> + +<p>He did. He had felt it too, the beauty and the sadness, but he couldn't +have put it into words. It was the sadness and the beauty of life.</p> + +<p>It was queer, he thought, how Winny felt as he did about most things in +life.</p> + +<p>But Winny's joy over the house was nothing to her joy over the garden, +the garden that Ranny had made, and over the little tree that he had +planted. It was the most beautiful and wonderful tree in the whole +world. For in her eyes everything that Ranny did and that he made was +beautiful and wonderful. It could not be otherwise: because she loved +him.</p> + +<p>And oh! she had the most intense appreciation of Granville, of the name +and of the personality. She took it all in. Trust Winny.</p> + +<p>And as they stood in the gateway at parting, he told her of the system +by which in twenty, no, in not much more than nineteen years' time +Granville would be his own.</p> + +<p>"Why, Ranny, it sounds almost too good to be true!"</p> + +<p>"I know it does. That's why sometimes I think I'll be had over it yet. I +say to myself Granville looks jolly innocent, but he'll score off me, +you bet, before he's done."</p> + +<p>"He <i>does</i> look innocent," said Winny.</p> + +<p>He did. (And how Winny took it in!)</p> + +<p>"<i>That's</i> what tickles me," said Ranny. "Sometimes, when I come home of +a evening and find him still sittin' there, cockin' his little eyes as +if he was goin' to have a game with me, it comes over me that he's up to +something, and—what do you think I do?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, Ranny." She almost whispered it.</p> + +<p>"I burst out laughin' in his face."</p> + +<p>"How <i>can</i> you?" She was treating Granville as he did, exactly as if it +was alive.</p> + +<p>"Well—you see how comical he is."</p> + +<p>"Yes. I see it." (Of course she saw it.) "Still—there's something about +him all the same."</p> + +<p>There was something about everything that was Ranny's, something that +touched her, something that made her love it, because she loved him. +Winny couldn't have burst out laughing in its face.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad I came," she said. "Because now I can see you."</p> + +<p>He misunderstood. "I hope you will, Winky—very often."</p> + +<p>"I mean—see you when you're not there."</p> + +<p>He looked away. Something in her voice moved him unspeakably. For one +moment he saw into the heart of her—placid, profound, and pure.</p> + +<p>He was going down the Avenue with her now. For in that moment he had +felt the beauty of her and the sadness. He couldn't bear to think of her +"seeing herself home," going back alone to that little room in St. Ann's +Terrace, where some day, when Maudie married, she would be left alone. +The least he could do was to walk with her a little way.</p> + +<p>"I say, Win," he said, presently, "why ever haven't you come before?" He +really wondered.</p> + +<p>There was a long silence. Then, "I don't know, Ranny," she said, simply.</p> + +<p>They had come to the end of Acacia Avenue before either of them spoke +again. Then Ranny conceived something brilliant.</p> + +<p>"What did you think of the Baby?" he said.</p> + +<p>She fairly shone at him, and at the same time she was earnest and very +grave.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny," she said, "it's the most beautiful baby that ever +was—Isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Ranny smiled superbly.</p> + +<p>"They tell me so; but I dunno. <i>Is</i> it?"</p> + +<p>"Of course it is."</p> + +<p>She had turned, parting from him at last, and she flung that at him as +she walked backward, smiling in his face.</p> + +<p>"Well—I must be going back to Vi," he said.</p> + +<p>And he went back.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + + +<p>In April Ransome looked confidently for Violet to "settle down." Mrs. +Usher had assured him again and again that the next month would bring +the blessed change.</p> + +<p>"She'll be all right," said Mrs. Usher, "when the nurse goes and she has +you and Baby to herself."</p> + +<p>And at first it seemed as though Violet's mother knew what she was +talking about.</p> + +<p>April put an end to their separation. April, like a second honeymoon, +made them again bride and bridegroom to each other. Nature, whom Ranny +had blasphemed and upbraided, triumphed and was justified in Violet's +beauty, that bloomed again and yet was changed to something almost fine, +almost clear; as if its coarse strain had been purged from it by +maternity. Something fine and clear in Ranny responded to the change.</p> + +<p>And, as in their first honeymoon, Violet's irritation ceased. She was +sullen-sweet, with a kind of brooding magic in her ways. She drew him +with eyes whose glamour was tenderness under lowering brows; she bound +him with arms that, for all their incredible softness, had a vehemence +that held him as if it would never let him go; and in the cleaving of +her mouth to his there was a savage will that pressed as if it would +have crushed between them all memory and premonition. This was somewhat +disastrous to fineness and clearness, and Ransome's no doubt would have +perished but for the persistence with which he held Violet sacred as the +mother of his child.</p> + +<p>Her attitude to the child was still incomprehensible to him, but he was +beginning to accept it, perceiving that it had some obscure foundation +in her temperament. There were moments when he fell back on his old +superstition (exploded by the doctor) and told himself that Violet was +one of those who suffer profoundly from the shock of childbirth. And in +that case she would get over it in time.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>But time went on, and Violet showed no signs of getting over it, no +signs, at any rate, of settling down. On the contrary, before very long +she slipped into her old slack ways. With all her fierce vitality it was +as if she had no strength to turn her hand to anything. The charwoman +came every week. (That was no more than Ransome was prepared for.)</p> + +<p>The charwoman worked heavily against odds, doing all she knew. And yet, +in the searching light of summer, it was plain, as Ransome pointed out, +that Granville was undergoing a slow deterioration.</p> + +<p>First of all, the woodwork cracked and the paint came off in blisters, +and the dirt that got into the seams and holes and places stayed there. +Granville was visited with a plague of fine dust. It settled on +everything; it penetrated; it worked its way in everywhere. Violet, +going round languidly with a silly feather brush, made no headway +against the pest.</p> + +<p>"For Heaven's sake get it out," said Ransome, "or we shall all be +swallowed up in it and die."</p> + +<p>"Get it out yourself, if you can," said Violet. "You'll soon see how you +like my job."</p> + +<p>She was developing more and more a power of acrimonious and unanswerable +retort.</p> + +<p>"Can't you let it be, Ranny?" (He had found the feather brush.)</p> + +<p>"No. It's spoiling all my O.K. cuffs and collars."</p> + +<p>"I can't help your cuffs and collars. What do you suppose it's doing to +mine?"</p> + +<p>Ransome went on flourishing the feather brush. Presently he began to +cough and sneeze.</p> + +<p>"If you wouldn't rouse it," said Violet, "it would do less harm."</p> + +<p>He admitted that the dust was terrible when roused.</p> + +<p>So the dust got the better of them. Ransome was not the sort of man who +could go about poking his nose into cupboards and places, or flourish a +feather brush with a serious intention. He was even more incapable of +badgering a beautiful girl whom he had already wronged sufficiently, who +declared herself to be sufficiently handicapped by Baby.</p> + +<p>Since the Baby came he had abstained from comment on his wife's +shortcomings; though in the matter of meals, for instance, she had begun +to add unpunctuality to incompetence. Ransome would have considered +himself "pretty flabby" if he couldn't rough it. But he found himself +looking forward more and more to the days they spent at Wandsworth, +those rare but extensive Sundays that covered the hours of two square +meals, not counting tea-time. Then there was the hamper from +Hertfordshire. To be sure, in common decency, it could only be regarded +as a lucky windfall, but providentially the windfall was beginning to +occur at frequent intervals. The Ushers must have had an inkling. +Everybody who came to the house could perceive the awful deterioration +in the food.</p> + +<p>The next thing Ransome noticed was a faint, a very faint, but still +perceptible deterioration in himself. And by "himself" Ranny meant in +general his physique and in particular his muscles. They were not +flabby—Heaven forbid!—but they were not the superb muscles that they +had been. All last year he had attended the Gymnasium religiously once a +week, just to keep in form. This year his wife was having a bad time, +and it wasn't fair to leave her too much by herself. Instead of going to +the Polytechnic he practised with his dumb-bells in the back bedroom. +And now and then after Violet had gone to bed he sprinted. There was no +need to worry about himself.</p> + +<p>What Ranny worried about was the steady, slow deterioration in the Baby.</p> + +<p>It began in the third month of its existence. Up till then the Baby +hadn't suffered. It was naturally healthy, and even Violet owned that it +was good. By which she meant that it slept a great deal. And for a whole +month after she had it to herself she had made tremendous efforts to +keep it as the nurse had kept it. She saw (for she was not +unintelligent) that trouble taken now would save endless trouble in the +long run, in dealing with its inconceivably tender person. As for its +food, Violet had been firm about the main point, but it was no strain to +order once for all from the dairy an expensive kind of milk which Ranny +paid for.</p> + +<p>Only, whereas Nurse had made a Grand Toilette for Baby every other day, +insisting that the little frocks and vests and flannels should be put on +all clean together, Violet observed a longer and longer interval. On +Sundays, when Ranny's mother saw her, Baby was still a Little Rose, a +Honeypot, and a Fairy Flower. On other days, when tiresome people +dropped in unexpectedly, Violet hid everything under a clean overall +when she could lay her hands on one.</p> + +<p>But from Ranny she hid nothing; and presently it came upon him with a +shock that to caress and handle Baby was not the same perfect ecstasy +that it had been. It puzzled him at first; then it enraged him; and at +last he spoke to Violet.</p> + +<p>"Look here," he said, "if you want that child to be a Little Rose and a +Honeypot and a Fairy Flower, you'll have to keep it cleaner. That's got +to be done, d'you see, whatever's left."</p> + +<p>Violet sulked for twenty-four hours after that outburst, but for a whole +week afterward he noticed that Baby was distinctly cleaner.</p> + +<p>But whether it was clean or whether it was dirty, Ranny loved it, and +became more and more absorbed in it.</p> + +<p>And with Ranny's absorption Violet's irritability returned and +increased, and sullenness set in for days at a time without +intermission.</p> + +<p>"<i>This</i>," said Ranny, "is the <i>joie de veeve</i>."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Three more months passed.</p> + +<p>For Ransome every day brought a going forth and a returning, a mixing +with the world, with men and with affairs, the affairs of Woolridge's. +His married life had done one thing for him. It taught him to +appreciate his life at Woolridge's, and to discern variety where variety +had not been too apparent. There was the change from Granville to +Woolridge's, and from Woolridge's to Granville. There was the dinner +hour when he rose from his desk and went out to an A B C shop with Booty +or some other man. Sometimes the other man had ideas, views of life and +so forth, that interested Ransome; if he hadn't, at any rate he was a +man. That is to say, he didn't sulk or nag or snap at you; or nip the +words out of your mouth and twist them; he wasn't perverse; he didn't do +things that passed your comprehension, and he let you be. For Ransome +the world of men brought respite. Even at home, in that world of women, +of one woman, when things (he meant the one woman) were too much for +him, menacing his as yet invincible hilarity, he could turn his back on +them, and work in the garden or play with the Baby. Or he could leave +them for a while and mount his bicycle and ride out into the open +country. For Ransome life still had interests and surprises.</p> + +<p>For the Baby surprise and interest lurked in the feeblest of its +sensations; every day brought, for the Baby, excitement, discovery, and +adventure. And then, it had attached itself to Ransome. It behaved as if +it had some secret understanding with its father. Its sense of comedy, +like Ranny's, seemed imperishable. It would respond explosively to +devices so old, so stale, so worn by repetition, that the wonder was +they didn't alienate it, or disgust. The rapid approach and withdrawal +of Ranny's hand, his face suddenly hidden behind its pinafore and +exposed, still more suddenly, with a cry of "Peep-bo!" its own inspired +seizing of Ranny's hair, would move it to delirious laughter or silent +strangling frenzy. And when Ranny wasn't there, and nobody took any +notice of it, it had its own solitary and mysterious ecstasies of mirth.</p> + +<p>It was all very well for Ranny and the Baby.</p> + +<p>But for Violet it was one interminable, intolerable monotony. Always the +same tiresome things to be done for Granville and for the Baby and for +Ranny, when she did them; and when she didn't there was nothing to do +but to sit still, with no outlook, no interest, no surprise, no +possibility of variety and adventure.</p> + +<p>Now and then they would leave the Baby at Wandsworth with its +grandmother, and Ranny would take her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum. +But these bright hours were rare, and when they passed the gloom they +had made visible was gloomier. And brooding over it, she suffered a +sense of irremediable wrong.</p> + +<p>Nothing to look forward to but bedtime; the slow, soft-footed ascent to +the room with the walls of love knots and rosebuds, Ranny carrying the +Baby. Nothing to look forward to but the dark when the Baby slept and +Ranny (who <i>would</i> hang over it till the last minute) couldn't see the +Baby any more, the dark when he would turn to her with the old passion +and the old caresses.</p> + +<p>And even into the darkness and into their passion there had come a +difference, subtle, estranging, and profound. Between them there +remained that sense of irremediable wrong. In Violet it roused +resentment and in Ransome a tender yet austere responsibility. For he +blamed himself for it.</p> + +<p>Violet blamed the Baby.</p> + +<p>And in those three months Winny Dymond came and went. By some fatality +she contrived to call either on a Sunday when they had all gone to +Wandsworth or on a Saturday when Ransome was not there. Once or twice in +summer, when he was kept at the counting-house during stock-taking or +the sales (for Woolridge's season of high pressure came months earlier +than Starker's), Winny had dropped in toward supper-time, when Violet +had asked her to keep her company. But she always left before Ranny +could get back, because Violet told her (as if she didn't know it) that +Ranny would be too tired to see her home.</p> + +<p>One Saturday evening in August he had come in about nine o'clock after a +turn on Wimbledon Common. Granville with its gate, its windows, and all +its doors flung open, had a scared, abandoned look. A strange sound came +from Granville, the sound of a low singing from upstairs, from—yes, it +was from the front bedroom.</p> + +<p>He went through the lower rooms and out into the garden. Nobody was +there. The Baby's cradle and pram were empty. And still from upstairs +the voice came singing. In all his knowledge of her he had never known +Violet to sing.</p> + +<p>He went upstairs. The door of the front bedroom was closed as if on a +mystery. He knocked and opened it tentatively, like a man who respected +mysteries. The voice had left off singing, and was saying something. It +was a voice he knew, but not Violet's voice.</p> + +<p>It was saying, with a lilt that was almost a song, "Upsy daisy, upsy +daisy, den!"</p> + +<p>There was a pause and then "Diddums!" and a sound of kissing.</p> + +<p>He found Winny Dymond sitting there, alone, with the Baby on her knee. +He caught her in the act of slipping a nightgown over its little naked +body, that was all rosy from its bath. The place was full of the +fragrance of soap and violet powder and clean linen.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Winky!" he said. "What a lark!" He stood fascinated.</p> + +<p>But Winky with a baby in her lap was not capable of levity. It struck +him that the Baby was serious, too.</p> + +<p>"Violet's just this minute gone out for a breath of air," she said. "I'm +putting Baby to bed for her. She's been very fretful all day."</p> + +<p>"Who? Virelet?"</p> + +<p>"No, Baby. (Did it then!)."</p> + +<p>"How's that?" (He sat perched on the footrail of the bedstead, for there +was not much room to spare, what with the wardrobe and Winny and the +bath.)</p> + +<p>"I don't know. But I fancy she isn't very well."</p> + +<p>The Baby confirmed her judgment by a cry of anguish.</p> + +<p>"I say, what's wrong?"</p> + +<p>"I think," said Winny, "it's the hot weather and the bottles."</p> + +<p>"The what?"</p> + +<p>"The bottles. They're nasty things, and you can't be too careful with +them."</p> + +<p>His face was inscrutable.</p> + +<p>"Do you think," she said, "you could find me a nice clean one somewhere? +I've got <i>two</i> in soak."</p> + +<p>He smiled in spite of himself at the gravity, the importance of her +air.</p> + +<p>He went off to look all over the house for the nice clean one that Winny +was certain must be somewhere. In a basin by the open window of the +bedroom he found the two horrors that she had put there to soak.</p> + +<p>"What's wrong with these?" said he.</p> + +<p>For one moment it was as if Winny were indignant.</p> + +<p>"You put your nose to them and you'll soon see what's wrong."</p> + +<p>He did and saw. It was not for nothing that he had been born over a +chemist's shop in Wandsworth High Street. He had heard his father and +his mother (and Mercier even) comment on the sluts whose sluttishness +sent up the death rate of the infant population.</p> + +<p>He kept his back to Winny as he stood there by the window.</p> + +<p>"The bi—!" A bad word, a word that he would not for worlds have uttered +in a woman's presence, half formed itself on Ranny's lips. He turned. +"Well," he said, aloud, "I <i>am</i>—Let's throw the filthy things away. +They're poisonous."</p> + +<p>"No, I'll see to it. Just bring me another."</p> + +<p>"There isn't another."</p> + +<p>She gazed at him with eyes where incredulity struggled with terror that +responded to his fierceness. She didn't believe, and she didn't want +Ranny to believe that Violet could be so awful.</p> + +<p>"There <i>must</i> be, Ranny, somewhere."</p> + +<p>"There isn't, I tell you."</p> + +<p>"Then run round to the chemist's and get <i>three</i>."</p> + +<p>"All right, but it's no good. The kid's been poisoned. Goodness knows +how long it's been going on."</p> + +<p>She looked at him, reproachfully, this time.</p> + +<p>"No, no; it's only the hot weather come on sudden."</p> + +<p>The Baby set up a sorrowful wail as if it knew better and protested +against Winny's softening of the facts.</p> + +<p>"Poor lamb, she's hungry. Jest you run, there's a dear."</p> + +<p>He ran. The chemist, a newcomer, had set up his shop very conveniently +at the corner of Acacia Avenue.</p> + +<p>As Ransome approached, a familiar figure emerged from the shop doorway; +it stood there for a moment as if undecided, then turned and disappeared +round the corner.</p> + +<p>It was Leonard Mercier.</p> + +<p>"What on earth," thought Ranny, "is old Jujubes doing here?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The flying wonder of it had barely flicked his brain when it was gone. +Ranny's thoughts were where his heart was, where he was back again in an +instant, in the bedroom with Winny and the Baby.</p> + +<p>He prepared the child's food under Winny's directions (it was wonderful +how Winny seemed to know); and before nightfall, what with rocking and +singing, she had soothed the Baby to sleep.</p> + +<p>Nightfall, and Violet hadn't come back.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad she's got out at last," Winny said. "She's had such an awful +day."</p> + +<p>"You think she doesn't get out enough, then?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated.</p> + +<p>"I do. Not really <i>out</i> because of Baby."</p> + +<p>They sat near, they spoke low, so as not to wake the child that slept on +Winny's knee.</p> + +<p>"The kid doesn't give her many awful days. It's such a jolly kid. Any +one would think she'd be happy with it."</p> + +<p>"She's so young, Ranny. You should think of that. She's only like a +child herself. She's got to be looked after. She doesn't know much about +babies. She hasn't had one very long, you see."</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> know, Winny. How's that? You haven't had one at all."</p> + +<p>"No. I haven't had one. I can't say how it is."</p> + +<p>He smiled. "To look at you any one would say you'd nursed a baby all +your life."</p> + +<p>So she had—in fancy and in dreams.</p> + +<p>"It comes more natural to some," she said. "All Violet wants is telling. +You should tell her, Ranny."</p> + +<p>"Tell her what?"</p> + +<p>"Well—tell her to take Baby out more. Tell her to give her a bath night +<i>and</i> morning. Tell her little babies get ill and die if you don't keep +everything about them as clean as clean. Tell her anything you like. But +don't tell her to-night."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Because she's upset."</p> + +<p>"What's upset her?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. <i>You'll</i> upset her if you go flying out at her about +those old bottles like you did; and if you go calling her bad names. <i>I</i> +heard you."</p> + +<p>Was it possible? (Why, he hadn't let it out, or, if he had, it had gone, +quite innocently, through the open window.)</p> + +<p>"If you're not as gentle as gentle with her you'll upset her something +awful. You've got to be as gentle with her as you are with Baby."</p> + +<p>So she thought he wasn't gentle, did she? She thought he bullied Violet +and upset her? Whatever could Violet have been saying about him? +Well—well—he couldn't tell her that he <i>had</i> been as gentle with her +as he was with Baby, and that the gentler he was the more Violet was +upset.</p> + +<p>He didn't know that Winky was punishing him in order to punish herself +for having given Violet away.</p> + +<p>"All right, Winky," he said. "If you think I'm such a brute."</p> + +<p>"I don't think anything of the sort, Ranny. You know I don't."</p> + +<p>She rose with the sleeping child in her arms and carried it to its cot. +He followed her and turned back the blanket for her as she laid Baby +down. But it was Winny and not Baby that he looked at.</p> + +<p>And he thought, "Little Winky's grown up."</p> + +<p>To be sure, her hair was done differently. He missed the door-knocker +plat.</p> + +<p>But that was not what he meant. He had only thought of it after she had +left him.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It was past ten before Violet came back. He found her in the +sitting-room, standing in the light of the gas flame she had just lit. +Her eyes shone; her face was flushed. She panted a little as if (so he +thought) she had hurried, being late.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said to her, "have you had your little run?"</p> + +<p>She stared and flung three words at him.</p> + +<p>"I wanted it!"</p> + +<p>And still she stared.</p> + +<p>"Vi—" he began.</p> + +<p>"Well—what's the matter with you?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing's the matter with <i>me</i>. But I'm afraid Baby's going to be ill."</p> + +<p>She stood before him, her breast heaving. She drew her breath in and let +it out again in a snort of exasperation.</p> + +<p>"What makes you think so?"</p> + +<p>"Something Winny said."</p> + +<p>"What does she know about it?"</p> + +<p>He wanted to say "A jolly sight more than you do," but he stopped +himself in time.</p> + +<p>He began to talk gently to her.</p> + +<p>And Violet was horribly upset.</p> + +<p>Wrap it up as tenderly as he might, there was no mistaking the awfulness +of the charge he brought against her. He had as good as taxed her with +neglecting Baby. She had recourse to subterfuge; she sheltered herself +behind lies, laid on one on the top of the other, little silly +transparent lies, but such a thundering lot of them that Ranny could say +of each that it was jolly thin and of the whole that it was a bit too +thick.</p> + +<p>That brought her round, and he wondered whether gentleness was the best +method for Violet after all. He was disgusted, for he hated subterfuge.</p> + +<p>And she might just as well have owned up at once; for in a day or two +she was defenseless. The Baby was ill; and the illness was accusation +and evidence and proof positive and punishment all rolled into one; +Baby's sufferings being due to the cause that Ransome had assigned. It +had been poisoned, suddenly, from milk gone sour in the abominable +bottles, and slowly, subtly poisoned from the still more abominable +state of its Baby's Comforter. Ransome and his wife sat up three nights +running, and the doctor came twice a day. And every time, except on the +last night, when the Baby nearly died, the doctor spoke brutally to +Violet. <i>He</i> knew that gentleness was not a bit of good.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + + +<p>Still, that was in August, and they could put a good half of it down to +the hot weather.</p> + +<p>Besides, the Baby got over it. With all its accusing and witnessing, it +was, as Ranny said, a forgiving little thing; it had never in its life +done anybody any harm. It did not hurt Violet now.</p> + +<p>And the hot days passed; weeks passed; months passed, and winter and +spring. The Baby had one little attack after another. It marked the +passage of the months by its calamities; and still these might be put +down to the cold weather or the stress of teething. Then, in a temperate +week of May, nineteen-six, it did something decisive. It nearly died +again of enteritis; and again it was forgiving and got over it.</p> + +<p>There could be no doubt that things would have been simpler if it had +been cruel enough to die. For the question was: What were they to do +now?</p> + +<p>Things, Ransome said, had got to be different. They couldn't go on as +they were. The anxiety and the discomfort were intolerable. Still, that +he had conceived an end to them, showed that he did not yet utterly +despair of Violet. She had been terrified by the behavior of the Baby +and by the things, the brutal things, the doctor had said to her, and +she had made another effort. Ransome's trouble was simply that he +couldn't trust her. He said to himself that she had good instincts and +good impulses if you could depend on them. But you couldn't. With all +her obstinacy she had no staying-power. He recognized in her a +lamentable and inveterate flabbiness.</p> + +<p>If he had known all about her he might have formed a larger estimate of +her staying-power. But he did not yet know what she was. That bad word +that he had once let out through the window had been in Ranny's simple +mind a mere figure of speech, a flowering expletive, flung to the dark, +devoid of meaning and of fitness. He did not know what Violet's impulses +and her instincts really were. He did not know that what he called her +flabbiness was the inertia in which they stored their strength, nor that +in them there remained a vigilant and indestructible soul, biding its +time, holding its own against maternity, making more and more for +self-protection, for assertion, for supremacy. He felt her mystery, but +he had never known the ultimate secret of this woman who ate at his +board and slept in his bed and had borne his child. It was with his +eternal innocence that he put it to her, What were they to do now?</p> + +<p>And that implacable and inscrutable soul in her was ready for him. It +prompted her to say that she couldn't do more than she did, and that if +things were to be different he must get some one else to see to them. He +must keep a servant. He should have kept one for her long ago.</p> + +<p>Poor Ranny protested that he'd keep twenty servants for her if he could +afford it. As it was, a charwoman every week was more than he could +manage, and she knew it. And she said, looking at him very straight, +that there was one way they could do it. They could do as other people +did. In half the houses in the Avenue they let apartments. They must +take a lodger.</p> + +<p>Violet had thrown out this suggestion more than once lately. And he had +put his foot down. Neither he nor Granville, he said, could stand a +lodger. A lodger would make Granville too hot by far to hold him.</p> + +<p>Now in their stress he owned that there was something in it. He would +think it over.</p> + +<p>Thinking it over, he saw more than ever how impossible it was. The +charwoman, advancing more and more, had been a fearful strain on his +resources, and the expenses of the Baby's birth had brought them to the +breaking-point. And then there had been Baby's illnesses. Before that +there was the perambulator.</p> + +<p>But that was worth it. He remembered how last year he had seen an +enormous poster in High Street, with the words in scarlet letters: "Are +you With or Without a Pram for Baby?" He had realized then for the first +time that he was without one. And the scarlet letters had burnt +themselves into his brain, until, for the very anguish of it, he had +gone and bought a pram and wheeled it home under cover of the darkness, +disguised in its brown-paper wrappings to heighten the surprise of it. +Violet had not been half so pleased nor yet surprised as he had +expected; but he had got his money back again and again on that pram +with the fun he'd had out of it.</p> + +<p>But before that again, in their first year, things had had to be done +for the house and garden. Ranny shuddered now when he thought of what +the lawn-mower alone had cost him. And that tree! And then the little +pleasures and the outings—when he totted them all up he found that he +had taken Violet to Earl's Court and the Coliseum far, far oftener than +he could have believed possible. Looking back on that first year, he +seemed to have been always taking her somewhere. She wasn't happy when +he didn't.</p> + +<p>No, and she hadn't been very happy when he did. He would never forget +that week they had spent at Southend last Whitsuntide, when he got his +holiday. And it had all eaten into money. Not that he grudged it; but +the fact remained. His margin was gone; half his savings were gone; his +income had suffered a permanent shrinkage of two pounds a year.</p> + +<p>Impossible to keep a servant without the aid of the lodger he abhorred. +But with it not only possible but easy, easy as saying how d'you do. +Except for the presence of the loathsome lodger, nothing would be +changed. The back bedroom was there all ready, eating its head off; and +for all they used the front sitting-room, they might just as well not +have had one.</p> + +<p>They could get somebody who would be out all day.</p> + +<p>He thought about it for three weeks; but before he made up his mind he +talked it over with his mother. She had come to see them late one +evening in June, and he had walked back with her. She was tired, she +said, and they had found a seat in a little three-cornered grove where +the public footpath goes to Wandsworth High Street.</p> + +<p>In this favorable retreat Ranny disclosed to his mother as much as he +could of his affairs. Mrs. Ransome didn't like the idea of the lodger +any more than he did, but she admitted that it was a way out of it. +"Only," she said, "if I was you I should have a lady. Some one you know +about. Some one who might look after Vi'let."</p> + +<p>"That's right. But Virelet would have to look after her, you see."</p> + +<p>"Vi'let's no more idea of looking after anybody than the cat."</p> + +<p>"It isn't her fault, Mother."</p> + +<p>"I'm not saying it's her fault. But it's a pity all the same you should +have to put up with it."</p> + +<p>"It's larks for me to what Vi puts up with. I shouldn't mind, if—"</p> + +<p>He drew back, shy before the trouble of his soul.</p> + +<p>"If what, Ranny?" she said, gently.</p> + +<p>"If she seemed to care a bit more for the kid. Sometimes I think she +actually—"</p> + +<p>Though he could not say it, Mrs. Ransome knew.</p> + +<p>"Don't you think that, Ranny. Don't you think it, my dear."</p> + +<p>She was playing at the old game of hiding things, and she expected him +to keep it up. She had never admitted for one moment that his father +drank; and she wasn't going to admit, or to let him admit, for a moment +that his wife was a bad mother.</p> + +<p>So she changed the subject.</p> + +<p>"That's a nice little girl I see sometimes down at your place. That +Winny Dymond. Is she a friend of Vi'let's?"</p> + +<p>Ranny said she was.</p> + +<p>"Has Vi'let known her long?"</p> + +<p>"I think so. I can't say exactly how long."</p> + +<p>"Before she was married?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>Something in his manner made her pause, pondering.</p> + +<p>"Did <i>you</i> know her before you married, Ran?"</p> + +<p>"Ages before."</p> + +<p>His mother sighed.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," said Ranny, harking back, "some women <i>are</i> like that."</p> + +<p>"Like what now?" She didn't want to go back to it. She was afraid of +what she might be driven to say.</p> + +<p>"Not caring much about their own kids."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny, why do you 'arp on it?"</p> + +<p>"Because I don't understand it. It's just the one thing I can't +understand. What does it <i>mean</i>, Mother?"</p> + +<p>"Well, my dear, sometimes it means that they can't care for anything but +their 'usbands. It's 'usband, 'usband with them all the time. There's +some," she elaborated, "that care most for their 'usbands, and there's +some that care most for their children."</p> + +<p>(He wondered which would Winny Dymond care for most?)</p> + +<p>"And there's some," said Mrs. Ransome, "that care most for both, and +care different, and that's best."</p> + +<p>(Winny, he somehow fancied, would have been that sort.)</p> + +<p>"Which did <i>you</i> care for most, Mother?"</p> + +<p>"You mustn't ask me that question, Ranny. I can't answer it."</p> + +<p>But he knew. He felt her yearning toward him even then. There was +something very artful, and at the same time very comforting, about his +mother. She had made him feel that Violet was all right, that he was all +right, that everything, in fact, was all right; that he was, indeed, +twice blest since he had a wife who loved him better than her child, and +a mother who loved him better than her husband.</p> + +<p>"Talking of husbands," he said, "how's the Torpichen Badger?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head at him in the old way; keeping it up.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny, you mustn't call your father that."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"It's a whisky, my dear."</p> + +<p>(He could have sworn there was the ghost of a smile about her soft +mouth.)</p> + +<p>"So it is. I forgot. Well, how's the Hedgehog?"</p> + +<p>For all her smile Mrs. Ransome seemed to be breaking down all of a +sudden, as if in another moment the truth would have come out of her; +but she recovered, and she kept it up.</p> + +<p>"He's had the Headache come on more than ever. I've never known a time +when His Headache has been so bad. Most constant it is."</p> + +<p>Ranny preserved a respectful silence.</p> + +<p>"He's worrying. That's what it is. Your father's got too much on His +mind. The business isn't doing quite so well as it did now He can't see +to things. And here's Mercier saying that he's going to leave."</p> + +<p>"What? Old Eno? What's he want to leave for?"</p> + +<p>"To better himself, I suppose. You can't blame him."</p> + +<p>They rose and went on their way that plunged presently into Wandsworth +High Street.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>By the time he got home again Ransome had braced himself to the prospect +of the thing he hated. They might let the rooms, perhaps, for a little +while, say, till Michaelmas when he would have got his rise. Yes, +perhaps; if they could find a lady.</p> + +<p>But Violet wouldn't hear of a lady. Ladies gave too much trouble; they +nagged at you, and they beat you down.</p> + +<p>Well, then, if she liked, a gentleman. A gentleman who would be out all +day, and whose hours of occupation would coincide strictly with his own. +But he impressed it on her that no rooms were to be let in his absence +to any applicant whom he had not first inspected.</p> + +<p>So they settled it.</p> + +<p>Then, as if they had scented trouble, Mr. and Mrs. Usher came up from +Hertfordshire the very next Saturday. They looked strangely at each +other when the idea of the lodger was put before them, and Mr. Usher +took Ranny out into the garden.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't do it," Mr. Usher said. "Let her work, let her work with her +'ands. A big, strapping girl like her, it won't hurt her. Why, my Missis +there could turn out your little doll-'ouse in a hour. Don't you take no +gentlemen lodgers. Don't you let her do it, Randall, my boy, or there'll +be trouble."</p> + +<p>The advice came too late. That very evening Violet informed her husband +that she had let the rooms.</p> + +<p>And while Ranny raged she assured him that it was all right. She had +done exactly what he had told her. She had let them to a friend of +his—Leonard Mercier.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + + +<p>She gathered from his silence that it was all right. Not a muscle of +Ranny's face betrayed to her that it was all wrong.</p> + +<p>Ever since his marriage he had kept Leonard Mercier at a distance. He +had had to meet him, of course, and Violet had had to meet him, now and +again at dinner or supper in his father's house; but Ranny was not going +to let him hang round his own house if he could help it. When Jujubes +suggested dropping in on a Sunday, Ranny assured him that on Sundays +they were always out. And Mercier had met the statement with his +atrocious smile. He understood that Randall meant to keep himself to +himself. Or was it, Mercier wondered, his young wife that he meant to +keep?</p> + +<p>And wondering, he smiled more atrociously than ever. It pleased him, it +excited him to think that young Randall regarded him as dangerous.</p> + +<p>But Randall did not regard him as dangerous in the least. To Ranny, +Jujubes, in his increasing flabbiness, was too disgusting to be +dangerous. And his conversation, his silly goat's talk, was disgusting, +too. Ranny had thought that Violet would find Jujubes and his +conversation every bit as disagreeable as he did.</p> + +<p>Even now, while some instinct warned him of impending crisis, he still +regarded Leonard Mercier as decidedly less dangerous than disgusting. +He wasn't going to have the flabby fellow living in his house. That was +all; and it was enough.</p> + +<p>And in this moment that his instinct recognized as critical, he acquired +a wisdom and a guile that ages of experience might have failed to teach +him. With no perceptible pause, and in a voice utterly devoid of any +treacherous emotion, he inquired what Mercier was doing there, and +learned that Mercier was leaving Wandsworth next week, on the +thirteenth, and would be established as chief assistant in the new +chemist's shop in Acacia Avenue.</p> + +<p>He remembered. He remembered how last year he had seen Jujubes coming +out of the chemist's shop and looking about him. So <i>that</i> was what he +was after! There had been no chance for him last year; but Southfields +was a rising suburb, and this summer the new chemist was able to +increase his staff.</p> + +<p>It was not surprising that Mercier should want to leave Wandsworth, nor +that the new chemist should desire to increase his staff, nor that these +two desires should coincide in time. Nothing, indeed, could be more +natural. But still Ranny's instinct told him that there had been a +curious persistency about old Eno.</p> + +<p>Well, he would have to interview old Eno, that was all.</p> + +<p>He waited a whole hour, to show that he was not excited; and then, +without saying a word to Violet, he whirled himself furiously down to +Wandsworth.</p> + +<p>The interview took place very quietly over his father's counter. He +found his quarry alone there in the shop.</p> + +<p>Leonard Mercier greeted him with immense urbanity. He could afford to be +urbane. He was dressed, and knew that he was dressed, with absolute +correctness in the prevailing style, a style that disguised and +restrained his increasing flabbiness, whereas, though Ranny's figure was +firm and slender, his suit was shabby. Leonard Mercier had the +prosperous appearance of a man unencumbered with a wife and family. And +unless you insisted on hard tissues he was good-looking in his own +coarse way. His face, with all its flabbiness, had its dark accent and +distinction; and these were rendered even more emphatic by the growth of +a black mustache which he had trained with care. The ends of it were +waxed and drawn finely to a point. His finger nails and his skin, his +hair and his mustache showed that the young chemist did not disdain the +use of the cosmetics that lay so ready to his hand.</p> + +<p>The duologue was brief.</p> + +<p>"Hello, old chappy. So you're going to be my new landlord?"</p> + +<p>"Not <i>much</i>."</p> + +<p>"What's that?"</p> + +<p>"Some error of my wife's, I fancy."</p> + +<p>"As <i>I</i> understand it Mrs. Ransome's let me two rooms, and I've taken +them."</p> + +<p>"That's right. But you can't have 'em."</p> + +<p>"But I've engaged them."</p> + +<p>"Sorry, Jujubes. You were a trifle previous. I'm not letting any rooms +just yet."</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Ransome told me the contrary."</p> + +<p>"Then Mrs. Ransome didn't know what she was talking about."</p> + +<p>"Rats! When <i>you</i> told <i>her</i>—"</p> + +<p>"It's immaterial," said Ranny, with great dignity, "what I told her. For +I've changed my mind. See?"</p> + +<p>"You can't change it. You can't play fast and loose like that. I've +engaged those rooms from a week to-day. Where am I to go to?"</p> + +<p>"You can go to hell if you like," said Ranny, with marked amiability.</p> + +<p>Up to that point Mercier had been amiable too. But when Ranny told him +where he might go to he began to look unpleasant.</p> + +<p>Unpleasant, not dangerous; oh no, not dangerous at all. Ranny looked at +him and thought how he would go in like a pillow if you prodded him, and +of the jelly, the jelly on the floor, he would make if you pounded.</p> + +<p>"You've got to account to me for this," said Mercier. "Those rooms are +let to me from the thirteenth, and on the thirteenth I come into them, +or you pay me fifteen bob for the week's rent."</p> + +<p>"Have you got that down in black and white?" He had not.</p> + +<p>"Well—if you come into those rooms on the thirteenth I shouldn't wonder +if you get it down in black and blue."</p> + +<p>Whereupon Mercier pretended that he was only joking. He was glad that +the counter was between him and young Randall, the silly ass. And Ranny +said it was all right and offered him (magnanimously) the fifteen +shillings, which Mercier (magnanimously) refused on the grounds that he +had been joking. Then Ranny, beholding Jujubes for the lamentably flabby +thing he was, and considering that after all he had not dealt quite +fairly with him, undertook to find him quarters equal if not superior +to Granville; where, he assured him, he would not be comfortable. And +having shaken hands with Jujubes across the barrier of the counter, he +strode out of the shop with a formidable tightening and rippling of +muscles under his thin suit.</p> + +<p>Mercier leaned back against the shelves of white jars and pondered. +Recovering presently, he made a minute inspection of his finger nails. +He then stroked his mustache into a tighter curl that revealed the rich +red curve of his upper lip. And as he caught the pleasing reflection of +himself in the looking-glass panel opposite he smiled with a peculiar +atrocity.</p> + +<p>Up till then his mood had been the petty fury of a shopman balked of his +bargain and insulted. Now, in that moment, the moment of his recovery, +another thought had occurred to Mercier.</p> + +<p>It accounted for his smile.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Ransome went back to Granville with his mind unalterably made up. He was +not going to let any rooms to anybody, ever. The letting of rooms was, +if you came to think of it, a desecration of the sanctity of the home +and an outrage to the dignity of Granville. When he thought of Jujubes +sprawling flabbily in the front sitting-room, strolling flabbily (as he +would stroll) in the garden, sleeping (and oh, with what frightful +flabbiness he would sleep!) in the back bedroom next his own, filling +the place (as he would) with the loathsome presence and the vision and +the memory of Flabbiness, he realized what it was to let your rooms. And +realizing it, he had no doubt that he could make Violet see the horror +and the nuisance of it. Come to that, she shrank from trouble, and +Jujubes would have been ten times more trouble than he was worth.</p> + +<p>In fact, Ranny, having settled the affair so entirely to his own +satisfaction, could no longer perceive any necessity for caution, and +rushed on it recklessly at supper; though experience had taught him to +avoid all unpleasant subjects at the table. The unpleasantness soaked +through into the food, as it were, and made it more unappetizing and +more deleterious than ever. Besides, Violet was apt to be irritable at +meal-times.</p> + +<p>"It's off, Vikes, that letting."</p> + +<p>He saw nothing at all unpleasant in the statement as it stood, and he +was not prepared for the manner in which she received it.</p> + +<p>"Off? What d'you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I've been down and I've seen Mercier."</p> + +<p>"He told you what?"</p> + +<p>She had raised her head. Her red mouth slackened as if with the passage +of some cry inaudible. Her eyes stared, not at her husband, but beyond +and a little above him; there was a look in them of terror and enraged +desire, as if the object of their vision were retreating, vanishing.</p> + +<p>But it was all vague, meaningless, incomprehensible to Ranny. He only +remembered afterward, long afterward, that on that night when he had +spoken of Mercier she had "looked queer."</p> + +<p>And the queerest thing was that she did not know Mercier then, or +hardly; hardly to speak to.</p> + +<p>He answered her question.</p> + +<p>"He told me he'd taken the rooms, of course."</p> + +<p>"And so he <i>did</i> take them!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he took them all right. But I had to tell him that he couldn't +have them."</p> + +<p>"But you can't act like that. You can't turn him out if he wants to +come."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>can't</i> I? <i>He</i> knows that. Jolly well he knows it. <i>He</i> won't want +to come. Anyhow, he isn't coming."</p> + +<p>"You stopped him?"</p> + +<p>"Should think I did. Rather," said Ranny, cheerfully.</p> + +<p>She shot at him from those covering brows of hers a look that was +malignant and vindictive. It missed him clean.</p> + +<p>"Y—y—you——!" Whatever word she would have uttered she drew it back +with her vehement breath. "<i>What</i> did you do that for?"</p> + +<p>"Why, because I don't want the fellow in the house."</p> + +<p>"Why—don't—you want him?" Her shaking voice crept now as if under +cover.</p> + +<p>"Because I don't approve of him. That's why."</p> + +<p>"What have you got against him?"</p> + +<p>"Never you mind. I don't approve of him. No more would you if you knew +anything about him. Don't you worry. You couldn't stand him, Vi, if you +had him here."</p> + +<p>She pushed her plate violently away from her with its untasted food, and +planted her elbows on the table. She leaned forward, her chin sunk in +her hands, the raised arms supporting this bodily collapse. +Foreshortened, flattened by its backward tilt, its full jowl strained +back, its chin thrust toward him and sharpened to a V by the pressure of +her hands, its eyes darkened and narrowed under their slant lids, her +face was hardly recognizable as the face he knew.</p> + +<p>But its sinister, defiant, menacing quality was lost on Ranny. He said +to himself: "She's rattled, poor girl; and she's worried. That's why she +looks so queer."</p> + +<p>"You haven't told me yet," she persisted, "what you've got against him."</p> + +<p>And Ranny replied in a voice devoid of rancor: "He's a low swine. If we +took him in I should have to build a pigsty at the bottom of the garden +for him, and I can't afford it. Granville isn't big enough for him and +me. And it wouldn't be big enough for him and you, neither. You'd be the +first to come and ask me to chuck him out." He spoke low, for he heard +the neighbors talking in the next garden.</p> + +<p>"Fat lot you think of <i>me</i>!" she cried.</p> + +<p>"It's you I <i>am</i> thinking of."</p> + +<p>She rose from the table, dragging the cloth askew in her trailing, +hysterical stagger. She lurched to the French window that, thrown back +against the wall, opened onto the little garden. And she stood there, +leaning against the long window and pressing her handkerchief to her +mouth till the storm of her sobbing burst through.</p> + +<p>The people in the next garden stopped talking.</p> + +<p>"For God's sake," said Ranny, "shut that window."</p> + +<p>He got up and shut it himself, moving her inert bulk aside gently for +the purpose. And she stood against the wall and laid her face on it and +cried.</p> + +<p>And Ranny called upon the Lord in his helplessness.</p> + +<p>He went and put his arm round her, and she thrust him from her, and then +whimpered weakly:</p> + +<p>"Wh—wh—wh—why are you so unkind to me?"</p> + +<p>"Unkind! Oh, my Aunt Eliza!"</p> + +<p>"You don't care. You don't care," she moaned. "You don't care what +happens to me. I might die to-morrow, and you wouldn't care."</p> + +<p>"Oh, come—" he ventured.</p> + +<p>But Violet wouldn't come. She was off, borne from him on the rising tide +of hysteria.</p> + +<p>"It's true! It's true!" she cried. "Else you wouldn't use me like you +do."</p> + +<p>"But look here. Whatter you goin' on about? Just because I don't want +you to have anything to do with Mercier."</p> + +<p>She raised her flaming face at that.</p> + +<p>"It's a lie! It's a beastly lie! I never had anything to do with +Mercier."</p> + +<p>"Who said you'd had anything to do with him?"</p> + +<p>"You did. And I hardly know him. I've hardly seen him. I've hardly +spoken to him be—be—before."</p> + +<p>"I never said you had."</p> + +<p>"You thought it."</p> + +<p>"You know I didn't. How <i>could</i> I think it?"</p> + +<p>"You <i>did</i>. That's why you wouldn't let him come. You won't trust me +with him."</p> + +<p>"Trust you with him? I should think I <i>would</i> trust you. Him! The flabby +swine!"</p> + +<p>Violet's sobs sank lower. They shook her inwardly, which was terrible to +see.</p> + +<p>And as he looked at her he remembered yet again how in the beginning he +had wronged her. <i>That</i> was what made her think he wouldn't trust her. +There would always be that wrong between them.</p> + +<p>He drew her (unresisting now) to the other side of the room and lowered +her to the couch that stood there. He looked into the teapot, where the +drained leaves were still warm. He filled it up again with boiling water +from the kettle on the gas ring, and poured out a cup and gave it her to +drink, supporting her stooping head tenderly with his hand. Her forehead +burned to his touch.</p> + +<p>"Poor little Vi," he said. "Poor little Vi."</p> + +<p>She glanced at him; slantwise, yet the look made his heart ache.</p> + +<p>"Then you <i>do</i> trust me?" she muttered.</p> + +<p>"You <i>know</i> I do."</p> + +<p>They sat there leaning against each other till the room grew dim. Then +they rose, uncertainly; and hand in hand, as it were under the old +enchantment, they went upstairs into the dark room where the Baby slept.</p> + +<p>To-night he did not look at it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> + + +<p>That was on the eighth of June.</p> + +<p>He remembered, because it was a Saturday, Saturdays and Sundays being +the landmarks of his existence by which alone he measured the distances +and marked the order of events. The habit of so regarding them was +contracted in his early days at Woolridge's, when only in and by those +hours snatched from Woolridge's did he live. All other days of the week +were colored and had value according to their nearness to Saturday and +Sunday. Monday was black, Tuesday brown, Wednesday a browny gray, +Thursday a rather clearer gray (by Thursday you had broken the back of +the week), Friday distinctly rosy, and Saturday and Sunday, even when it +rained, a golden white.</p> + +<p>He hadn't been married a year before all the seven were shady; the +colors ran into each other till even Sundays became a kind of grayish +drab. And still he continued to date things by Saturdays and Sundays; as +he did now in his mind, exultantly, thus: "Saturday, the eighth: Jujubes +knocked out in the first round."</p> + +<p>Not that the dates went for very much with Ranny, to whom interesting +things so seldom happened. He remembered this one more because of his +scoring off Jujubes than because of the scene with Violet and its +sequel. He was used to scenes and sequels, and was no longer concerned +to note their correspondence and significance. So that he never noted +now that it was on and after Thursday, the thirteenth, that what he +called the Great Improvement had begun.</p> + +<p>He meant the improvement in Violet's appearance. He had accepted the +fact that, in all household matters, his wife was a slut and a slattern; +yet it staggered him when it first dawned on him that, in the awful +deterioration of Granville and the Baby, the standard of her own +toilette had gradually lowered. Then gradually he got inured to it. The +tousled, tumbling hair, the slipshod feet, the soiled blouse gaping at +the back, were, he reflected bitterly, in perfect harmony with +Granville, and of a piece with everything. He had ceased to censure +them; they belonged so inalienably to the drab monotone; they were so +indissolubly a part of all his life. And somehow she bloomed in spite of +them. Ranny's unconquerable soul still cried "Stick it!" as he grappled +with her shameless blouses.</p> + +<p>And now, suddenly, she had changed all that. She had become once more +the creature of mysterious elegance, of beauty charged with magical +reminiscence, in the trim skirt and stainless blouse, clipped by the +close belt; and with the bit of narrow black velvet ribbon round her +throat. Even in the morning she appeared once more with a clear parting +in her brushed and burnished hair. Even in the morning her soft skin was +once more sweet in its sheer cleanness. And in the evening there soaked +through and fell and hung about her that old fragrance of violets that +invariably turned his head.</p> + +<p>And she had bought new stockings and new shoes; openwork stockings that +showed her white feet through, and little, little shoes with immense +steel buckles. And her new mushroom with the big red roses round it +assaulted, battered, and beat into cocked hats all the other mushrooms +in the Avenue.</p> + +<p>But it was the stockings and the shoes that made him kiss her feet when, +on Sunday, the sixteenth, he first saw them coming down the stairs.</p> + +<p>"Do you like my shoes?" she said. And she stuck them out one after the +other. As she was standing four steps above him they were on a level +with his mouth; so he kissed them one after another, on the instep, just +above the buckles.</p> + +<p>"Do you like my dress?"</p> + +<p>"It's ripping."</p> + +<p>"Do you like my hat?"</p> + +<p>"It's an A 1 hat; but it's those feet that fetch me."</p> + +<p>He had not been so fetched for a whole year. It was a most peculiar +fetching.</p> + +<p>They went to church together (they had hired a little girl for the last +week to mind the toddling Baby in the mornings). It might have been for +church that she had put on that hat. It could only be for him that she +wore the shoes. All through the service Ranny's heart was singing a hymn +to the blessed little feet that had so fetched him, the blessed little +tootsy-woots in the blessed little shoes. He knelt, adoring, to the hem +of the new white dress. He bowed his head under the benediction of the +hat.</p> + +<p>The fact that Mercier was established in the chemist's pew opposite, and +was staring at the hat, and under it, did not interfere with his +devotions in the least. He could even afford to let old Jujubes walk +home with them, though he managed to shake him off adroitly at his shop +door. Nothing could really interfere with his devotions. For he felt +that those things, especially the shoes, were the outward and visible +signs of an inward and spiritual grace. Some grace that had descended +out of Heaven upon Violet.</p> + +<p>The signs would be, no doubt, expensive; they should not have been so +much as dreamed of before Michaelmas, when he would get his rise; that +splendiferous get-up would in all probability just about clean him out, +rise and all; but he tried not to look on the dark side of it. He was +not one to quench the spirit or the smoking flax.</p> + +<p>But, as the hours and the days went by, it was borne in upon him that +there was absolutely no connection between Violet's inward state and +that regenerated outside. This perturbed him; and it would have +perturbed him more but that he had other things to think of, and that in +any case he believed that a woman's clothes do not necessarily point to +an end beyond themselves.</p> + +<p>Now, if he had been less preoccupied and had paid more heed to dates, he +would have noted three things: that it was on and after the evening of +Thursday, the twentieth, that her mood of gay excitement and of +satisfaction died and gave place to restlessness, irritation, and +expectancy (a strained and racking, a dismayed and balked expectancy); +that Thursday, the twentieth, was early-closing day in Southfields; and +that consequently Leonard Mercier was at large. And having gone thus far +in observation, he must have seen that it was on and after Thursday, the +twenty-seventh (early-closing day again) that she became intolerable.</p> + +<p>Intolerable. There was no other word for it. The "<i>joie de veeve</i>" was +so intense that it was not to be borne. She had days of stupor now that +followed fits of fury. He didn't know which was the worse, the fury or +the stupor.</p> + +<p>But it was the stupor that made him burst out one night (at supper; it +was always at supper that these things happened).</p> + +<p>She had brought it on herself by asking what he wanted <i>now</i> when he had +broken the frightful silence by addressing her affectionately as +"Vikey."</p> + +<p>"What I want," said Ranny then, "is a change. I want bracing; and bright +surroundings, and entertaining society. I shall go and live at +Brookwood."</p> + +<p>At last it was too much for anybody (the fury, this time). It was too +much for the charwoman, even once a fortnight, and she refused to come +again. It was too much for the little girl who minded Baby in the +mornings, and she left. Her mother said she wouldn't "have her put +upon," and complained that Mrs. Ransome had served her something +shameful. Ransome hardly liked to think how Violet could have served the +little girl.</p> + +<p>Before long he had an inkling. For presently a new and incredible +quality revealed itself in Violet.</p> + +<p>Up till now she had never been unkind to the Baby. She had neglected it; +she had been indifferent to it; but it had seemed impossible, not only +to Ransome, but to Violet herself, that she could be positively unkind. +He had charged the neglect to her ignorance, and the indifference to the +perversity of her passion for her husband. It was thus that his mother +had explained the mystery, and at moments it looked as if she might be +right.</p> + +<p>But now that the little thing was on its feet, padding about with a +pathetic and ridiculous uncertainty, stumbling and upsetting itself, +sitting down suddenly, and clutching at things as it overbalanced, and +dragging them with it in its fall, Violet could only think of it as a +perfect and omnipresent nuisance, a thing inspired to torment her with +its malignant and deliberate activity. And from this she went on to +think of it as grown-up at fifteen months, a mature person, infinitely +responsible. Its misfortunes, its infirmities, its innocences were +counted to it as sins. When jam spread itself over Baby's face and +buried itself in Baby's neck, and leaped forth and ran down to the +skirts of its clothing, Baby was "a nasty little thing!" and "a naughty, +naughty girl!"</p> + +<p>Then once, in a fit of exasperation, Violet slapped Baby's hands and +found such blessed relief in that exercise that the slapping habit grew +on her. Cries of anguish went up from Granville, till the neighbors two +doors on either side complained.</p> + +<p>But tiny hands, slapped till (as she said) she was tired of slapping +them, gave no scope, offered no continuous outlet to the imprisoned +spirit within. Violet, under a supreme provocation, advanced to +arm-dragging and shaking.</p> + +<p>She found that shaking on the whole did her most good.</p> + +<p>And then, one Sunday morning, Ransome caught her at it.</p> + +<p>He caught her, coming up softly behind her and pinning her, so that her +fingers relaxed their hold, and he swung her from him.</p> + +<p>"I'm not going to have that, my girl," he said.</p> + +<p>He was deadly quiet about it; and the deadliness and quietness subdued +her. But he kept the child away from her all day till it dropped off to +sleep at bedtime.</p> + +<p>After that he never knew another peaceful moment. All his life was +narrowed suddenly into the circle of one terror and one care. It was +like a nightmare while it lasted. And it tethered him tight. He couldn't +get off by himself now on Saturdays and Sundays, for he was afraid to +leave the child with Violet and Violet with the child. He came pounding +home from Woolridge's at a frantic pace, for he never knew now what +might be happening, what might have happened in his absence.</p> + +<p>And so on to the last days of July.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>In that month Granville, so long deteriorating, was at its worst. The +paper on the walls was blistering here and there like the paint; the red +and blue roses and the rosebuds wilted, with an effect of putrefaction, +and the love knots faded.</p> + +<p>The front sitting-room, furnished so proudly and expensively, had been +long abandoned because of the attendance it exacted. In there you could +positively smell the dust. The pile of the plush held it and pierced +through it, as grass holds and pierces through the earth. Ranny had a +landed estate in his chairs and sofa. And the bright surfaces of +polished wood and looking-glass were blurred as if the breath of +dissolution had passed over them. Ranny's silver prize cups, standing in +a row on the little sideboard, were tarnished every one. Violet had no +pride in them. That sitting-room was not supposed to be sat in; yet +Ranny sat in it sometimes with Baby, as a refuge from the other.</p> + +<p>For the other was awful. It had the look, not only of being lived in, +but of having lived; of having lived hard, brutally, squalidly, and of +being worn out. A room of which Ranny said that, go into it when you +would, it looked as if it had been up all night. A stained, +bleared-eyed, knocked-kneed sinner of a room.</p> + +<p>And oh! the scullery, where the shining sink had grown a gray, rough +skin, a sort of fungoid coat, from the grease that clung to it, and the +gas stove, furred with rust, skulked like some obscene monster in its +corner. He was afraid, morally and physically afraid, to look at that +thing of infamy behind the back door. He tried to pretend the scullery +wasn't there.</p> + +<p>And in the middle of it, and through the fury and the stupor, Violet +bloomed.</p> + +<p>That was what he could not understand; how between her own cruelty and +that squalor she had the heart to bloom.</p> + +<p>He dreaded every interruption and delay that detained him at +Woolridge's, every chance encounter that kept him from that lamentable +place where he feared and yet desired to be.</p> + +<p>Yet it was in those last days of July that Granville, as if it had +passed through its mortal crisis, took, suddenly, a turn for the better.</p> + +<p>He came into his house late one evening and found peace and order there, +and the strange, pungent smell of a thorough cleaning. There was a +clean, white cloth spread in the sitting-room for supper, spoons and +forks, and the china on the dresser and the table glistened; everything +that could be made to shine was shining. From the gas stove in the +scullery there came the alluring smell of a beefsteak pie baking. It was +wonderful. And it all seemed to have been done by some divine, invisible +agency. There was nobody about; not, at any rate, at the back; and +overhead there was no sound of footsteps.</p> + +<p>He was gripped by a sense of mystery, almost of disaster; as if a wonder +so extreme had something ominous in it. Then he went into the front +sitting-room.</p> + +<p>On the plush sofa, which had been moved from its place against the wall +and drawn right across the bow of the window, Violet lay, veiled from +the street by white Nottingham lace curtains. Pure white they were; such +whiteness as was not to be seen in the newest houses in the Avenue. The +furniture had been polished till it looked like new. All in a row +Ranny's silver prize cups shone again as on the day when he bore them +from the field. The smell of dust was gone. Instead of it there came +toward him a sweet smell of violets and of woman's hair.</p> + +<p>On the sofa in the window Violet lay like a suburban odalisk, +voluptuous, heavy-scented. The flesh of her neck and arms showed rosy +under the thin, white muslin of her gown that clung to her in slender +folds and fell away, revealing the prone beauty of her body. The dim +light came on her through the Nottingham lace curtains, as light might +come through some Oriental lattice of fretted ivory. She bloomed, like a +heavy flower, languid, sullen-sweet, heavy-scented.</p> + +<p>It was Thursday, the twenty-fifth.</p> + +<p>Ransome looked about him and smiled.</p> + +<p>"I say, this is a bit of all right. Did you do it yourself, Vi?"</p> + +<p>Her large eyes opened on him in the pale light; dark they were with a +sensuous mockery in them.</p> + +<p>"Do I look as if I'd done it myself?" she said.</p> + +<p>She certainly didn't.</p> + +<p>"Did you get a woman in, then, or what?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated a moment.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I got a woman in."</p> + +<p>And the miracle continued; so that Ranny said that Granville was not +such a bad little fellow, after all, if you took him the right way and +humored him.</p> + +<p>Then he began to make discoveries.</p> + +<p>The first was on the Sunday morning when he went to his drawer for a +pair of clean socks. He had no hope of finding so much as one whole one. +And yet, there were all his socks sorted, and folded, and laid in a row; +and every single one of them had been made whole with exquisite darning. +The same with his shirts and vests and things; and they had been in rags +when he had last looked at them. And something had been done to his +cuffs and collars, too.</p> + +<p>Then there was the Baby. Her hair, that used to cling to her little head +in flat rings as her sleep had crushed it, was all brushed up and +fluffed into feathery ducks' tails that shone gold in gold. She came to +him lifting up her little clean pinafore and frock to show him. She knew +that she was fascinating.</p> + +<p>"It must be Mother, bless her," he said to himself.</p> + +<p>But it wasn't Mother; or if it was she lied about it.</p> + +<p>Then Violet let it out.</p> + +<p>It was on the night of Tuesday, the first of August, at bedtime. Ransome +was leaning over the cot where the Baby lay, tossed half naked between +sleep and waking, drowsy with dreams. She was adorable with her Little +Rose face half unfolded, and the Honeypot smell of her silken skin.</p> + +<p>Violet stood beside him, looking at the two, sullenly, but with a +certain unwonted tolerance. She was strange and still, as if the unquiet +spirit that had torn her was appeased.</p> + +<p>"I say, it's worth while keeping this kid clean, Vi. It repays you."</p> + +<p>"It pays Winny, I suppose. Else she wouldn't do it."</p> + +<p>"<i>Winny?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Yes. What are you staring at? She's a pretty kid," she added, as if the +admission had been wrung from her.</p> + +<p>"She's not been here?" said Ransome.</p> + +<p>"Hasn't she! She was here all morning and all day yesterday, and pretty +nearly every day last week."</p> + +<p>"But—how did she get off? Why—it's sale-time!"</p> + +<p>"She's chucked them."</p> + +<p>"What's she done that for?"</p> + +<p>"You'd better ask her."</p> + +<p>His instinct told him that he would do well to let it pass. He said no +more that night.</p> + +<p>But in the morning, over his hurried breakfast, he returned to it.</p> + +<p>"I don't like this about Winny," he said. "Has she got another job, or +what?"</p> + +<p>"She's got what she wanted."</p> + +<p>"What's that?"</p> + +<p>"A job at Johnson's."</p> + +<p>Johnson's was the new drapers at the other corner of Acacia Avenue, +opposite the chemist.</p> + +<p>"Johnson's?" Ranny could not conceal his innocent dismay. Johnson's +operations and his premises were so diminutive that for Winny—after +Starker's—the descent seemed awful.</p> + +<p>"Are you sure she wanted it?"</p> + +<p>"She must have wanted it pretty badly when she's willing to take seven +bob a week less screw. And if she'd waited till Michaelmas she'd have +got her rise."</p> + +<p>Ranny bent his head low over his cup. He felt his face burning with a +shame that he could not comprehend. He knew that Violet was looking at +him, and that made it worse.</p> + +<p>"You needn't worry," she was saying. "It isn't your fault if she makes a +fool of herself."</p> + +<p>"Makes a fool of herself? What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>The heat in his face mounted and flamed in his ears; and he knew that he +was angry.</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> ought to know," she sneered.</p> + +<p>He was hotter. He was intolerably hot.</p> + +<p>"I don't, then," he retorted.</p> + +<p>"You silly cuckoo, d'you mean to say you don't know she's gone on you? +Lot of pains she takes to hide it. You've only got to look at her to +know."</p> + +<p>At that the fire in him blazed out. He rose, bringing his fist down on +the table.</p> + +<p>"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," he said. "A low animal wouldn't +say a thing like that. When she's been so good to you! Where would you +be, I should like to know, if it hadn't been for Winny?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him under her lowered brows; and in her look there was +that strange tolerance, and mockery, and a feigned surprise. And with it +all a sort of triumph, as if she were rich in some secret and insolent +satisfaction and could afford her tolerance.</p> + +<p>"Me?" she mocked. "Do you suppose it's me she comes for?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know and I don't care. But as long as she does come you've got +to be decent to her. See?"</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i> decent to her. <i>I</i> don't mind her coming. What difference does +it make to <i>me</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I should say it makes a thundering lot of difference, if you ask me. +Considering the work you've managed to get out of her for nothing."</p> + +<p>"It isn't my business. I can't help it, if she likes to come here and +work for nothing."</p> + +<p>"You make me sick," said Ranny.</p> + +<p>His eyelids stung him as if they had been cut by little, little knives +close under the eyeballs. He turned from her, shamed, as if he had +witnessed some indecency, some outrage on a beautiful innocent thing.</p> + +<p>Outside in the sunlight his tears dazzled him an instant and sank back +into their stinging ducts.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Yes, it had stung him. And he had got to end it, somehow, for Winny's +sake. He had no idea how to set about it. He could not let the little +thing come and do his wife's work for her, like that, on the sly, for +nothing. And yet he could not tell her not to come.</p> + +<p>And he asked himself again and again, "Why, why does she do it? Why? +Like that—for nothing?"</p> + +<p>His heart began to beat uncomfortably, trying to tell him why. But he +did not listen to it. He was angry with his heart for trying to tell him +things he did not know and did not want to know.</p> + +<p>No. He ought not to let her keep on coming. But what was he to do? How +could he tell her not to come?</p> + +<p>He went home through Wandsworth that evening and called at St. Ann's +Terrace. Winny was there. She came down to him where he waited on the +doorstep. As they stood there he could see over the low palings of the +gardens the window of the little house where he had climbed in that +night, that Sunday night, more than two years ago.</p> + +<p>He said he had come to ask her to spend Bank Holiday with them. They +might go for a sort of picnic to Richmond Park, and she must come back +to supper.</p> + +<p>That was his idea, his solution, his inspiration; that she must come; +that she must be asked, must be implored to come; but as a guest, in +high honor, and in festival.</p> + +<p>They settled it. And still he lingered awkwardly.</p> + +<p>"I say—is it true that you've left Starker's?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"What did you do that for, Winky?"</p> + +<p>He did not know that he was going to ask her that; but somehow he had +to.</p> + +<p>She paused, but with no sign of embarrassment; looking at him with her +profound and placid eyes. It was as if she had to search for the truth +before she answered him.</p> + +<p>"I thought it best," she said at last. "I didn't want to stay."</p> + +<p>"Were you wise?"</p> + +<p>She smiled.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Ranny. I think so."</p> + +<p>No. There was not a trace of embarrassment about her, such embarrassment +as she would have been bound to feel if Violet had been right. She had +spoken in measured tones, as if from some very serious, secret, and +sincere conviction.</p> + +<p>She went on. "You see, Maudie won't want me any more. They're going to +be married when Fred gets his holiday."</p> + +<p>"Yes. But it isn't such a good thing for <i>you</i>, is it?"</p> + +<p>Her deed thus exposed, presented to her in all the high folly of it, she +seemed to flinch as if she herself were struck with the frightful +indiscretion of her descent from Starker's.</p> + +<p>"It's quieter. That's more what I want."</p> + +<p>He smiled. Pressed home, she was evasive as she had ever been.</p> + +<p>"Look here," he said, as if he were changing the subject. "<i>You've</i> been +found out."</p> + +<p>"Found out, Ranny?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. What have you been about this last week? I can't have you going +and doing Vi's work for her, you know."</p> + +<p>"Oh <i>that</i>! That was nothing. I just put things straight a bit, and now +she's got to keep them straight."</p> + +<p>He sighed, and reverted. "I don't like your throwing up that good job. I +don't reelly."</p> + +<p>He meant to go, leaving it there, all that she had done, +unacknowledged, unexplained between them, as she would have it left. And +instead of going he stood rooted to that doorstep, and to his amazement +he heard himself saying, "I wish I could do something for you, Winny."</p> + +<p>And then (he took his own breath away with the abruptness of it). "Look +here—why not come and make your home with us, when Maudie's married?"</p> + +<p>She smiled dimly, as if she hardly saw him, as if, instead of standing +beside him on the doorstep, she were saying good-by to him from +somewhere a long way off.</p> + +<p>"Oh no, Ranny, that would never do."</p> + +<p>"Why not? There's that back room there doing nothing. We don't want it. +You'd be welcome to it if it was any good."</p> + +<p>She shook her head slowly. "It's very kind of you, but it wouldn't do. +It really wouldn't. I don't mean the room, Ranny—it's a dear little +room—I mean—I mean, you know——"</p> + +<p>Now at last she was embarrassed, helpless, shaken from her defenses by +the suddenness of his proposal.</p> + +<p>"All right, Winky," he said, gently.</p> + +<p>Then she broke down, but without self-pity, tearless, in her own +fashion.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny, <i>please</i> don't think I'm horrid and ungrateful."</p> + +<p>"That's all right," he said, feebly.</p> + +<p>He turned as if to go; but she recalled him.</p> + +<p>"There's one thing you could do," she said.</p> + +<p>"What's that? I'll do anything."</p> + +<p>"Well—You can let me come over Saturdays and Sundays sometimes and look +after Baby while you take Violet somewhere."</p> + +<p>He said nothing, and she went on.</p> + +<p>"If I were you, Ranny, I'd take her somewhere every week. I'd get her +out all I could."</p> + +<p>And he said again for the third time, very humbly:</p> + +<p>"All right."</p> + +<p>And as he went he called over his shoulder, "Don't forget Monday."</p> + +<p>As if she was likely to forget it!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> + + +<p>And, after all, Monday, that is to say the day at Richmond, never came.</p> + +<p>On Monday morning when Violet got up she was seized with a slight +dizziness and sickness. It passed off. She declared that earthquakes +shouldn't stop her going to Richmond, and dressed herself in defiance of +all possible disturbance. Ransome took the Baby over to Wandsworth, to +his mother, to be looked after. At ten o'clock he joined Winny and +Maudie and Fred Booty at St. Ann's Terrace, where they had arranged that +Violet was to meet them. Following on her bicycle, she would be there at +ten sharp, when the five would go on to Richmond by the tram that passed +Winny's door.</p> + +<p>Ransome had no sooner left Granville than Violet slipped out to the +chemist's at the corner.</p> + +<p>Ten o'clock struck, and the quarter and the half hour, and Violet had +not appeared at St. Ann's Terrace.</p> + +<p>Ransome proposed that the others should go on without him; he said he +thought there must be something wrong, and that he had better go and see +what had happened. They argued about it for a while, and finally Maudie +and Fred Booty started. Winny refused flatly to go with them. She was +convinced that they would meet Violet on the road to Southfields. She +must have had a puncture, Winny said.</p> + +<p>But they did not meet her.</p> + +<p>And there was no sign of her downstairs at Granville.</p> + +<p>"Hark! What's that?" said Winny, listening at the foot of the stair. +"Oh, Ranny!"</p> + +<p>From the room above there came a low, half-stifled sound of sobbing and +groaning.</p> + +<p>He dashed upstairs.</p> + +<p>In a few minutes he returned to Winny in the front sitting-room.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter? Is she ill?" she said.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't think so. She won't tell me. She's horribly upset about +something."</p> + +<p>"Shall I go to her?"</p> + +<p>"No; better not, Winny. Look here, she won't come to Richmond. She says +we're to go without her."</p> + +<p>"We can't, Ranny."</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Upon my word, I think we may as well. She'll be more +upset if we don't go. She says she wants to be left to herself for <i>one</i> +day."</p> + +<p>A sort of tremor passed over her eyes. They did not look at him; they +looked beyond him, as if somewhere they saw something that frightened +her.</p> + +<p>"You mustn't leave her, Ranny," she said.</p> + +<p>He laughed. "She doesn't want me. She's just told me so."</p> + +<p>"Whether she wants you or not you've got to stay with her."</p> + +<p>She said it sternly.</p> + +<p>"I say, you needn't talk like that. To hear you any one would think I +fair neglected her."</p> + +<p>She bit her lip. Her eyes wandered in their troubled way. She looked +like a thing held there under his eyes against its will and seeking +some way of escape.</p> + +<p>"I don't think you neglect her, Ranny," she said at last.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, what <i>do</i> you think?"</p> + +<p>She turned. "I think I'm going for a little spin somewhere by myself. I +shall come back in time for dinner. Then I shall go down to Wandsworth +and fetch Baby."</p> + +<p>"I'll do that."</p> + +<p>"No, you won't. You'll stay with Violet," she said.</p> + +<p>"And what about your holiday?"</p> + +<p>"My holiday's all right. Don't you worry."</p> + +<p>She was out of the house and in the garden. Mechanically he wheeled her +bicycle out into the road. He was utterly submissive to her will.</p> + +<p>She mounted, and he ran by her side; she pressed on her pedals, +compelling him to run fast and faster; she set her mouth hard, grinning, +and forced the pace, and he ran at the top of his speed and laughed. At +the end of the Avenue she turned, waved to him gaily and was gone.</p> + +<p>Upstairs on her bed, in the room of the love knots, Violet lay and +writhed. She lay on her face. She had wetted her pillow with her tears; +she had flung it aside and was digging her hands into Ransome's pillow +with a tearing, disemboweling motion. Every now and then, with the +regularity of a machine, she gave out a sob and a groan that shook her.</p> + +<p>He found her so.</p> + +<p>She turned on her side as he entered, and showed him her face scarlet +and swollen with crying.</p> + +<p>"What have you come for?" she said. "I <i>told</i> you to go."</p> + +<p>"I haven't gone. I'm not going."</p> + +<p>"But you've got to go. You shall go. D'you hear? I won't have you +hanging about, watching and tormenting me. What are you afraid of? What +d'you think I'm going to do?"</p> + +<p>She turned and raised herself on her elbow and stared about her as if at +a host of enemies surrounding her, then she sank back helpless.</p> + +<p>"Won't you tell me what it is, Vi?" he said, tenderly.</p> + +<p>He sat beside her, leaning over into her hot lair, and made as though he +would have put his hand on her shoulder. She writhed from him.</p> + +<p>"Why can't you let me be," she cried, "when I don't want you? I don't +want you, I tell you, and I wish you'd go away. You've done enough harm +as it is."</p> + +<p>He rose and went to the foot of the bed and stood there, regarding her +somberly.</p> + +<p>"What did you mean by that? What harm have I done you?"</p> + +<p>She had flung herself down again.</p> + +<p>"You <i>know</i>—you <i>know</i>," she moaned into the pillow.</p> + +<p>"My God, I wish I did!"</p> + +<p>Then he remembered.</p> + +<p>"Unless—you mean—"</p> + +<p>"You ought to know what I mean without my telling you."</p> + +<p>"Well, if I do, you needn't cast it up to me. I married you right +enough, Vi."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's what you did. And that's why I hate you."</p> + +<p>"It seems to me a queer reason. But, come to that, what else could we +do?"</p> + +<p>She sat up, pulling herself together like a woman who had things to say +and meant to say them now.</p> + +<p>"We could have done as I wanted. We could have gone on as we were."</p> + +<p>"That's what you wanted, was it?"</p> + +<p>"You know it was. I never asked you to marry me. I asked you not to. And +you <i>would</i>—you <i>would</i>. I didn't <i>want</i> to marry you."</p> + +<p>"And why didn't you want? That's what I'd like to get at?"</p> + +<p>"Because I knew what it would be."</p> + +<p>"Has it been so very bad then?"</p> + +<p>She sat up straighter, wringing her hands as if she wrung her words out. +"It's been awful—something awful. All the things I don't like—all the +time. And it's made me hate the sight of you. It's made me wish I'd died +before I'd seen you. And I want to get away. I want to get out of this +horrid, hateful little house. I knew I would. I knew—I knew——"</p> + +<p>"My God—if <i>I</i>'d known——"</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i>? If <i>you</i>'d known! I wish to God you had. I wish you had just! If +that would have stopped you marrying me. Oh, you <i>knew</i> all right; only +you didn't care. You never have cared. I suppose you think it's what I'm +made for."</p> + +<p>"I don't follow. It may be all wrong. I'll allow it <i>is</i> all wrong, all +the time. What I want to know is what's up now?"</p> + +<p>"Can't you see what's up? Can't you think?"</p> + +<p>He thought. And presently he saw.</p> + +<p>"You don't mean to say it's—it's another?"</p> + +<p>"Of course it is. What else have I been talking about?"</p> + +<p>"Are you sure, Vi?"</p> + +<p>He was very grave, very gentle.</p> + +<p>"Sure? D'you think I wouldn't make sure, when it's what I'm afraid of +all the time?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you want it? Have you never wanted it?"</p> + +<p>"Want it? Want it? I'll hate it if it comes. But it won't come. It +sha'n't come. I won't have it. I won't live and have it. I shall die +anyway."</p> + +<p>"Oh no, you won't," he said.</p> + +<p>But she flung herself back and writhed and sobbed again. He sat down and +watched with her. In silence and utter hopelessness he watched. +Presently she lay motionless, worn out.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>At one o'clock Winny knocked at the door and said dinner was ready.</p> + +<p>Violet stirred. "What's the good of sitting staring there like a stuck +ox?" She raised herself. "Since you <i>are</i> there you can get me that +eau-de-Cologne."</p> + +<p>He brought it. He bathed her hands and forehead and wiped them with his +handkerchief.</p> + +<p>She dragged herself downstairs and sat red-eyed through the dinner, the +materials for the picnic which Winny had unpacked and spread.</p> + +<p>The day wore on. Violet dragged herself to her bed again, and lay there +all afternoon while Ransome hung about the house and garden, unable to +think, unable to work, or take an interest in anything. He was oppressed +by a sense of irremediable calamity.</p> + +<p>At four o'clock he made tea and took it to Violet in her room.</p> + +<p>She sat up, weak and submissive, and drank, crying softly.</p> + +<p>She turned her face to him as she sank back on her pillow. "I'm sorry, +Ranny," she said; "but you shouldn't have married me. I'm not that sort. +I told you; and you see."</p> + +<p>He could not remember when she had ever told him. But it was clear that +he saw. For he said to himself, "They say a lot of things they don't +mean when they're like this."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> + + +<p>That was the first and by far the most impressive of their really great +scenes. There was no doubt about it, Violet could make scenes, and there +was no end to the scenes she made. But those that followed, like those +that had gone before, were beyond all comparison inferior. They lacked +vehemence, vividness, intensity. After that first passion of resentment +and revolt Violet declined upon sullenness and flat, monotonous +reproach.</p> + +<p>Ransome put it all down to her condition. He set his mouth with a hard +grin and stuck it. He told himself that he had no illusions left, that +he saw the whole enormous folly of his marriage, and that he saw it +sanely, as Violet could not see it, without passion, without revolt, +without going back for one moment on anything that he or she had done. +He saw it simply as it was, as a thing that had to be. She, being the +more deeply injured of the two, must be forgiven her inability to see it +that way. He had done her a wrong in the beginning and he had made +reparation, and it was not the reparation she had wanted. She had never +reproached him for that wrong as many women would have; on the contrary, +he remembered how, on the night when it was done, she had turned to +comfort him with her "It had got to be." She had been generous. She had +never hinted at reparation. No; she certainly had not asked him to marry +her.</p> + +<p>But that also had had to be. They couldn't help themselves. They had +been caught up and flung together and carried away in a maze; like the +Combined Maze at the Poly., it was, when they had to run—to run, locked +together.</p> + +<p>What weighed on him most for the moment was the financial problem. He +lived in daily fear of not being able to pay his way without breaking +into the rest of his small savings. His schemes, that had looked so fine +on paper, had left, even on paper, no margin for anything much beyond +rent and clothing and their weekly bills. There had been no margin at +all for Baby; Baby who, above all, ought to have been foreseen and +provided for. Baby had been paid for out of capital. So that from the +sordid financial point of view Violet's discovery was a calamity.</p> + +<p>It was a mercy he had got his rise at Michaelmas. But even so they were +behindhand with their bills. That, of course, would not have happened if +he hadn't had to buy a new suit that winter. Ranny had found out that +his bicycle, though it diminished his traveling expenses and kept him +fit, was simply "ruination" to his clothes.</p> + +<p>It was awful to be behindhand with the bills. But if they got behind +with the rent they would be done for. He would lose Granville. His rent +was not as any ordinary rent that might be allowed to run on for a week +or two in times of stress. Granville was relentless in exaction of the +weekly tribute. If payments lapsed, he lost Granville and he lost the +twenty-five pounds down he paid for it.</p> + +<p>And Granville, that scourged him, was itself scourged of Heaven. That +winter the frosts bound the walls too tight and the thaws loosened +them. The rain, beating through from the southwest, mildewed the back +sitting-room and the room above it. The wind made of Granville a pipe, a +whistle, a Jew's harp to play its tunes on; such tunes as set your teeth +on edge.</p> + +<p>Ransome said to himself bitterly that his marriage had not been his only +folly. He should have had the sense to do as Booty had done. Fred had +married soon after Michaelmas, when he too had got his rise. He and +Maudie had not looked upon houses to their destruction; they had simply +taken another room in St. Ann's Terrace where she had lived with Winny. +And she had kept her job at Starker's, and meant to keep it for another +year or so. Fred wasn't going to have any kids he couldn't provide for. +Ranny's case had been a warning to him.</p> + +<p>And Ranny's case was lamentable that winter, after he had paid for his +suit. They lived almost entirely now on hampers sent from Hertfordshire. +The hampers were no longer treated as mysterious windfalls; they came +regularly once a week, and were shamefully and openly allowed for in the +accounts. And regularly once a week the young Ransomes had their Sunday +dinner at Wandsworth; they reckoned it as one square meal.</p> + +<p>All this squeezing and pinching was to pay for a little girl to look +after Baby in the mornings. They had found another, and had contrived to +keep her. For Violet, though she went on making scenes with Ranny, was +quiet enough now when Ranny wasn't there, if only Baby was kept well out +of her way. In the autumn months and in the early winter she even had +her good days, days of passivity, days of exaltation and of rapt +brooding, days when she went as if sustained by some mysterious and +secret satisfaction, some agreeable reminiscence or anticipation. And if +Ransome never noticed that these days were generally Thursdays, it was +because Thursday (early-closing day in Southfields) had no interest or +significance for Ranny. And of all Violet's moods he found the one +simple explanation in her state.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>On the whole, he observed a change for the better in his household. +Things were kept straighter. There was less dust about, and Ranny's +prize cups had never ceased to shine. His socks and vests were +punctually mended, and Baby at his homecoming was always neat and clean. +He knew that Winny had a hand in it. For Winny, established at Johnson's +at the corner, was free a good half hour before he could get back from +Oxford Street; and as often as not he found her putting Baby to bed when +Violet was out or lying down. But he did not know, he was nowhere near +knowing, half the things that Winny did for them. He didn't want to +know. All that he did know made him miserable or pleased him according +to his mood. Of course it couldn't really please him to think that Winny +worked for him for nothing; but to know that she was there, moving about +his house, loving and caring for his child as he loved and cared for it, +whether it was sick or well, clean or dirty, gave him pleasure that when +he thought about it too much became as poignant as pain. For there was +nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do for Winny to repay her. He +did not know that Winny paid herself in a thousand inimitable +sensations every time she touched the things that he had touched, or +that belonged to him; that with every stitch she put into his poor +clothes her fingers satisfied their longing, as it were, in an +attenuated, reiterated caress; that to feel the silken flesh of his +child against her flesh was for Winny to know motherhood.</p> + +<p>Her life had in it the wonder and beauty and mystery of religion. All +the religion that she knew was in each service that she did for Ranny in +his house. Acacia Avenue, with its tufted trees, with its rows of absurd +and pathetic and diminutive villas, was for Winny a shining walk between +heavenly mansions. She handled each one of Ranny's prize cups as if it +had been the Holy Grail.</p> + +<p>And religion went hand in hand with an exquisite iniquity. In all that +she did there was something unsanctioned, something that gave her the +secret and essential thrill of sin. When Winny made that beefsteak pie +for Ranny she had her first taste of fearful, delicious, illegitimate +joy. For it was not right that she should be there making beefsteak pies +for Ranny. It was Violet who should have been making beefsteak pies. But +once plunged in Winny couldn't stop. She went on till she had mended all +Ranny's clothes and sewed new Poly. ribbon on all the vests he ran in. +She loved those vests more than anything he wore. They belonged to the +old splendid Ranny who had once been hers.</p> + +<p>And under it all (if she had cared to justify herself), under the +mystery and the beauty and the wonder, there was the sound, practical +common sense of it all. As long as Violet was comfortable with Ranny +she would stay with him. But she would not be comfortable if she had too +many things to do; and if she became uncomfortable she would leave him; +and if she left him Ranny would be unhappy. So that the more you did for +her the more likely she was to keep straight. Keeping Violet straight +had always been Winny's job; it always would be; and she was more than +ever bound to stick to it now that it meant keeping Ranny's home +together. In Winny's eyes the breaking up of a home was the most awful +thing that could happen on this earth. In Leonard Mercier (established +so dangerously near) she recognized a possible leader of the forces of +disruption. When she left Starker's for Johnson's (where, as she put it +to herself, she could look after Violet), she had hurled her small body +into the first breach. Johnson's was invaluable as a position whence she +could reconnoiter all the movements of the enemy.</p> + +<p>But it was a strain upon the heart and upon the nerves; and the effect +on Winny's physique was so evident that Ranny noticed it. He noticed +that Winny was more slender and less sturdy than she used to be; her +figure, to his expert eye, suggested the hateful possibility of +flabbiness. He thought he had traced the deterioration to its source +when he asked her if she had chucked the Poly.</p> + +<p>She had.</p> + +<p>What did she do that for? Well—she didn't think she cared much for the +Poly. now. It was different somehow. At least that was the way she felt +about it. ("Same here," said Ranny.) And she couldn't keep up like she +did. The running played her out.</p> + +<p>He saw her, then, a tired, indifferent little figure, padding through +the circles and the patterns of the Combined Maze; padding listlessly, +wearily, with all the magic and the joy gone out of her.</p> + +<p>"We had grand times there together," he said then. "Do you remember the +Combined Maze?"</p> + +<p>She remembered.</p> + +<p>"Sometimes I think that life's like that—a maze, Winny. A sort of +Combined Maze—men and women—mixed up together."</p> + +<p>She thought so too.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Violet had got used to Winny's being there. She took it for granted, as +if it also were one of those things that had to be. She depended on it, +and owned herself dependent. When Winny was there, she said, things went +right, and when she wasn't there they went wrong. She didn't know how +they had ever got along without her.</p> + +<p>Ransome was surprised to see in Violet so large a heart and a mind so +open. For not only did she tolerate Winny, she clung, he could see that +she clung, to her like a child. She even tolerated what he wouldn't have +thought a woman would have stood for a single instant, the fact, the +palpable fact, that Ranny couldn't get along without her any more than +she could.</p> + +<p>And if they could, the Baby couldn't. Baby (she was Dorothy now and +Dossie) cried for Winny when Winny wasn't there. She would run from her +mother's voice to hide her face in Winny's skirts. Baby wasn't ever +really happy without Winny.</p> + +<p>That was how she had them, and she knew it, and the Baby knew it; and +the two of them simply rode roughshod over Ranny and his remonstrances.</p> + +<p>"What are you doing there, Winky?" he would say, when he caught her on a +Sunday morning in the bathroom, with Baby happy on a blanket at her +feet.</p> + +<p>"Washing Dossie's pinafores," she would sing out.</p> + +<p>"I wish to Goodness I could stop you."</p> + +<p>"But you can't. Can he, Lamby Lamb? Laugh at him, then. Laugh at Daddy."</p> + +<p>And the Lamby Lamb would laugh.</p> + +<p>He knew, and they knew, that he couldn't stop her except by doing the +work for her; and the more things he did the more things she found to do +that he couldn't do, such as washing pinafores. So he gave it up; and +gradually he too began to take it for granted that Winny should be +there.</p> + +<p>And she was more than ever there after April of nineteen-seven, when the +little son was born. The little son that they called Stanley Fulleymore.</p> + +<p>When <i>he</i> came more and more of Ranny's savings had to go. He didn't +care. For he had gone again through deep anguish, again believing that +Violet would die, that she couldn't possibly get over it. And she <i>had</i> +got over it; beautifully, the doctor said. He assured him that she +hadn't turned a hair. And after it she bloomed as she had never bloomed +before; she bloomed to excess; she coarsened in sheer exuberance and +rioting of health. She was built magnificently, built as they don't seem +able to build women now, built for maternity.</p> + +<p>"You don't think," said Ranny to the doctor, "that it really does her +any harm?"</p> + +<p>For she had tried to frighten him with the harm she said it did her.</p> + +<p>"My dear Ransome, if she had a dozen children it wouldn't do her any +harm."</p> + +<p>It was the same tale as before, and he couldn't understand it. For of +the flame of maternity, the flame that burned in Winny, it was evident +that Violet hadn't got a spark. If she had been indifferent to her +daughter Dorothy, she positively hated her son, Stanley Fulleymore. She +intimated that he was a calamity, and an ugly one at that. One kid, she +said, was bad enough; what did he expect that she should do with two?</p> + +<p>She did nothing; which was what he had expected. She trailed about the +house, glooming; she sank supine under her burden and lay forever on the +sofa. When he tried to rouse her she burst into fury and collapsed in +stupor. The furies and the stupors were worse than he had ever known. +They would have been unendurable if it had not been for Winny.</p> + +<p>And in the long days when Winny was not there he was always afraid of +what might happen to the children. He had safeguarded them as far as +possible. He had engaged an older and more expensive girl, who came from +nine to six, five days a week and Saturday morning. Soon after six Winny +would be free to run in and wash the Baby and put Dossie to bed.</p> + +<p>Shamelessly he accepted this service from her; for he was at his wits' +end. As often as not he took Violet out somewhere (to appease the +restlessness that consumed her), leaving Winny in charge of the babies. +Winny had advised it, and he had grown dependent on her judgment. He +considered that if anybody understood Violet it was Winny.</p> + +<p>And slowly, month by month, the breach that Winny had hurled herself +into widened. It was as if she stood in it with arms stretched wide, +holding out a desperate hand to each of them.</p> + +<p>Everything conspired to tear the two asunder. In summer the heat of the +small rooms became intolerable. Ransome proposed that he should sleep in +the back bedroom and leave more air for Violet and the children.</p> + +<p>Violet was sullen but indifferent. "If you do," she said, "you'll take +Dossie. <i>I</i> won't have her."</p> + +<p>He took Dossie. The Baby was safe enough for all her dislike of it, and +for all it looked so sickly. For it slept. It slept astoundingly. It +slept all night and most of the day. There never was such a sleeper.</p> + +<p>He thought it was a good sign. But when he said so to Winny she looked +grave, so grave that she frightened him.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly the Baby left off sleeping. Instead of sleeping he cried. +He cried piteously, inveterately; he cried all night and most of the +day. He never gave them any peace at all. His crying woke little Dossie, +and she cried; it kept Ransome awake; it kept Violet awake, and she +cried, too, hopelessly, helplessly; she was crushed by the everlasting, +irremediable wrong.</p> + +<p>And it was then, in those miserable days, that she turned on Winny, +until Ransome turned on her.</p> + +<p>"It's shameful the way you treat that girl, after all she's done for +you."</p> + +<p>"What's she been telling you?" There was fright in Violet's eyes.</p> + +<p>"She's not told me anything. I've got eyes. I can see for myself."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you've got eyes, have you? Jolly lot you see!"</p> + +<p>But she was penitent that night and asked Winny to forgive her. She +implored her not to leave off coming.</p> + +<p>And Winny came and went now in pain instead of joy. Everything in +Ranny's house pained her. Violet's voice that filled it pained her, and +the crying of the little children. Ranny's face pained her. Most of all +it pained her to see Dossie's little cot drawn up beside Ranny's bed in +the back room; they looked so forlorn, the two of them; so outcast and +so abandoned.</p> + +<p>She went unhindered and unheeded into Ranny's room, tidying it and +putting the little girl to bed. But into Violet's room she would not go +more than she could help. She hated Violet's room; she loathed it; and +she dared not think why.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>One Saturday evening in the last week of September Ransome had come home +late after a long solitary ride in the country. Violet, who was busy +making a silk blouse for herself, had refused to go with him. Winny had +laid it down as a law for Ranny that Violet was never to be left for +very long to herself, if he wanted her to be happy. And, of course, he +wanted her to be happy. But if ever there was a moment when he could +leave her with a clear conscience it was when she was dressmaking.</p> + +<p>She gave herself to it with passion, with absorption. He had known her +to sit for hours over a new blouse in apparently perfect happiness.</p> + +<p>And to-day he could have sworn that she was happy. She had risen of her +own accord and kissed him good-by and told him to enjoy himself and not +hurry home. She would be all right, and Winny had said she would drop in +for tea. He left her sewing white lace onto blue silk in a matchless +tranquillity.</p> + +<p>And he <i>had</i> enjoyed his ride, and he had not hurried home, for he knew +that the children would be all right (even if Violet's happy mood had +changed) as long as Winny was there to look after them.</p> + +<p>He rode far out into the open country, into the deep-dipping lanes, +between fields, and through lands scented with autumn. And as he rode he +was a boy again. Never since his marriage had he known such joy in +freedom and such ecstasy in speed. There was a wind that drove him on, +and the great clouds challenged him and raced with him as he went.</p> + +<p>He came home against the wind, but that was nothing. The wind was a +challenge and a defiance of his strength; it set the blood racing in his +veins, and cooled it in his face when it burned. It was good to be +challenged by the wind and to defy it. It was good to struggle. It was +all good that happened to him on that day.</p> + +<p>Night had fallen when he returned. Granville was lit up behind its +yellow blinds. Winny stood at the open door with the lighted passageway +behind her. Granville in the autumnal dark, with the gas turned full on +inside it, looked all light, all quiet flame, as if the walls that were +the substance of it had been cut clean away, leaving a mere shell, a +mere framework for its golden incandescence.</p> + +<p>So small, so fragile, so insubstantial was the shell, that Winny's +slight figure in the doorway showed in proportion solid and solitary and +immense, as if it sustained the perishable fabric.</p> + +<p>She was leaning forward now, bearing up the shell on her shoulders. She +was looking out, up and down the Avenue.</p> + +<p>"That you, Winny?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I'm looking for Vi."</p> + +<p>"She gone out?"</p> + +<p>"Gone into Wandsworth."</p> + +<p>"What did she go for?"</p> + +<p>"To have a dress tried on."</p> + +<p>"I say, she <i>is</i> going it!"</p> + +<p>"There's a girl in St. Ann's," said Winny, "what makes for her very +cheap."</p> + +<p>He sighed and checked his sigh. "You bin slavin', Win?"</p> + +<p>"No. Why?"</p> + +<p>"You looked fagged out."</p> + +<p>Winny's face was white under the gaslight.</p> + +<p>She said nothing. She stood there looking out while he propped his +bicycle up against the window sill.</p> + +<p>He followed as she turned slowly and went through the passage to the +back room.</p> + +<p>"Kids asleep?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Fast."</p> + +<p>She went to the dresser, and he helped her to take down the cups and +plates and set the table for their supper. In all her movements there +was a curious slowness and constraint, as if she were spinning time +out, thread by thread. It was five-and-twenty past eight.</p> + +<p>"Who's that for?" she asked as he laid a third place at the side.</p> + +<p>"Well, I should think it was for you."</p> + +<p>She started ever so slightly, and stared at the three plates, as if +their number put her out in some intricate calculation.</p> + +<p>"I must be going," she said.</p> + +<p>"Not you. Not much!"</p> + +<p>She submitted, moving uneasily about the place, but busy, folding things +and putting them away. He ran upstairs to wash. She could hear him +overhead, splashing, rubbing, and brushing.</p> + +<p>When he came down again she was sitting on the sofa with her hands +clasped in front of her, her head bent, her eyes fixed, gazing at the +floor.</p> + +<p>"I suppose we've got to wait for Vi," he said.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes."</p> + +<p>They waited.</p> + +<p>"I say, it's a quarter to nine, you know," he said, presently.</p> + +<p>"Hungry, Ran?"</p> + +<p>"My word! I should think I was just. D'you think she's gone to Mother +and had supper there?"</p> + +<p>"She—might have."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, let's begin. Come along."</p> + +<p>She shook her head. There was a slight spasm in her throat as if the +idea of food sickened her.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing—nothing. I'm all right. I don't want to eat anything, that's +all. I must be going soon."</p> + +<p>"You're tired out, Win. You've got past it. Tell you what, I'll make you +a cup of tea."</p> + +<p>"No, Ranny, don't. I'd rather not."</p> + +<p>She rose, and yet she did not go. He had never known Winny so undecided.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly she stooped. On the floor of the hearth rug she had caught +sight of some bits of blue silk left from Violet's sewing. With an +almost feverish concentration of purpose she picked up each one of the +scraps and snippets; she threw them on the hearth. Slowly, deliberately, +spinning out her thread of time, she gathered what she had strewed; she +gathered into a handful the little scraps and snippets of blue silk, +powdered with the gray ashes from the hearth, and dropped them in the +fire, watching till the last shred was utterly destroyed.</p> + +<p>There was a faint cry overhead and Ransome started up.</p> + +<p>The cry or his movement clenched her resolution.</p> + +<p>"<i>I'll</i> go, Ranny," she said.</p> + +<p>And as she went she drew a letter in a sealed envelope from the bosom of +her gown and laid it on the table.</p> + +<p>"Vi said I was to give you that if she wasn't back by eight. It's nine +now."</p> + +<p>He stared and let her go. He waited. He was aware of her footsteps in +the front room upstairs, of the baby crying, and of the sudden stilling +of his cry. Then he opened the letter.</p> + +<p>He read in Violet's tottering, formless handwriting:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Randall,</span>—This is to let you know I've gone and that I'm not +coming back again. I stuck to you as long as I could, but it was +misery. You and me aren't suited to live together, and it's no use +us going on any more pretending. If you'd take me back to-morrow I +wouldn't come. I can't live without Leonard Mercier, nor he without +me. I dare say you know it's him I've gone with.</p> + +<p>We're awfully sorry for all the trouble we're bringing on you. But +we couldn't help ourselves. We were driven to it. I've been off my +head all this year thinking how I must do it, and all the time +being afraid to take the step. And ever since I made up my mind to +it I've been quiet inside and happy, which looks as if it was meant +and had got to be.</p> + +<p>You needn't blame Leonard. He held off till he couldn't hold off +any more, because he was a friend of yours and didn't want to hurt +you. It was really me made him. It's a tragedy, but it would be a +bigger tragedy if we didn't, for we belong to one another. And he's +taking me to Paris to live so as nobody need know anything about +it. He's got a post in a shop there. And we're starting on a +Saturday so as you can have Sunday to turn round in.</p> + +<p>You'll forgive me, Ranny dear. It's what I've always told you—you +shouldn't have married me. You should have married a girl like +Winny. She was always fond of you. It was a lie what I told you +once about her not being. I said it because I was mad on you, and I +knew you'd marry her if I let you alone. So you can say it's all my +fault, if you like.</p> + +<p>Yours truly,</p> + +<p>[she had hesitated, with some erasures, over the form of +valedictions]</p> + +<p>Vi.</p></div> + +<p>There was a postscript:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"You can do anything you like to me as long as you don't touch +Leonard. It's not his fault my caring for him more than you."</p></div> + +<p>And in a small hand squeezed into the margin he made out with difficulty +two more lines. "You needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby. There was +never anything between me and Leonard before July of last year."</p> + +<p>He did not read it straight through all at once. He stuck at the opening +sentence. It stupefied him. Even when he took it in it did not tell him +plainly what it was that she had done besides going away and not coming +back again. It was as if his mind were unable to deal with more than one +image at a time, as if it refused to admit the hidden significance of +language.</p> + +<p>Realization came with the shock of the name that struck at him suddenly +out of the page in a flash that annihilated the context. The name and +his intelligence leaped at each other and struck fire across the +darkness. His gorge rose at it as it would have risen at a foul blow +under the belt.</p> + +<p>Leonard Mercier; he saw nothing else; he needed nothing else but that; +it showed him her deed as the abomination that it was. If it had been +any other man he thought he could have borne it, for he might still have +held her clean.</p> + +<p>As it was, the uncleanness was such that his mind turned from it +instinctively as from a thing unspeakable. He closed his eyes, he hid +his face in his hands, as if the two had been there with him in the +room. And still he saw things. There rose before him a sort of welter of +gray slime and darkness in which were things visible, things white and +vivid, yet vague, broken and unfinished, because his mind refused to +join or finish them; things that were faceless and deformed, like white +bodies that tumble and toss in the twilight of evil dreams. These white +things came tumbling and tossing toward him from the gray confines of +the slime; urged by a persistent and abominable life, they were borne +perpetually on the darkness and were perpetually thrust back into it by +his terror.</p> + +<p>He turned the letter and read it to the end, to the last scribble on the +margin: "You should have married a girl like Winny Dymond." "It was a +lie what I told you once about her." "You needn't be afraid of being +fond of Baby." There was nothing evocative, nothing significant for him +in these phrases, not even in the names. His mind had no longer any grip +on words. The ideas they stood for were blurred; they were without form +or meaning; they rose and shifted like waves, and like waves they +disappeared on the surface of the darkness and the slime.</p> + +<p>He was roused from his sickening contemplation by a child's cry +overhead. It came again; it pierced him; it broke up the horror and +destroyed it. He woke with it to a sense of sheer blank calamity, of +overpowering bereavement.</p> + +<p>His wife had left him. That was what had happened to him. His wife had +left him. She had left her little children.</p> + +<p>It was as if Violet had died and her death had cleansed her.</p> + +<p>When the child cried a third time he remembered Winny. He would have to +tell her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> + + +<p>He rose and went to the fireplace mechanically. His impulse was to tear +up and burn Violet's letter and thus utterly destroy all proof and the +record of her shame. He was restrained by that strong subconscious +sanity which before now had cared for him when he was at his worst. It +suggested that he would do well to keep the letter. It was—it was a +document. It might have value. Proofs and records were precisely what he +might most want later on. He folded it and replaced it in its envelope +and thrust it into the breast pocket of his coat.</p> + +<p>And it occurred to him again that he had got to tell Winny.</p> + +<p>He could hear her feet going up and down, up and down, in the front room +overhead where she walked, hushing the crying baby. Presently the crying +ceased and the footsteps, and he heard the low humming of her cradle +song; then silence; and then the sound of her feet coming down the +stairs.</p> + +<p>He would have to tell her now.</p> + +<p>He drew himself up, there where he was, standing by his hearth, and +waited for her.</p> + +<p>She came in softly and shut the door behind her and stood there as if +she were afraid to come too near. Her face was all eyes; all eyes of +terror, as before a grief too great, a bereavement too awful for any +help or consolation. She spoke first.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Ranny?" Her low voice went light like a tender hand that +was afraid to touch his wound.</p> + +<p>"She's left me; that's all."</p> + +<p>Her lips parted, but no words came; they parted to ease the heart that +fluttered with anguish in her breast. She moved a little nearer into the +room, not looking at him, but with her head bowed slightly as if her +shoulders bore Violet's shame. She stood a moment by the table, looking +at her own hand as it closed on the edge, the fingers working up and +down on the cloth. It might have been the hand of another person, for +all she was aware of its half-convulsive motion.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny, <i>dear</i>—" At last she breathed it out, the soul of her +compassion, and all her hushed sense of his bereavement.</p> + +<p>"Did you know?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head, slowly, closing in an extremity of negation the eyes +that would not look at him.</p> + +<p>"No—No—" It was as if she had said, "Who <i>could</i> have known it?" Yet +her voice had an uncertain sound.</p> + +<p>"But you had an idea?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said, taking courage from his incredible calmness. "I was +afraid; that was all." And then, as one utterly beaten by him and +defenseless, she broke down. "I tried so hard—so hard, so as it +shouldn't happen."</p> + +<p>It was as if she had said, "I tried so hard—so hard to save her for +you; but she had to die."</p> + +<p>"I know you did."</p> + +<p>But it was only then, in the long pause of that moment, that he knew; +that he saw the whole full, rich meaning and intention of the things +that she had done for him.</p> + +<p>And now, as if she were afraid lest he should see too much, as if +somehow his seeing it would sharpen the perilous edge she stood on, +would wind up to the pitch of agony her tense feeling of it all, Winny +suddenly became evasive. She found her subterfuge in stark matter of +fact.</p> + +<p>"You haven't had any supper," she said.</p> + +<p>"No more have you."</p> + +<p>"I don't want anything."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure <i>I</i> don't. But you must. You'll be ill, Winny, if you don't."</p> + +<p>White-faced and famished, they kept it up, both struck by the indecency +of eating in the house of sorrow. Then for his sake she gave in, and he +for hers.</p> + +<p>"If you will, I will," she said.</p> + +<p>"That's right," said he.</p> + +<p>And together helping each other, they filled the kettle and set it on +the fire to boil, moving in silence and with soft footsteps, as in the +house where death was. And together they sat down to the table and +forced themselves to eat a little, each for the sake of the other, +encouraging each other with such difficult, broken speech as mourners +use. They behaved in all ways as if the ghost of a dead Violet sat in +her old place, facing Ranny. The feeling, embraced by each of them with +the most profound sincerity, was that Ranny's bereavement was +irreparable, supreme. Each was convinced with an inassailable and +immutable conviction that the thing that had happened was, for each of +them, the worst that could happen.</p> + +<p>Half through the meal he got up suddenly and left her. He was seized +with violent sickness, such sickness as he had never yet known, and +would have believed impossible. The sounds of his bodily anguish reached +her from the room above. They stirred her emotion to a passion of +helpless, agonizing pity. If she could only go up to him and put her +hand on his forehead, and do things for him! But she couldn't; and she +felt poignantly that if she did Ranny somehow wouldn't like it. So, as +there was nothing she could do for him, she laid her head down on her +arms and wept.</p> + +<p>She raised it suddenly, like a guilty thing, and dashed the tears from +her eyes, as if she were angry with them for betraying her.</p> + +<p>Ranny had recovered and was coming downstairs again. As he came in he +saw at once what she had been doing.</p> + +<p>"You've been crying, Winny?"</p> + +<p>She said nothing.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't if I were you," he said. "There's no need."</p> + +<p>She rose and faced him bravely, for there were things that must be +thought of.</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do, Ranny?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Nothing. What is there to be done?"</p> + +<p>"Well—" She paused, breathing painfully.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Winny, you're dead-beat and you must go home to bed. Do you +know it's past ten?"</p> + +<p>She drew herself up. "I'm not going."</p> + +<p>"You must, dear, I'm afraid."</p> + +<p>He smiled, and the smile and his white face made her heart ache. Also +they made her more determined.</p> + +<p>"You must have somebody. You can't be left like this all by yourself. Do +you think I can go and leave you, when you're ill and all?"</p> + +<p>"I'm all right now. I wish I could see you home, but I can't leave the +house with the kids, you see, all alone."</p> + +<p>"Ranny," she said, "I'm not going." She was very grave, very earnest, +absolutely determined, and, child that she still was, absolutely unaware +of the impossibility of the thing that she proposed. She was blind to +herself, blind to all appearances, blind to all aspects of the case, but +one, his desolation and his necessity.</p> + +<p>"I can't leave you. I wouldn't be happy if I didn't stay. You might be +taken bad or something, in the night."</p> + +<p>"You can't stay, Winny. It wouldn't do." They were the words she had +used to him, in her wisdom, when he had asked her to make her home with +him and Violet.</p> + +<p>But the vision of propriety, which he raised and presented thus for her +consideration, it was nothing to her. She swept it all aside.</p> + +<p>"But I <i>must</i>," she said. "There's Baby."</p> + +<p>He remembered then that little one, above in Violet's deserted room. +Almost she had persuaded him, but for that secret sanity which had him +in its care.</p> + +<p>"I'll take him. You must go now," he said, firmly. "Now this minute."</p> + +<p>He looked for her hat and coat, found them and put her into them, +handling her with an extreme inflexibility of manner and tenderness of +touch, as if she had been a child.</p> + +<p>"Well, then," she compromised. "Let me help you move him."</p> + +<p>He let her; and they went upstairs and into Violet's room. Winny had +removed every sign of disorder left by Violet in the precipitancy of her +flight. Between them, very gently, they carried the cot, with the +sleeping baby in it, out of the room of the love knots and the rosebuds +into Ranny's room. They set the cot close up against the side of his bed +with the rail down so that Ranny's arms might reach out to Baby where he +lay. Dossie's little bed was drawn up at the foot. They stood together +for a moment, looking at the two children, at Dossie, all curled up and +burrowing into her pillow, and at Baby, lying by Ranny's bed as a +nursling lies by its mother.</p> + +<p>They were silent as the same thought tore at them.</p> + +<p>Night after night, for years, as long as Dossie and Baby were little, +Ranny would lie like that, on that narrow bed of his, shut in by the two +cots, one at his side and the other at his feet. And to Winny it had +come, for Ranny had rubbed it into her (tenderly enough; but he had +rubbed it in), that this was the last night when she could stand beside +him there. She had tried so hard to hold him and Violet together; and +all the time it had been Violet who had held her and him. It was +Violet's presence that had made it possible for her to go in and out +with Ranny in his house.</p> + +<p>She stooped for a final, reassuring look at Baby.</p> + +<p>"Can you manage with him?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>"I've made him his food in that saucepan. You'll have to heat it on the +gas ring—in there."</p> + +<p>"In there" was Violet's room.</p> + +<p>They went downstairs together.</p> + +<p>"I wish I could see you home," he said again.</p> + +<p>"I'm all right." But she paused on the doorstep. "You ought to have +somebody. You can't be left all alone like this. Mayn't I run down and +fetch your mother?"</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "you mayn't. I'll go down myself to-morrow morning, if +you wouldn't mind coming in and looking after the kids for a bit."</p> + +<p>"Of course I'll come. Good night, Ranny."</p> + +<p>"Good night, Winky. And thanks—" His throat closed with a sharp +contraction on the words. She slipped into the darkness and was gone.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He was thankful that he had had the sense to see the impossibility of +it, of her spending the night in his house with nobody in it but the two +of them and the two children.</p> + +<p>But it was only when, in the act of undressing, he was reminded of +Violet's letter by its bulging in his breast pocket, that he glimpsed +the danger they had escaped. Up till then he had only thought of Winny, +of her reputation, of her post at Johnson's (imperiled if she were not +in by eleven), of all that she would not and could not think of in her +thought for him. Now, that inner sanity, that secret wisdom which had +made him preserve Violet's letter as a possibly valuable document, +suggested that if Winny had stayed all night in the house with him that +document would have lost its value. Not that he had meant to do anything +with it, that he had any plan, or any certain knowledge. Those two +ideas, or rather, those two instinctive appreciations, of the value of +the document, and of the awfulness of the risk they ran, were connected +in his mind obscurely as the stuff of some tale that he had been told, +or as something he had seen sometime in the papers. He put them from him +as things that he himself had no immediate use for; while all the time +subconscious sanity guarded them and did not let them go.</p> + +<p>But that was all it did for him. It did not lift from him his +oppression, or fill with intelligible detail his blank sense of +calamity, of inconsolable bereavement. This oppression, this morbid +sense, amounted almost to hallucination; it prevented him from thinking +as clearly as he might about all that, the value of the document, and +the rest of it, and about what he ought to do. It was with him as he lay +awake on his bed, shut in by the two cots; it, and the fear of +forgetting to feed Baby, got into his dreams and troubled them; they +watched by him in his sleep; they woke him early and were with him when +he woke.</p> + +<p>Dossie woke too. He took her into his bed and played with her, and in +playing he forgot his grief. A little before seven he got up and +dressed. He washed Dossie and dressed her as well as he could, with +tender, clumsy fingers that fumbled over all her little strings and +buttons. Pain, and pleasure poignant as pain, thrilled him with every +soft contact with her darling body. He tried to brush her hair as Winny +brushed it, all in ducks' tails and in feathers.</p> + +<p>He went down and busied himself, hours earlier than he need, making the +fire, getting ready Dossie's breakfast and Baby's and his own. Foraging +in the larder, he came upon a beefsteak pie that, evidently, Winny had +made for him, as if in foreknowledge of his need. When he had washed up +the breakfast things and the things that were left over from last night, +he went upstairs and made his bed, clumsily. Then he went down again and +tidied the sitting-room. In all this he was driven by his determination +to leave nothing for Winny to do for him when she came. He went to and +fro, with Dossie toddling after him and laughing.</p> + +<p>Upstairs, Baby laughed in his cot.</p> + +<p>And all the time, Ranny, with his obsession of bereavement and calamity, +was unaware of the peace, the exquisite, the unimaginable peace that had +settled upon Granville.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>At half past eight Winny looked in (entering by the open door of +Granville) to see what she could do.</p> + +<p>She found him in the bathroom, trying to wash Baby. He had put the +little zinc bath with Baby in it inside the big one.</p> + +<p>"Whatever did you do that for, Ranny?" Winny asked, while her heart +yearned to him.</p> + +<p>He said he had to. The little beggar splashed so. Good idea, wasn't it?</p> + +<p>Almost he had forgotten his bereavement.</p> + +<p>Winny shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Anyhow, I've washed him all right."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said she. "But you'll never dry him."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"You can't. Not in here. There isn't room for you to set. Where's your +chair and your flannel apron?"</p> + +<p>"Flannel apron?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. If you don't wear one you'll not get any hold on him. He'll slip +between your knees before you know he's gone."</p> + +<p>"Not if I keep 'em together."</p> + +<p>"<i>Then</i> there's no lap for him. What he wants is petticoats."</p> + +<p>(Petticoats? That was the secret, was it? He had tried to soap Baby, bit +by bit, as he had seen Winny do, holding him, wrapped in a towel, on his +knees—a disastrous failure. It was incredible how slippery he was.)</p> + +<p>"There's his blanket. I thought I'd dry him on the floor."</p> + +<p>"He'll catch his death of cold, Ranny, if you do. There, give him to me. +We'll take him downstairs to the fire."</p> + +<p>He gave her the little naked, dripping body, and she wrapped it in the +warm blanket and carried it downstairs.</p> + +<p>"You bring the towels and the powder puff, and all his vests and +flannels and things," said Winny.</p> + +<p>He brought them. She established herself in the low chair by the fire +downstairs. He played with Dossie as he watched her. And all the time, +through all the play, his obscure instinct told him that she ought not +to be there. It suggested that if he desired to preserve the integrity +of the document, Winny and he must not be known to be alone in the house +together.</p> + +<p>But it was a question of petticoats. He realized it when he saw Baby +sprawling in the safe hollow of her lap. He had meant to tell Winny +that she mustn't stay; but she had him by those absurd petticoats of +hers, and behind her petticoats he shielded himself from the upbraidings +of his sanity.</p> + +<p>But Winny knew. She was not going to stay, to be there with him more +than was strictly necessary. When, with exquisite gentleness, she had +inserted Baby into all his little vests and things, she put on him his +knitted Baby's coat and hat, and gave him to Ranny to hold while she +arrayed Dossie in her Sunday best. Then she packed them both into the +wonderful pram, and wheeled them out into the Avenue, far from Ranny.</p> + +<p>For she knew that Ranny didn't want her. He wanted to be left alone to +think.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> + + +<p>He had been incapable of thinking until now, the first moment (since it +had happened) that he had been left alone. Last night the thing had +stupefied him so that he could not think. If he had tried to describe +what had been before him last night, he would have said there was a lot +of cotton wool about. It had been all like wool, cotton wool, nothing +that the mind could bite on, nothing that it could grasp. Last night +Winny had been there, and that had stopped his thinking. It was absurd +to say that what had happened had disturbed his night's rest. What had +disturbed his night's rest had been his fear lest he should forget to +feed Baby. And in the morning there had been too many things to do, +there had been Dossie and Baby. And then Winny again.</p> + +<p>And now they were all gone. There was silence and a clear space to think +in. His brain too was clear and clean. The clouds of cotton wool had +been dispersed in his movements to and fro.</p> + +<p>As an aid to thinking he brought out of his breast pocket Violet's +letter. He spread it on the table in the back sitting-room and sat down +to it, seriously, as to a document that he would have to master, a thing +that would yield its secret only under the closest examination. He was +aware that he had not by any means taken it all in last night.</p> + +<p>That she had gone off with Leonard Mercier, <i>that</i> he had indeed +grasped, <i>that</i> he knew. But beyond that the letter gave him no solid +practical information. It did not and it was not meant to give him any +clue. In going off Violet had disappeared and had meant to disappear. He +gathered from it that she had been possessed by one thought and by one +fear, that he would go after her and bring her back.</p> + +<p>"What on earth," he said to himself, "should I go after her for?"</p> + +<p>She made that clear to him as he read on. Her idea was that he would go +after her, not so much to bring her back as to do something to Mercier, +to inflict punishment on him, to hurt Mercier and hurt him badly. That +was what Violet was afraid of; that was why she tried to shield Mercier, +to excuse him, to take the whole blame on herself. And, evidently, that +was what Mercier was afraid of too. That was why he had bolted with her +to Paris. They must have had that in their minds, they must have planned +it months before. He must have been trying for the post he'd got there. +Ransome could see further, with a fierce shrewdness, that it was +Mercier's "funk" and not his loyalty that accounted for his "holding +off." "He held off because I was his friend, did he? He held off to save +his own skin, the swine!"</p> + +<p>And now she drew him up. What was all this about Winny Dymond? He must +have missed it last night. "She was always fond of you. It was a lie +what I told you about her not being. I said it because I was mad on you. +I knew you'd have married her if I'd let you alone."</p> + +<p>She was cool, the way she showed herself up. That's what she'd done, +had she? Lied, so that he might think Winny didn't care for him? Lied, +so that he mightn't marry her? Lied, so that she might get him for +herself? For her fancy, for no more than a low animal would feel. He +could see it now. He could see what she was. A woman who could fancy +Mercier must have been a low animal all through and all the time.</p> + +<p>How he had ever cared for her he couldn't think. There must have been +some beastliness in him. Men <i>were</i> beasts sometimes. But he was worse. +He was a fool to have believed her lie. Even her beastliness sank out of +sight beside that treachery.</p> + +<p>Well—she'd been frank enough about it now. She must have had a face, to +own that she'd lied to him and trapped him! After that, what did it +matter if she <i>had</i> left him? "I dare say you know who I've gone with." +What did it matter who she'd gone with? Good God! What did it matter +what she'd done?</p> + +<p>He could smile at her fear and at the cause of it. Mercier must have +terrified her with his funk. The postscript said as much. "You can do +anything you like to me, so long as you don't hurt Leonard." He smiled +again at that. What did she imagine he'd like to do to her? As for +Mercier, what should he want to hurt the beast for? He wouldn't touch +him—now—with the end of a barge-pole.</p> + +<p>Oh, well, yes, he supposed he'd have to leather him if he came across +him. But he wouldn't have any pleasure in it—now. Last year he would +have leathered him with joy; his feet had fairly ached to get at him, to +kick the swine out of the house before he did any harm in it. Now it was +as if he loathed him too much in his flabbiness to care for the contact +that personal violence involved.</p> + +<p>Yet, through all the miserable workings of his mind the thought of +Mercier's flabbiness was sweet to him. It gave him a curious consolation +and support. True, it had been the chief agent in the process of +deception; it had blinded him to Mercier's dangerous quality; it had +given him a sense of false security; he could see, now, the fool he'd +been to imagine that it would act as any deterrent to a woman so +foredoomed as Violet. Thus it had in a measure brought about the whole +catastrophe. At the same time it had saved him from the peculiar +personal mortification such catastrophes entail. In comparison with +Mercier he sustained no injury to his pride and vanity of sex. And +Mercier's flabbiness did more for him than that. It took the sharpest +sting from Violet's infidelity. It removed it to the region of insane +perversities. It removed Violet herself from her place in memory, that +place of magic and of charm where if she had remained she would have had +power to hurt him.</p> + +<p>When he considered her letter yet again in the calmness of that thought, +it struck him that Violet herself was offering him support and +consolation. "You shouldn't have married me. You should have married a +girl like Winny Dymond."—"I knew you'd marry her if I let you alone." +Why, after all these years, had she confessed her treachery? Why had she +confessed it now at the precise moment when she had left him? There was +no need. It couldn't help her. No, but it was just possible (for she was +quite intelligent) that she had seen how it might help him. It was +possible that some sort of contrition had visited her in that last +hour, and that she had meant to remind him that he was not utterly +abandoned, that there was something left.</p> + +<p>That brought him to the lines, almost indecipherable, squeezed in her +last hurried moment into the margin of the letter. "You mustn't be +afraid of being fond of Baby. There was nothing between me and Leonard +before July of last year."</p> + +<p>She had foreseen the supreme issue; she had provided for the worst +sting, the unspeakable suspicion, the intolerable terror. It was as if +she had calculated the precise point where her infidelity would touch +him.</p> + +<p>Faced with that issue, Ranny's mind, like a young thing forced to sudden +tragic maturity by a mortal crisis, worked with an incredible clearness +and capacity. It developed an almost superhuman subtlety of +comprehension. He looked at the thing all round; he controlled his +passion so that he might look at it. It was of course open to him to +take it that she had lied. Passion indeed clamored at him, insisting +that she did lie, that lying came easier to her than the truth. But, +looking at it all round without passion, he was inclined to think that +Violet had not lied. She had not given herself time or space to lie for +lying's sake. If she had lied, then, she had lied for a purpose. A +purpose that he could very well conceive. But if she lied for <i>that</i> +purpose she would have given importance and prominence to her lie. She +wouldn't have hidden it away in an almost invisible scrawl on an +inadequate margin.</p> + +<p>Of course, she might have lied to deceive him for another purpose, for +his own good. But there again conscious deception would have made for +legibility at the least.</p> + +<p>Besides, she had put it in a way that left no room for doubt. "You +needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby." Even passion had to own that +the words had the ring of remorse, of insight, of certainty, and, above +all, of haste. Such haste as precluded all deliberation. Evidently it +was an afterthought. It had come to her, inopportunely, in the last +moment before flight, and she had given it the place and the importance +she would naturally give to a subject in which she herself was not in +any way concerned.</p> + +<p>There remained the possibility that she might be mistaken. But the dates +upheld her. In the beginning he and she had, of necessity, gone very +carefully into the question of dates. He remembered that there had been +a whole body of evidence establishing the all-important point beyond a +doubt. All of his honor that he most cared for she had spared. She had +not profaned the ultimate sanctity, nor poisoned for him the very +sweetness of his life.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>There were sounds in the front garden. Winny was bringing in the +children. He went out to meet them as they came up the flagged walk. +Dossie toddled, clinging to the skirts of Winny, who in all her +tenderness and absurdity, with her most earnest air of gravity and +absorption in the adventure, pushed the pram. In the pram, tilted +backward, with his little pink legs upturned, Baby fondled, deliciously, +his own toes. He was jerking himself up and down and making for the +benefit of all whom it might concern his very nicest noises.</p> + +<p>Ranny stood in the doorway, silent, almost austere, like a man escaped +by a hair's breadth from great peril.</p> + +<p>When he caught sight of the silent and austere young man in the doorway, +Baby let go his fascinating toes. He chuckled with delight. He jerked +himself more than ever up and down. He struggled to be free, to be +lifted up and embraced by the young man. Silence and austerity were no +deterrent to Baby, so assured was he of his position, of his welcome, of +the safe, warm, tingling place that would presently be his in the hollow +of the young man's arm. The desire of it made Baby's arms and his body +writhe, with a heartrending agitation, in his little knitted coat.</p> + +<p>All this innocent ecstasy of Baby the young man met with silence and +austerity and somber eyes.</p> + +<p>With Winny's eyes on him he indeed lifted Baby up, disclosing, first, +his pathetically bunched and bundled back, and then his face, +exquisitely contorted.</p> + +<p>And Winny, who had <i>forgotten</i> for a minute, laughed.</p> + +<p>"He is funny, isn't he? He smiles just like you do, all up in the +corners like."</p> + +<p>At that the young man's arms tightened, and he gripped Baby with passion +to his breast. He kissed him, looking down at him, passionately, +somberly.</p> + +<p>Winny saw, and the impulse seized her to efface herself, to vanish.</p> + +<p>"I must be going," she said, "or I shall be late for dinner. Can you +manage, Ranny? There's a beefsteak pie. I made it yesterday."</p> + +<p>As she turned Dossie trotted after her; and as she vanished Dossie +cried, inconsolably.</p> + +<p>He managed, beautifully, with the beefsteak pie.</p> + +<p>His sense of bereavement which still weighed on him was no longer +attached in any way to Violet. He could not say precisely what it <i>was</i> +attached to. There it was. Only, when he thought of Violet it seemed to +him incomprehensible, not to say absurd, that he should feel it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2> + + +<p>In the afternoon Winny came again for the children, so that he could go +to Wandsworth unencumbered. The weather was favorable to her idea, which +was not to be in Ranny's house more than she could help, but to be seen, +if seen she must be, out of doors with the children, in a public +innocence, affording the presumption that Violet was still there.</p> + +<p>Above all, she was not going to be seen with Ranny, or to be seen by him +too much, if she could help it. With her sense of the sadness of his +errand, the sense (that came to her more acutely with the afternoon) of +things imminent, of things, she knew not what, that would have to be +done, she avoided him as she would have avoided a bereaved person +preoccupied with some lamentable business relating to the departed.</p> + +<p>He was aware of her attitude; he was aware, further, that it would be +their attitude at Wandsworth. They would all treat him like that, as if +he were bereaved. They would not lose, nor allow him to lose for an +instant, their awestruck sense of it. That was why he dreaded going +there, why he had put it off till the last possible moment, which was +about three o'clock in the afternoon. His Uncle Randall would be there. +He would have to be told. He might as well tell him while he was about +it. His wife's action had been patent and public; it was not a thing +that could be hushed up, or minimized, or explained away.</p> + +<p>As he thought of all this, of what he would have to say, to go into, to +handle, every moment wound him up to a higher and higher pitch of +nervous tension.</p> + +<p>His mother opened the door to him. She greeted him with a certain +timidity, an ominous hesitation; and from the expression of her face you +might have gathered, in spite of her kiss, that she was not entirely +glad to see him; that she had something up her sleeve, something that +she desired to conceal from him. It was as if by way of concealing it +that she let him in stealthily with no more opening of the door than was +absolutely necessary for his entrance.</p> + +<p>"You haven't brought Vi'let?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>They went softly together through the shop, darkened by the blinds that +were drawn for Sunday. In the little passage beyond he paused at the +door of the back parlor.</p> + +<p>"Where's Father?"</p> + +<p>She winced at the word "Father," so out of keeping with his habitual +levity. It was the first intimation that there was something wrong with +him.</p> + +<p>"He's upstairs, my dear, in His bed."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with him?"</p> + +<p>"It's the Headache." She went on to explain, taking him as it were +surreptitiously into the little room, that the Headache had been +frequent lately, not to say continuous; not even Sundays were exempt.</p> + +<p>"He's a sad sufferer," she said.</p> + +<p>Instead of replying with something suitable, Ranny set his teeth.</p> + +<p>She had sat down helplessly, and as she spoke she gazed up at him where +he remained standing by the chimney-piece; her look pleaded, deprecated, +yet obstinately endeavored to deceive. But for once Ranny was blind to +the pathos of her deception. Vaguely her foolish secrecy irritated him.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Mother," he said, "I want to talk to you. I've got to tell +you something."</p> + +<p>"It's not anything about your Father, Ranny?"</p> + +<p>"No, it is not."</p> + +<p>(She turned to him from her trouble with visible relief.)</p> + +<p>"It's about my wife."</p> + +<p>"Vi'let?"</p> + +<p>"She's left me."</p> + +<p>"Left you? What d'you mean, Ranny?"</p> + +<p>"She's gone off—Bolted."</p> + +<p>"When?"</p> + +<p>"Last night, I suppose—to Paris."</p> + +<p>She stared at him strangely, without sympathy, without comprehension. It +was almost as if in her mind she accused him of harboring some monstrous +hallucination. With her eternal instinct for suppression she fought +against it, she refused to take it in. He felt himself unequal to +pressing it on her more than that.</p> + +<p>"Would she go there—all that way—by herself, Ranny?" she brought out +at last.</p> + +<p>"By herself? Not much!"</p> + +<p>"Well—how—"</p> + +<p>And still she would not face the thing straight enough to say, "How did +she go, then?"</p> + +<p>He flung it at her brutally, exasperated by her obstinacy.</p> + +<p>"She went with Mercier."</p> + +<p>"With <i>'im</i>—? <i>She</i>—"</p> + +<p>Her face seemed suddenly to give way under his eyes, to become +discolored in a frightful pallor, to fall piteously into the lines of +age.</p> + +<p>This face that his words had so crushed and broken looked up at him with +all its motherhood, mute yet vibrant, brimming in its eyes.</p> + +<p>"Sit down, dear," she said. "You'll be tired standing."</p> + +<p>He sat down, mechanically, in the nearest chair, bending forward, +contemplating his clenched hands. His posture put him at her mercy. She +came over to him and laid one hand on his shoulder; the other touched +his hair, stroking it. He shrank as if she had hurt him and leaned back. +She moved away, and took up a position in a seat that faced him. There +she sat and gazed at him, helpless and passive, panting a little with +emotion; until a thought occurred to her.</p> + +<p>"Who's looking after the little children?"</p> + +<p>"Winny—Winny Dymond."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you send for <i>me</i>, Ranny?"</p> + +<p>"It was too late—last night."</p> + +<p>"I'd have come, my dear. I'd have got out of me bed."</p> + +<p>"It wouldn't have done any good."</p> + +<p>There was a long pause.</p> + +<p>"Were you alone in the house, dear?"</p> + +<p>He looked up, angry. "Of course I was alone in the house."</p> + +<p>She sat silent and continued to gaze at him with her tender, wounded +eyes.</p> + +<p>Outside in the passage the front-door bell rang. She rose in +perturbation.</p> + +<p>"That's them. Do you want to see them?"</p> + +<p>"I don't care whether I see them or not."</p> + +<p>She stood deliberating.</p> + +<p>"You'd better—p'raps—see your uncle. I'll tell him, Ranny. Your +Father's not fit for it to-day."</p> + +<p>"All right."</p> + +<p>He rose uneasily and prepared himself to take it standing.</p> + +<p>He heard them come into the shop, his Uncle and his Aunt Randall. He +heard his uncle's salutation checked in mid-career. He heard his +mother's penetrating whisper, then mutterings, commiserations. Their +communion lasted long enough for him to gather that his mother would +have about told them everything.</p> + +<p>They came in, marking their shocked sense of it by soft shufflings at +the door of the parlor, his sanctuary. He felt obscurely that he had +become important to them, the chief figure of a little infamous tragedy. +He had a moment's intense and painful prescience of the way they would +take it; they would treat him with an excruciating respect, an awful +deference, as a person visited by God and afflicted with unspeakable +calamity.</p> + +<p>And they did. It was an affair of downcast eyes and silent, embarrassed +and embarrassing hand-shakings. Ransome met it with his head in the air, +clear-eyed, defiant of their sympathy.</p> + +<p>"I think," his mother said, "we'd better come upstairs if we don't want +to be interrupted." For on Sundays the back parlor was assigned to the +young chemist, Mercier's successor, who assisted Mr. Ransome.</p> + +<p>Upstairs, the ordered room, polished to perfection, steadfast in its +shining Sunday state, appeared as the irremovable seat of middle-class +tradition, of family virtue, of fidelity and cleanliness, of sacred +immutable propriety. And into the bosom of these safe and comfortable +sanctities Ranny had brought horror and defilement and destruction.</p> + +<p>His Uncle Randall, try as he would, could not disguise from him that +this was what he had done. Because of Ranny's wife, Respectability, the +enduring soul of the Randalls and the Ransomes, could never lift up its +head superbly any more. All infamies and all abominations that could +defile a family were summed up for John Randall in the one word, +adultery. It was worse than robbery or forgery or bankruptcy; it struck +more home; it did more deadly havoc among the generations. It excited +more interest; it caused more talk; and therefore it marked you more and +was not so easily forgotten. It reverberated. The more respectable you +were the worse it was for you. If, among the Randalls and the Ransomes, +such a plunge as Violet's was unheard of, it made the more terrific +splash, a splash that covered the whole family. The Ransomes, to be +sure, stood more in the center, they were more deplorably bespattered, +and more, much more intimately tainted. But, by the very closeness of +their family attachment, the mud of Violet's plungings would adhere +largely to the Randalls, too. The taint would hang for years around him, +John Randall, in his shop. He had hardly entered his sister's room +before he had calculated about how long it would be before the scandal +spread through Wandsworth High Street. It wasn't as if he hadn't been +well known. As a member of the Borough Council he stuck in the public +eye where other men would have slipped through into obscurity. It was +really worse for him than any of them.</p> + +<p>All this was present in the back of John Randall's mind as he prepared +to deal efficiently with the catastrophe. Having unbuttoned his coat and +taken off his gloves with exasperating, slow, and measured movements, he +fairly sat down to it at the table, preserving his very finest military +air. The situation required before all things a policy. And the policy +which most appealed to Mr. Randall, in which he showed himself most +efficient, was the policy of a kindly hushing up. It was thus that for +years he had dealt with his brother-in-laws' inebriety. Ranny's case, to +be sure, was not quite so simple; still, on the essential point Mr. +Randall had made up his mind—that, in the discussion that must follow, +the idea of adultery should not once appear. If they were all of them as +a family splashed more or less from head to foot with mud of a kind that +was going to stick to them, why, there was nothing to be done but to +cover it up as soon as possible.</p> + +<p>It was in the spirit of this policy that he approached his nephew. It +involved dealing with young Mrs. Ransome throughout as a good woman who +had become, somehow, mysteriously unfortunate.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry to hear this about your wife, Randall. It's a sad business, a +sad business for you, my boy."</p> + +<p>From her seat on the sofa beside Ranny's mother, Aunt Randall murmured +inarticulate corroboration of that view.</p> + +<p>Ranny had remained standing. It gave him an advantage in defiance.</p> + +<p>"I've never heard anything," his uncle continued, heavily, "that's +shocked and grieved me more."</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, Uncle."</p> + +<p>At that Mr. Randall fumed a little feebly, thereby losing some of the +fineness of his military air. It was as if his nephew had disparaged his +importance, ignored his stake in the family's reputation, and as good as +told him it was no business of his.</p> + +<p>"But I <i>must</i> worry about it. <i>I</i> can't take it like you do, as cool as +if nothing had happened. Such a thing's never been known, never so much +as been named in your mother's family, or your father's, either. +It's—it's so unexpected."</p> + +<p>"I didn't expect it any more than you did."</p> + +<p>"You needn't take that tone, Randall, my boy. I'm sorry for you, but +you're not the only one concerned. Still, I'm putting all that aside, +and I'm here to help you."</p> + +<p>"You can't help me. How can you?"</p> + +<p>"I can help you to consider what's to be done."</p> + +<p>"There isn't anything to be done that I can see."</p> + +<p>"There are several things," said Mr. Randall, "that can be done." He +said it as if he were counsel giving an opinion. "You can take her back; +you can leave her alone; or you can divorce her. First of all I want to +know one thing. Did you give her any provocation?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean by provocation?"</p> + +<p>"Well—did you give her any cause for jealousy?"</p> + +<p>Ranny's mother struck in. "He wouldn't, John." And his Aunt Randall +murmured half-audible and shocked negation.</p> + +<p>Ranny stared at his uncle as if he wondered where he was coming out +next.</p> + +<p>"Of course I didn't."</p> + +<p>"Are—you—quite—sure about that?"</p> + +<p>"You needn't ask him such a thing," said Ranny's mother; and Ranny +fairly squared himself.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Uncle, what d'you want to get at?"</p> + +<p>"The facts, my boy."</p> + +<p>"You've got all there are."</p> + +<p>"How about that young woman up at your place?"</p> + +<p>"What young woman?"</p> + +<p>"That Miss—"</p> + +<p>Ranny's mother supplied his loss. "Miss Dymond."</p> + +<p>"What's she got to do with it?" said Ranny.</p> + +<p>"I'm asking you. What <i>has</i> she?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. You can keep her out of it."</p> + +<p>"That's what I should advise <i>you</i> to do, my boy."</p> + +<p>Ranny dropped his defiance and sank his flushed forehead. "I <i>have</i> kept +her out of it." His voice was grave and very low.</p> + +<p>"Not if she's there. Taking everything upon her and looking after your +children."</p> + +<p>"What harm's she doing looking after them?"</p> + +<p>"You'll soon know if you take it into a court of law."</p> + +<p>"Who told you I was going to take it?"</p> + +<p>"That's what I'm trying to get at. <i>Are</i> you?"</p> + +<p>"Am I going to divorce her, you mean?"</p> + +<p>That was what he had meant. It was also what he was afraid of, what he +hoped to dissuade his nephew from. Above all things he dreaded the +public scandal of divorce.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "Is it bad enough for that?"</p> + +<p>"It's bad enough for anything. But I don't know what I'm going to do."</p> + +<p>"Well, it won't do to have that young woman's name brought forward in +the evidence."</p> + +<p>"Who'd bring it?"</p> + +<p>"Why, <i>she</i> might" (Randall's face was blank). "Your wife, if she +defends the suit. That would be her game, you may be sure."</p> + +<p>It would, Randall reflected. That was the very point suggested last +night by his inner sanity, the use that might be made of Winny. Winny's +innocent presence in his house might ruin his case if it were known. +What was worse, far worse, it would ruin Winny. Whatever he did he must +keep Winny out of it.</p> + +<p>"I haven't said I was going to bring an action."</p> + +<p>"Well—and I don't advise you to. Why have the scandal and the publicity +when you can avoid it?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Ranny," his mother cried, "it would kill your Father."</p> + +<p>Ranny scowled. Her cry failed to touch him.</p> + +<p>Mr. Randall went on. He felt that he was bringing his nephew round, that +he was getting the case into his own hands, the hands that were most +competent to deal with it. It was only to be expected that with his +experience he could see farther than the young man, his nephew. What Mr. +Randall saw beyond the scandal of the Divorce Court was a vision of +young Mrs. Ransome, wanton with liberty and plunging deeper, splashing +as she had not yet splashed, bespattering them all to the farthest +limits of her range. The question for Mr. Randall was how to stop her, +how to get her out of it, how to bring her to her sober senses before +she had done more damage than she had.</p> + +<p>He wondered, had it occurred to Randall that he might take her back?</p> + +<p>"Have you any idea," he said, "what made her do it?"</p> + +<p>"Good God, what a question!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Randall made a measured, balancing movement of his body while he +drummed with his fingers on the table.</p> + +<p>"Well—" It was as if he took his question back, conceding its enormity. +He leaned forward now in his balancing, and lowered his voice to the +extreme of confidence.</p> + +<p>"Have you any idea how far she's gone?" (It was as near as he could get +to it.)</p> + +<p>"She's gone as far as Paris," said Ranny, with a grin. "Is that far +enough for you?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Randall leaned back as with relief, and stopped balancing. "It might +be worse," he said, "far worse."</p> + +<p>"How d'you mean—worse? Seems to me about as bad as it can be."</p> + +<p>"It's unfortunate—but not so serious as if—" He paused profoundly. He +was visibly considering it from some private and personal point of view. +"She might have stayed in London. She might have carried on at your own +door or here in Wandsworth."</p> + +<p>His nephew, Randall, was now regarding him with an attention the nature +of which he entirely misconceived. It gave him courage to speak out—his +whole mind and no mincing matters.</p> + +<p>"If I were you, Randall, the first thing I should do is to get rid of +that young woman—that Dymond girl—" He put up his hand to ward off the +imminent explosion. "Yes, yes, I know <i>all</i> you've got to say, my boy, +but it won't do. She's a young girl—"</p> + +<p>"She's as good as they make them," said Ranny, glaring at him, "as good +as my mother there."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, yes. I know all about it. But you mustn't have her there."</p> + +<p>"Have her where?"</p> + +<p>"Where I know she's been—where your mother says she's been—in your +house. Now, don't turn on your mother; she hasn't said a word against +her. I'm not saying a word. But you mustn't—have—her—about, Randall. +You mustn't have her about. There'd be talk and all, before you know +where you are. It isn't right and it isn't proper."</p> + +<p>"No, Ranny, it isn't proper," said his mother; and his aunt said, No, it +wasn't, too.</p> + +<p>Ranny laughed unpleasantly.</p> + +<p>"You think it's as improper as the other thing, do you?"</p> + +<p>He addressed his uncle.</p> + +<p>"What other thing?" said Mr. Randall. It had made him wince even while +he pretended not to see it. It had brought him so near.</p> + +<p>"What my wife's done."</p> + +<p>"Well, Randall, since you ask me, to all appearances—appearances, mind +you—it is."</p> + +<p>"Appearances?"</p> + +<p>"Well, you must save appearances, and you must save 'em while you can."</p> + +<p>"How am I to save them, I should like to know?"</p> + +<p>"By actin' at once. By stoppin' it all before it gets about. You can't +have your wife over there in Paris carryin' on. You must just +start—soon as you can—to-morrow—and bring her back."</p> + +<p>"Not much!"</p> + +<p>"It's what you got to do, Randall. She's been unfortunate, I know; but +she's young, and you don't know how she may have been led on. 'S +likely's not you haven't looked after her enough. You don't know but +what you may have been responsible. You got to take her back."</p> + +<p>"What should I take her back for?" said Ranny, with false suavity.</p> + +<p>"To save scandal. To save trouble and misery and disgrace all round. You +got to think of your family."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean by my family? Me and my children?"</p> + +<p>"I mean the family name, my boy."</p> + +<p>A frightful lucidity had come upon Ranny, born of the calamity itself. +It was not for nothing that he had attained that sudden violent maturity +of his. He saw things as they were.</p> + +<p>"You mean yourself," he said. "Jolly lot you think of me and my children +if you ask me to take her back. Not me! I'll be damned first."</p> + +<p>"You married her, Randall, against the wishes of your family; and you're +responsible to your family for the way she conducts herself."</p> + +<p>"I should rather think I <i>was</i> responsible! If I wasn't—if I was a +bletherin' idiot—I might take her back—"</p> + +<p>"I don't say if she leaves you again you'll take her back a second time. +But you got to give her a chance. After all, she's the mother of your +children. You married her."</p> + +<p>"Yes. That's where I went wrong. That's what made her do it, if you want +to know. <i>That's</i> the provocation I gave her. It's what she always had +against me—the children, and my marrying her. And she was right. She +never ought to have had children. I never ought to have married +her—against her will."</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't think what you did it for—in such haste."</p> + +<p>"I did it," said Ranny, in his maturity, his lucidity, "because it was +the way I was brought up. I suppose, come to that, I did it for all +you."</p> + +<p>He saw everything now as it was.</p> + +<p>"How d'you make that out? Did it for us!"</p> + +<p>Then Ranny delivered his soul, and the escape, the outburst was +tremendous, cataclysmic.</p> + +<p>"For you and your rotten respectability! What you brought me up on. What +you've rammed down my throat all along. What you're thinking of now. +You're not thinking of me; you're thinking of yourself, and how +respectable you are, and how I've dished you. You don't want me to take +my wife back because you care a rap about me and my children. It's +because you're afraid. That's what it is, you're afraid. You're afraid +of the rotten scandal; you're afraid of what people'll say; you're +afraid of not looking respectable any more. You know what my wife's +done—you know what she <i>is</i>—"</p> + +<p>"She's a woman, Randall, she's a woman."</p> + +<p>"She's a—Well, she <i>is</i>, and you know it. You know what she is, and you +want me to take her back so as you can lie about it and hush it all up +and pretend it isn't there. Same as you've done with my father. He's a +drunkard—"</p> + +<p>"For shame, Randall," said his uncle.</p> + +<p>"He is, and you know it, and he knows it, and my mother knows it. And +yet you go on lying about him and pretending. I'm sick of it. I'm sick +of hearing about how good he is, and his Headaches—Headaches!"</p> + +<p>"Oh! Ranny, dear," his mother wailed, piteously.</p> + +<p>"I'm not blaming him, Mother. Poor old Humming-bird, he can't help it. +It's the way he's made. I'm not blaming Virelet. She can't help it, +either. It's my fault. If I'd wanted her to stick to me I oughtn't to +have married her."</p> + +<p>"What ought you to have done then?" his uncle inquired, sternly.</p> + +<p>"Anything but that. That's what started her. She couldn't stand it. +She'll stick to Mercier all right, you'll see, because she isn't married +to the swine; whereas if I took her back to-night she'd chuck me +to-morrow. Can't you see that she's like that? She's done the best day's +work she ever did for herself and me, too."</p> + +<p>"Well, how you can speak about it so, Ranny," said his mother.</p> + +<p>"There you're at it again, you know—pretendin'. You go on as if it was +the most horrible thing that could happen to any one, her boltin', when +you know the most horrible thing would be her comin' back again. To look +at you and Uncle and Aunt there, any one would think that Virelet was +the best wife and mother that ever lived, and that she'd only left me to +go to heaven."</p> + +<p>"Well, there's no good my saying any more, I can see," said Mr. Randall. +And he rose, buttoning his coat with dignity that struggled in vain +against his deep depression. He was profoundly troubled by his nephew's +outburst. It was as if peace and honesty and honor, the solid, +steadfast tradition by which he lived, had been first outraged, then +destroyed in sheer brutality. He didn't know himself. He had been +charged with untruthfulness and dishonesty; he, who had been held the +soul of honesty and truth; who had always held himself at least sincere.</p> + +<p>And he didn't know his nephew Randall. He had always supposed that +Randall was refined and that he had a good heart. And to think that he +could break out like this, and be coarse and cruel, and say things +before ladies that were downright immoral—</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, as he shook hands with him, "I can't understand you, my +boy."</p> + +<p>"Sorry, Uncle."</p> + +<p>"There—leave it alone. I don't ask you to apologize to me. But there's +your mother. You've done your best to hurt her. Good-by."</p> + +<p>"He's upset, John," said Ranny's mother, "and no wonder. You should have +let him be."</p> + +<p>"I'm not upset," said Ranny, wearily. "What beats me is the rotten +humbug of it all."</p> + +<p>And no sooner did Mr. Randall find himself in the High Street with his +wife than he took her by the arm in confidence.</p> + +<p>"He was quite right about that wife of his. Only I thought—if he could +have patched it up—"</p> + +<p>"Ah, I dare say he knows more than we do. What I can't get over is the +way he spoke about his poor father."</p> + +<p>"Well—I wouldn't say it to Emma, but Fulleymore <i>does</i> drink. Like a +fish he does."</p> + +<p>(It was his sacrifice to honesty.)</p> + +<p>"But Randall was wild. He didn't quite know what he was saying. Poor +chap! It's hit him harder than he thinks."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Ranny, alone with his mother, put his arm round her neck and kissed her. +(She had gone into her room and returned dressed, ready to go back with +him to Southfields.)</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, Mother, if I hurt you."</p> + +<p>"Never mind, Ranny, I know how hurt you must have been before you could +do it. It was what you said about your Father, dear. But there—you've +always been good to him no matter what he's been."</p> + +<p>"Is he <i>very</i> bad, Mother?"</p> + +<p>"He is. I don't know, I'm sure, how I'm going to leave him; unless he +can manage with Mabel and Mr. Ponting. She's a good girl, Mabel. And +he's got a kind heart, Ranny, that young man."</p> + +<p>"D'you think I haven't?"</p> + +<p>"I wasn't meaning you, my dear. Come, I'm ready now."</p> + +<p>They went downstairs. Mrs. Ransome paused at the kitchen door to give +some final directions to Mabel, the maid, and a message for Mr. Ponting, +the assistant; and they went out.</p> + +<p>As they were going down the High Street, her thoughts reverted to +Ranny's awful outburst.</p> + +<p>"Ranny, I wish you hadn't spoken to your uncle like you did."</p> + +<p>"I <i>know</i>, Mother—but he set my back up. He was talkin' through his +Sunday hat all the time, pretendin' to stick up for Virelet, knowin' +perfectly well what she is, and cussin' and swearin' at her for it in +his heart, and naggin' at me because there wasn't anybody else to go +for."</p> + +<p>"He was trying to help you, Ranny."</p> + +<p>"If God can't help me, strikes me it's pretty fair cheek of Uncle to +presume—" He meditated.</p> + +<p>"But he wasn't tryin' to help me. He was thinkin' how he could help his +own damned respectability all the blessed time. He knows what a bloomin' +hell it's been for Virelet and me this last year—and he'd have forced +us back into it—into all that misery—just to save his own silly skin."</p> + +<p>"No, dear, it isn't that. He doesn't think Vi'let should be let go on +living like she is if you can stop her. He thinks it isn't proper."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's what I say. It's his old blinkin', bletherin' morality +he's takin' care of, not me. Everybody's got to live like he thinks they +ought to, no matter how they hate it. If two Kilkenny cats he knew was +to get married and one of them was to bolt he'd fetch her back and tie +'em both up, heads together, so as she shouldn't do it again. And if +they clawed each other's guts out he wouldn't care. He'd say they were +livin' a nice, virtuous, respectable and moral life.</p> + +<p>"What rot it all is!</p> + +<p>"Stop her? As if any one could stop her! God knows she can't stop +herself, poor girl. She's made like that. I'm not blamin' her."</p> + +<p>For, with whatever wildness Ranny started, he always came back to +that—He didn't blame her. He knew whereof she was made. It was proof of +his sudden, forced maturity, that unfaltering acceptance of the fact.</p> + +<p>"Talk of helpin'! Strikes me poor Vi's helpin' more than anybody, by +clearin' out like she's done."</p> + +<p>That was how, with a final incomparable serenity, he made it out.</p> + +<p>But his mother took it all as so much wildness, the delirium, the +madness, born of his calamity.</p> + +<p>"He'd have been all right if I'd been ass enough to play into his hands +and gone blowin' me nose and grizzlin', and whinin' about my misfortune, +and let <i>him</i> go gassin' about the sadness of it and all that. But +because I kept my end up he went for me.</p> + +<p>"Sadness! He doesn't know what sadness is <i>or</i> misfortune.</p> + +<p>"My God! If every poor beggar had the luck I've had—to be let off +without having to pay for it!"</p> + +<p>Up till then his mother had kept silence. She had let him rave. "Poor +boy," she had said to herself, "he doesn't mean it. It'll do him good."</p> + +<p>But when he talked about not having to pay for it, that reminded her +that paying for it was just what he would have to do.</p> + +<p>"How'll you manage," she said now, "about the children? I can take them +for a week or two or more while you get settled."</p> + +<p>"Would you?"</p> + +<p>It <i>was</i> a way out for the present.</p> + +<p>"I'd take them altogether—I'd love to, Ranny—if it wasn't for your +Father bein' ill."</p> + +<p>In spite of the cataclysm, she still by sheer force of habit kept it up.</p> + +<p>"I don't want you to take them altogether," he said.</p> + +<p>"I could do it—if you was to come with them—"</p> + +<p>That, indeed, was what she wanted, the heavenly possibility she had +sighted from the first. But she had hardly dared to suggest it. Even +now, putting out her tremorous feeler, she shrank back from his refusal.</p> + +<p>"If you could let Granville—and come and live with us."</p> + +<p>His silence and his embarrassment pierced her to the heart.</p> + +<p>"Won't you?" she ventured.</p> + +<p>"Well—I've got to think of them. For them, in some ways, the poor old +Humming-bird might, you see, be almost as bad as Virelet."</p> + +<p>She knew. She had known it all the time. She had even got so far in +knowledge as to see that Ranny's father was in a measure responsible for +Ranny's marriage. If Ranny had had more life, more freedom, and more +happiness around him in his home, he would not have been driven, as he +was, to Violet.</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, you just think it over. If you don't come you must get +somebody."</p> + +<p>Yes. He must get somebody. He had thought of that.</p> + +<p>"It can't be Winny Dymond, dear."</p> + +<p>"No," he assented. "It can't be Winny Dymond."</p> + +<p>"And you'll have to come to me until I can find you some one."</p> + +<p>They left it so. After all, it made things easier, the method that his +mother had brought to such perfection, her way of skating rapidly over +brittle surfaces, of circumnavigating all profound unpleasantness, and +of plunging, when she did plunge, only into the vague, the void.</p> + +<p>And through it all he was aware of the brittleness, the unpleasantness, +the profundity of what was immediately before him, how to deal with poor +Winny and her innocent enormity; the impropriety, as it had been +presented to him, of her devotion.</p> + +<p>But even this problem, so torturing to his nerves, was presently lost +sight of in the simple, practical difficulty of detaching Winny from the +children; or rather, of detaching the children from Winny, of tearing, +as they had to tear, them from her, piecemeal, first Baby, then Dossie, +with every circumstance of barbarous cruelty.</p> + +<p>It was a spectacle, an operation of such naked agony that before it the +most persistent, the most incorruptible sense of propriety broke down. +It was too much altogether for Mrs. Ransome.</p> + +<p>Dossie was the worst. She had strength in her little fingers, and she +clung.</p> + +<p>And the crying, the crying of the two, terrible to Ranny, terrible to +Winny, the passionate screams, the strangled sobs, the long, +irremediable wailing, the terrifying convulsive silences, the awful +intermissions and shattering recoveries of anguish—it was as if their +innocence had insight, had premonition of the monstrous, imminent +separation, of the wrong that he and she were about to do to each other +in the name of such sanctities as innocence knows nothing of. For +outrage and wrong it was to the holy primal instincts, drawing them, as +it had drawn them long ago, seeking to bind them again, body and soul, +breaking all other bonds; insult and violence to honest love, to +fatherhood and motherhood, to the one (one and threefold) perfection +that they could stand for, he and she.</p> + +<p>It ended by its sheer terror in Winny's staying just for that evening, +to put the little things to sleep. For nobody else, not Ranny, and not +his mother, was able to do that. The dark design of their torturers was +to take these innocent ones by night, drugged with their sleep, and pack +them in the pram, snugly blanketed, and thus convey them in secrecy to +Wandsworth, where, it was hoped, they would wake up, poor lambs, to a +morning without memory.</p> + +<p>"Well—Winky," he said. But it was not yet well. He had to stand by and +see Winky stoop over Baby's cot (it was her right) for the last look.</p> + +<p>She knew it was her last look, in that room—in that way that had been +the way of innocence.</p> + +<p>"Well, I never!" said Ranny's mother, as he returned from seeing Winky +home. (So much was permitted him. It was even imperative.)</p> + +<p>"Did they ever cry like that for their Mammy?"</p> + +<p>He smiled grimly. His illumination was more than he could bear.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> + + +<p>It was in the cruelty of it, in that sudden barbarous tearing of the +children from Winny, of Winny from Ransome, and of Ransome from his +home, in that hurried, surreptitious flight through the darkness, that +he most felt the pressure and the malignant pinch of poverty. Owing to +his straitened circumstances, with all his mother's forethought and good +will, with all the combined resources of their ingenuity, they could do +no better to meet his lamentable case than this. "This," indeed, was +imperative, inevitable. He reflected bitterly that, if he had been a +rich man, like the manager or the secretary of Woolridge's, instead of a +ledger clerk (that was all that his last rise had made him) at a hundred +and fifty a year, he would have been spared "this." It would have been +neither inevitable nor imperative. It simply wouldn't have happened. He +would have had a house with a staff of competent servants, a nurse for +the children, a cook, and maybe a housemaid to manage for him, and so +forth. Winny wouldn't have come into it. It would never have occurred to +her to run the risks she had run for him. There would have been no need. +She would have remained, serene, beautiful in sympathy, outside his +calamity, untouched by its sordidness, its taint. All the machinery of +his household would have gone on in spite of it, without any hitch or +dislocation, working all the more smoothly in the absence of its +mistress.</p> + +<p>That was how rich people came out of this sort of thing, right side up, +smiling, knowing as they did that there was nothing to spoil the peace +of it for them, or make them apt to mistake it for anything but the +blessing that it was. Thus they got, as you may say, the whole good out +of it without any waste. At the worst, if they didn't like it, rich +people, driven to flight, depart from the scene of their disaster with +dignity, in cabs.</p> + +<p>But Ranny's departure, with all its ignominy, was not by any means the +worst. The worst, incomparably, was the going back on Monday evening to +settle up. There was a man coming from Wandsworth with a handcart for +the cots, the high chair and all the babies' furniture, and the kids' +toys and the little clothes, their whole diminutive outfit, and for what +he needed of his own. And when all the packing was done he would still +have to go into things.</p> + +<p>By the things he had to go into he meant the drawers and the cupboards +in his wife's room.</p> + +<p>And such things! It was as if the whole tale of her adultery, with all +its secret infamy, its squalor, its utter callousness, was there in that +room of the love-knots and the rosebuds.</p> + +<p>In the locked wardrobe—the key was on the chimney piece where he could +find it—he came on her old skirts, draggled and torn and stained as he +had known them, on the muslin gown of last year, loathsome and limp, +bent like a hanged corpse; and on her very nightgown of the other night, +dreadfully familiar, shrinking, poor ghost of an abomination, in its +corner. And under them, in a row, the shoes that her feet had gone in, +misshapen, trodden down at heel, gaping to deliver up her shame.</p> + +<p>These things Winny had collected and put away in order, and hidden out +of his sight as best she could. Seeing, she too, the tale they told, she +had hung a sheet in front of them and locked the door on them and laid +the key aside, to break in some degree the shock of them. For they were +things that had been good enough for him, but not good enough for +Violet's lover. She had gone to him in all her bravery, leaving them +behind, not caring who found them.</p> + +<p>And there was more to be gone through before he had finished with it. +There were the drawers, crammed with little things, the collars, the +ribbons and the laces, and one or two trinkets that he had given her, +cast off with the rest, all folded and tidied by Winny, smoothed and +coaxed out of the memories they held, the creases that betrayed the +slattern; and with them, tucked away by Winny, defiled beyond +redemption, almost beyond recognition, the sachet, smelling of violets +and with the word "Violet" sprawling all across it in embroidery.</p> + +<p>All these things, the dresses, the shoes, and the rest of them, he +gathered up in handfuls and flung into an old trunk which he locked and +pushed under the bed.</p> + +<p>Then he set his teeth and went on with his task. In the soiled linen +basket, among his own handkerchiefs as he counted them, he found one +queerly scented and of a strange, arresting pattern. It had the monogram +"L. M." stitched into the corner. She must have borrowed it from the +beast. Or else—the beast had been in the house and had left it there.</p> + +<p>That finished him.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Finished as he was in every sense, thoroughly instructed, furnished with +details that fitted out and rounded off all that was vague and +incomplete in his vision of the thing, he was still unprepared for the +question with which his mother met him.</p> + +<p>"Have you told Mr. and Mrs. Usher?"</p> + +<p>He hadn't.</p> + +<p>He had forgotten Mr. and Mrs. Usher, forgotten that this prolongation of +his ordeal would be necessary.</p> + +<p>"Well, you'll have to."</p> + +<p>"Of course I'll have to."</p> + +<p>"Will you go and see him?"</p> + +<p>"No. I—can't. I'll write."</p> + +<p>He wrote in the afternoon of the next day at Woolridge's, in the +luncheon hour when he had the ledger clerks' pen to himself. He was very +brief.</p> + +<p>He received his father-in-law's reply by return. Mr. Usher made no +comment beyond an almost perfunctory expression of regret. But he said +that he must see Randall. And, as the journey between Elstree and +Wandsworth was somewhat long to be undertaken after office hours, he +proposed the "Bald-Faced Stag," Edgware, as a convenient halfway house +for them to meet at, and Wednesday, at seven or thereabouts, as the day +and hour. Thus he allowed time for Randall to receive his letter and, if +necessary, to answer it. No telegraphing for Mr. Usher, except in case +of death, actual or imminent.</p> + +<p>Ransome supposed that he would have to see him and get it over. Soon +after seven on Wednesday, then, Mr. Usher having ridden over on his mare +Polly and Ransome on his bicycle, they met in the parlor of the +"Bald-Faced Stag," Edgware. Mr. Usher's friend the landlord had +undertaken that they should not be disturbed.</p> + +<p>It was impossible for Ransome not to notice something queer about his +father-in-law, something utterly unlike the bluff and genial presence he +had known. Mr. Usher seemed to have shrunk somehow and withered, so that +you might have said the catastrophe had hit him hard, if that, his mere +bodily shrinkage, had been all. What struck Ransome as specially queer +about Mr. Usher was his manner and the expression of his face. You could +almost have called it crafty. Guilty it was, too, consciously guilty, +the furtive face of a man on the defensive, armed with all his little +cunning against a possible attack, having entrenched himself in the +parlor of the "Bald-Faced Stag" as on neutral territory.</p> + +<p>"What say to a bit of supper, my boy, before we begin business?"</p> + +<p>It was a false and feeble imitation of his old heartiness.</p> + +<p>Over a supper of cold ham and cheese and beer they discussed Ransome's +father's health and his mother's health, and Mrs. Usher's health, which +was poor, and Mr. Usher's prospects, which were poorer, not to say bad. +He leaned on this point and returned to it, as if it might have a +possible bearing on the matter actually in hand, and with a certain +disagreeable effect of craftiness and intention. It was as if he wished +to rub it in that whatever else Randall forgot, he wasn't to forget +<i>that</i>, that he had nothing to look to, nothing to hope for in his +father-in-law's prospects; as if he, Mr. Usher, had arranged this +meeting at the "Bald-Faced Stag" for the express purpose of making that +clear, of forestalling all possible misunderstanding. He kept it before +him, with the cheese and beer, on the brown oil-cloth of the table from +which poor Randall found it increasingly difficult to lift his eyes.</p> + +<p>It was almost a relief to him when Mr. Usher pushed his plate away with +a groan of satiety, and began.</p> + +<p>"Well, what's all this I hear about Virelet?"</p> + +<p>Randall intimated that he had heard all there was.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but what's the meaning of it? That's what I want to know."</p> + +<p>Randall put it that its meaning was that it had simply happened, and +suggested that his father-in-law was in every bit as good a position for +understanding it as he.</p> + +<p>"I dare say. But what I'm trying to get at is—did you do anything to +make it happen?"</p> + +<p>"What on earth do you suppose I did?"</p> + +<p>"There might be faults on both sides, though I don't say as there were. +But did you do anything to prevent it? Tell me that."</p> + +<p>"What could I do? I didn't know it was going to happen."</p> + +<p>"You should have known. You was warned fair enough."</p> + +<p>"Was I? Who warned me, I should like to know?"</p> + +<p>"Why, I did, and her mother did. Told you straight. Don't you go for to +say that I let you marry the girl under false pretenses, or her mother +either. I told you what sort Virelet was, straight as I could, without +vilifying my own flesh and blood. Did you want me to tell you +straighter? Did you want me to put a name to it?"</p> + +<p>His little eyes shot sidelong at Randall, out of his fallen, shrunken +fatness, more than ever crafty and intent.</p> + +<p>He was pitiful. Randall could have been sorry for him but that he showed +himself so mean. His little eyes gave him so villainously away. They +disclosed the fullness of his knowledge; they said he had known things +about Violet; he had known them all the time, things that he, Randall, +never knew. And he hadn't let on, not he. Why should he? He had been too +eager, poor man, to get Violet married. His eagerness, that had appeared +as the hardy flower of his geniality, betrayed itself now as the +sinister thing it was—when you thought of the name that he could have +given her!</p> + +<p>Randall did not blame him. He was past blaming anybody. He only said to +himself that this explained what had seemed so inexplicable—the +attitude, the incredible attitude of Mr. and Mrs. Usher; how they had +leaped at him in all his glaring impossibility, an utter stranger, with +no adequate income and no prospects; how they had hurried on the +marriage past all prudence; how they had driven him on and fooled him +and helped him to his folly.</p> + +<p>But he was not going to let them fool him any more.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Mr. Usher, I don't know what your game is and I don't care. +I dare say you <i>think</i> you told me what you say you did. But you +didn't. You didn't tell me anything—not one blessed thing. And if you +had it wouldn't have done any good. I wouldn't have believed you. You +needn't reproach yourself. I was mad on Virelet. I meant to marry her +and I did marry her. That's all."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Usher, partially abandoning his position, "so long as +you don't hold me responsible—"</p> + +<p>"Of course, I don't hold you responsible."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure me and the Missis we've done what we could to make it easier +for you."</p> + +<p>He gazed before him, conjuring up between them a quiet vision of the +long procession of hampers, a reminder to Randall of how deeply, as it +was, he stood indebted.</p> + +<p>"And we can't do no more. That's how it is. No more we can't do."</p> + +<p>"I'm not asking you to do anything. What do you <i>want</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I want to know what you're going to do, my boy."</p> + +<p>"Do?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, do."</p> + +<p>"About what?"</p> + +<p>"About Virelet. Talk of responsibility, you took it on yourself contrary +to the warnings what you had, when you married her. And having taken it +you ought to have looked after her. Knowing what she is you ought to +have looked after her better than you've done."</p> + +<p>"How <i>could</i> I have looked after her?"</p> + +<p>"How? Why, as any other man would. You should have made her work, work +with her 'ands, as I told you, 'stead of giving her her head, like you +did, and lettin' her sit bone-idle in that gimcrack doll-house of yours +from morning till night. Why, you should have taken a stick to her. +There's many a man as would, before he'd 'a' let it come to that. Damn +me if I know why you didn't."</p> + +<p>"Well, really, Mr. Usher, I suppose I couldn't forget she was a woman."</p> + +<p>"Woman? Woman? I'd 'a' womaned 'er! Look 'ere, my boy, it's a sad +business, and there's no one sorrier for you than I am, but there's no +good you and me broodin' mournful over what she's done. Course she'd do +it, 's long's you let her. You hadn't ought to 'ave let 'er. And seein' +as how you have, seems to me what you've got to do now is to take her +back again."</p> + +<p>"I can't take her back again."</p> + +<p>"And why not?"</p> + +<p>"Because of the children—for one thing."</p> + +<p>That argument had its crushing effect on Mr. Usher. It made him pause a +perceptible moment before he answered.</p> + +<p>"Well—you needn't look to me and her mother to 'ave her—"</p> + +<p>Randall rose, as much as to say that this was enough; it was too much; +it was the end.</p> + +<p>"We've done with her. You took her out of our 'ands what 'ad a hold on +her, and you owe it to her mother and me to take her back."</p> + +<p>"If that's all you've got to say, Mr. Usher—"</p> + +<p>"It isn't all I've got to say. What I got to say is this. Before you was +married, Randall, I don't mind telling you now, my girl was a bit too +close about you for my fancy. I've never rightly understood how you two +came together."</p> + +<p>There, as they fixed him, his little eyes took on their craftiness again +and his mouth a smile, a smile of sensual tolerance and understanding, +as between one man of the world and another.</p> + +<p>"I don't know, and I don't want to know. But however it was—I'm not +askin', mind you—however it was"—He was all solemn now—"you made +yourself responsible for that girl. And responsible you will be held."</p> + +<p>It may have been that Mr. Usher drew a bow at a venture; it may have +been that he really knew, that he had always known. Anyhow, that last +stroke of his was, in its way, consummate. It made it impossible for +Randall to hit back effectively; impossible for him to say now, if he +had wished to say it, that he had not been warned (for it seemed to +imply that if Mr. Usher's suspicions were correct, Randall had had an +all-sufficient warning); impossible for him to maintain, as against a +father whom he, upon the supposition, had profoundly injured, an +attitude of superior injury. If Mr. Usher had deceived Randall, hadn't +Randall, in the first instance, deceived Mr. Usher? In short, it left +them quits. It closed Randall's mouth, and with it the discussion, and +so that the balance as between them leaned if anything to Mr. Usher's +side.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm sorry for you, Randall."</p> + +<p>As if he could afford it now, Mr. Usher permitted himself a return to +geniality. He paused in the doorway.</p> + +<p>"If at any time you should want a hamper, you've only got to say so."</p> + +<p>And Randall did not blame him. He said to himself: "Poor old thing. It's +funk—pure funk. He's afraid he may have to take her back himself. And +who could blame him?"</p> + +<p>Funny that his father-in-law should have taken the same line as his +Uncle Randall. Only, whereas his Uncle Randall had reckoned with the +alternative of divorce, his father-in-law had not so much as hinted at +the possibility.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It was almost as if Mr. Usher had had a glimpse of what was to come when +he had been in such haste, haste that had seemed in the circumstances +hardly decent, to saddle Ransome with the responsibility.</p> + +<p>For, if Ransome had really thought that Violet was going to let him off +without his paying for it, the weeks that followed brought him proof +more than sufficient of his error. He had sown to the winds in the +recklessness of his marriage and of his housekeeping, and he reaped the +whirlwind in Violet's bills that autumn shot into the letter box at +Granville.</p> + +<p>He called there every other day for letters; for he was not yet +prepared, definitely, to abandon Granville.</p> + +<p>The bills, when he had gathered them all in, amounted in their awful +total to twenty pounds odd, a sum that exceeded his worst dreams of +Violet's possible expenditure. He had realized, in the late summer and +autumn of last year, before the period of compulsory retirement had set +in, that his wife was beginning to cost him more than she had ever done, +more than any woman of his class, so far as he knew, would have dreamed +of costing; and this summer, no sooner had she emerged triumphant +than—with two children now to provide for—she had launched out upon a +scale that fairly terrified him. But all her past extravagance did +nothing to prepare him for the extent to which, as he expressed it, she +could "go it," when she had, as you might say, an incentive.</p> + +<p>The most astounding of the bills his whirlwind swept him was the bill +from Starker's—from Oxford Street, if you please—and the bill (sent in +with a cynical promptitude) from the chemist in Acacia Avenue at the +corner. That, the chemist's, was in a way the worst. It was for scent, +for toilette articles, strange yet familiar to him from their presence +in his father's shop, for all manner of cosmetics, for things so +outrageous, so unnecessary, that they witnessed chiefly to the shifts +she had been put to, to her anxieties and hastes, to the feverish +multiplication of pretexts and occasions. Still, they amounted but to a +few pounds and an odd shilling or two. Starker's bill did the rest.</p> + +<p>That, the high, resplendent "cheek" of it, showed what she was capable +of; it gave him the measure of her father's "funk," for, of not one of +the items, from the three-guinea costumes (there were several of them) +down to the dozen of openwork Lisle-thread hose at two and eleven the +pair, had Ransome so much as suspected the existence. The three-guinea +costumes he could understand. It was the three nightgowns, trimmed lace, +at thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen shillings apiece, that took his breath +away, as with a vision of her purposes. Still, to him, her husband, +Starker's statement of account represented directly, with the perfection +of business precision, the cost of getting rid of her; it was so simply +and openly the cost of her outfit, of all that she had trailed with her +in her flight.</p> + +<p>Yet, as he grasped it, he saw with that mature comprehension which was +now his, that, awful as it was, that total of twenty pounds odd +represented, perfectly, the price of peace. It was open to him to +repudiate his wife's debts, in which case she would appear in the County +Court, which, with its effect of publicity, with the things that would +be certain to come out there, was almost as bad as the Divorce Court. +Then the unfortunate tradespeople would not be paid, a result of her +conduct which was intolerable to Ranny's decency. Besides, he wanted to +be rather more than decent, to be handsome, in his squaring of accounts +with the woman whom, after all, in the beginning he had wronged. He +could even reflect with a humor surviving all calamity, that though +twenty-odd pounds was a devil of a lot to pay, his deliverance was +cheap, dirt cheap, at the money.</p> + +<p>But that was not all. There was Granville.</p> + +<p>He hated Granville. He could not believe how he ever could have loved +it. The fact that he was gradually becoming his own landlord only made +things worse. It gave Granville a malignant power over him, that power +which he had once or twice suspected, the power to round on him and +injure him and pay him back. He knew he was partly responsible for +Granville's degradation. He had done nothing for this property of his. +He had not given it a distinctive character; he had not covered it with +creepers or painted it green or built a balcony. He had left it to +itself.</p> + +<p>He asked himself what it would look like in seventeen years' time when +it would be his. In seventeen years' time he would be forty-two. What +good would he be then? And what good would Granville be to him? What +good was it now? In its malignancy it demanded large sums to keep it +going and if it didn't get them it knew how to avenge itself. Slowly +perishing, it would fall to dust in seventeen years' time when it came +into his hands.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>But he had not dreamed of the extent to which Granville could put on the +screw.</p> + +<p>He was enlightened by the agent of the Estate Company to which Granville +owed its being. The agent, after a thorough inspection of the premises, +broke it to Ransome that if he did not wish to lose Granville, he would +have to undertake certain necessary repairs, the estimate for which +soared to the gay tune of ten pounds eight shillings and eightpence. It +was the state of the roof, of the southwest wall, and of the scullery +drain that most shocked the agent. Of the scullery drain he could hardly +bring himself to speak, remarking only that a little washing down from +time to time with soda would have saved it all. The state of that drain +was a fair disgrace; and it was not a thing of days; it dated from +months back—years, he shouldn't be surprised. It was fit to breed a +fever.</p> + +<p>Of course, it wasn't quite as bad as the agent had made out. But Ranny, +knowing Violet, believed him. It gave him a feeling of immense +responsibility toward Granville, and the Estate Company, and the agent.</p> + +<p>Finally, owing to Violet's reckless management, his debts to the grocer, +the butcher, and the milkman had reached the considerable total of nine +pounds eighteen shillings and eleven pence. It would take about forty +pounds odd to clear his obligations.</p> + +<p>The question was how on earth was he to raise the money? Out of a salary +of twelve pounds a month?</p> + +<p>He would have to borrow it. But from whom? Not from his father. To +whatever height his mother kept it up, she could not conceal from him +that his father was in difficulties. Wandsworth was going ahead, caught +by the tide of progress. The new Drug Stores over the way were drawing +all the business from Fulleymore Ransome's little shop. Even with the +assistance of the young man, Mr. Ponting, Fulleymore Ransome was not in +a state to hold his own. But John Randall, the draper, if you like, was +prosperous. He might be willing, Ransome thought, to lend him the money, +or a part of it, at a fair rate of interest.</p> + +<p>And John Randall indeed lent him thirty pounds; but not willingly. His +reluctance, however, was sufficiently explained by the fact that he had +recently advanced more than that sum to Fulleymore. He was careful to +point out to Randall that he was helping him to meet only those +catastrophes which might be regarded as the act of God—Violet's bills +and the deterioration of Granville. He was as anxious as Randall himself +to prevent Violet's appearance in the County Court, and he certainly +thought it was a pity that good house property should go out of his +nephew's hands. But he refused flatly to advance the ten pounds for the +weekly arrears, in order to teach Randall a lesson, to make him feel +that he had some responsibility, and to show that there was a limit to +what he, John Randall, was prepared to do.</p> + +<p>For days Ransome went distracted. The ten pounds still owing was like a +millstone round his neck. If he didn't look sharp and pay up <i>he</i> would +be County-Courted too. He couldn't come down on his father-in-law. His +father-in-law would tell him that he had already received the equivalent +of ten pounds in hampers. There was nobody he <i>could</i> come down on. So +he called at a place he had heard of in Shaftesbury Avenue, where there +was a "josser" who arranged it for him quite simply by means of a bill +of sale upon his furniture. After all, he did get some good out of that +furniture.</p> + +<p>And he got some good, too, out of Granville when he let it to Fred Booty +for fifteen shillings a week.</p> + +<p>He was now established definitely in his father's house. The young man +Mr. Ponting had shown how kind his heart was by turning out of his nice +room on the second floor into Ranny's old attic. The little back room, +used for storage, served also as a day nursery for Ranny's children. Six +days in the week a little girl came in to mind them. At night Ranny +minded them where they lay in their cots by his bed.</p> + +<p>It was all that could be done; and with the little girl's board and the +children's and his own breakfast and supper and his Sunday dinner, it +cost him thirty shillings a week. There was no way in which it could be +done for less, since it was not in him to take advantage of his +mother's offer to let him have the rooms rent free.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>And underneath Ranny's rooms, between the bedroom at the back and the +back parlor, between the parlor and the shop, between the shop and the +dispensing-room, Fulleymore Ransome dragged himself to and fro, more +than ever weedy, more than ever morose, more than ever sublime in his +appearance of integrity; and with it all so irritable that Ranny's +children had to be kept out of his way. He would snarl when he heard +them overhead; he would scowl horribly when he came across the "pram," +pushed by the little girl, in its necessary progress through the shop +into the street and back again.</p> + +<p>But at Ranny he neither snarled nor scowled, nor had he spoken any word +to him on the subject of the great calamity. No reproach, no reminder of +warnings given, none of that reiterated, "I told you so," in which, +Ranny reflected, he might have taken it out of him. He also seemed to +regard his son Randall as one smitten by God and afflicted, to whose +high and sacred suffering silence was the appropriate tribute. His very +moroseness provided the sanctuary of silence.</p> + +<p>And all the time he drank; he drank worse than ever; furtively, +continuously he drank. Nobody could stop him, for nobody ever saw him +doing it. He did it, they could only suppose, behind Mr. Ponting's back +in the dispensing-room.</p> + +<p>They were free to suppose anything now; for, since Ranny's great +delivering outburst, they could discuss it; and in discussion they +found relief. Ranny's mother owned as much. She had suffered (that also +she owned) from the strain of keeping it up. Ranny's outburst had saved +her, vicariously. It was as if she had burst out herself.</p> + +<p>There were, of course, lengths to which she would never go, admissions +which she could not bring herself to make. There had to be some +subterfuge, some poor last shelter for her pride. And so, of the +depression in Fulleymore's business she would say before Mr. Ponting, +"It's those Drug Stores that are ruining him," and Mr. Ponting would +reply, gravely, "They'd ruin anybody."</p> + +<p>Mr. Ponting was a fresh-colored young man and good-looking, with his +blue eyes and his yellow hair sleeked backward like folded wings, so +different from Mercier. Mr. Ponting had conceived an affection for Ranny +and the children. He would find excuses to go up to the storeroom, where +he would pretend to be looking for things while he was really playing +with Dossie. He would sit on Ranny's bed while Ranny was undressing, and +together they would consider, piously, the grave case of the +Humming-bird, and how, between them, they could best "keep him off it."</p> + +<p>"It's the dispensary spirits that he gets at," Mr. Ponting said. "That's +the trouble."</p> + +<p>(And it always had been.)</p> + +<p>"The queer thing is," said Ranny, "that you never fairly see him tight. +Not to speak of."</p> + +<p>"That's the worst of it," said Mr. Ponting. "I wish I <i>could</i> see your +father tight—tumbling about a bit, I mean, and being funny. The beastly +stuff's going for him inside, all the time—undermining him. There +isn't an organ," said Mr. Ponting, solemnly, "in your father's body that +it hasn't gone for."</p> + +<p>"How d'you know?"</p> + +<p>"Why, by the medicines he takes. He's giving himself strophanthus now, +for his heart."</p> + +<p>"I say—d'you think my mother knows that?"</p> + +<p>"It's impossible to say what your mother knows. More than she lets on, I +shouldn't be surprised."</p> + +<p>Mr. Ponting pondered.</p> + +<p>"It's wonderful how he keeps it up. His dignity, I mean."</p> + +<p>"It's rum, isn't it?" said Ranny. He was apparently absorbed in tying +the strings of his sleeping-suit into loops of absolutely even length. +"But he always <i>was</i> that mysterious kind of bird."</p> + +<p>He began to step slowly backward as he buttoned up his jacket. Then, by +way of throwing off the care that oppressed him, and lightening somewhat +Mr. Ponting's burden, he ran forward and took a flying leap over the +Baby's cot into his own bed.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ponting looked, if anything, a little graver. "I wouldn't do that, +if I were you," he said.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" said Ranny over his blankets, snuggling comfortably.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Ponting, vaguely.</p> + +<p>In a day or two Ranny himself knew.</p> + +<p>His arrangements had carried him well on into October. In the last week +of that month, on a Tuesday evening, he appeared at the Regent Street +Polytechnic, where he had not been seen since far back in the last year. +It was not at the Gymnasium that he now presented himself, but at the +door of that room where every Tuesday evening, from seven-thirty to +eight-thirty, a qualified practitioner was in attendance.</p> + +<p>It was the first time that Ransome had availed himself of this privilege +conferred on him by the Poly.</p> + +<p>He said he wouldn't keep the medical man a minute.</p> + +<p>But the medical man kept Ranny many minutes, thumping, sounding, +intimately and extensively overhauling him. For more minutes than Ranny +at all liked, he played about him with a stethoscope. Then he fired off +what Ranny supposed to be the usual questions.</p> + +<p>"Had any shock, worry, or excitement lately?</p> + +<p>"Been overdoing it in any way?</p> + +<p>"Gone in much for athletics?"</p> + +<p>Ranny replied with regret that it was more than three years since he had +last run in the Wandsworth Hurdle Race.</p> + +<p>He was then told that he must avoid all shock, worry, or excitement. He +mustn't overdo it. He must drop his hurdle-racing. He mustn't bicycle +uphill, or against the wind; he mustn't jump; he mustn't run—</p> + +<p>"Not even to catch a train?"</p> + +<p>"Not to catch anything."</p> + +<p>And the doctor gave him a prescription that ran:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sodæ Bicarb., one dram.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tinct. Strophanthi, two drams—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He remembered. That was the stuff he'd measured for old Mr. Beasley's +heart mixture. It was the stuff that Ponting said his father was taking +now.</p> + +<p>If any one had told him three years ago that his heart was rocky he'd +have told them where to go to. It had been as sound as a bell when he +entered for the Poly. Gym.</p> + +<p>Well, he supposed that was about the finishing touch—if they wanted to +do the thing in style.</p> + +<p>He went slowly over Wandsworth Bridge and up the High Street, dejected, +under the autumn moon that had once watched his glad sprinting.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> + + +<p>And in all this time he had not heard again from Violet, nor had he +written to her.</p> + +<p>Then—it was in the first week of November—Violet wrote.</p> + +<p>She wrote imploring him to set her free. It was rooted in her, the fear +that he would compel her to come back, that he had the power to make +her. She wanted (he seemed to see it) to feel safe from him forever. +Leonard had promised to marry her if she were free. She intimated that +Leonard was everything that was generous and honorable. She wanted (she +who had abused him so for having married her), she wanted to marry +Mercier, to have a hold on him and be safe. Marriage was her idea of +safety now.</p> + +<p>She went on to say that if he would consent to divorce her, it would be +made easy for him, she would not defend the suit.</p> + +<p>That meant—he puzzled it out—that meant that it would lie between the +two of them. Nobody else would be dragged into it. Winny's name would +not by any possibility be dragged in. Violet would have no use for +Winny, since she was not going to defend the suit. She might—at the +worst—have to appear as witness, if the evidence of Violet's letters +(her own admission) was not sufficient. It looked as if it would be +simple enough. Why should he not release her? He had no business not to +give her the chance to marry Mercier, to regulate the relation, if that +was what she wanted.</p> + +<p>It was his own chance, too, his one chance. He would be a fool not to +take it.</p> + +<p>And as it came over him in its fullness, all that it meant and would yet +mean, Ranny felt his heart thumping and bounding, dangerously, in its +weakened state.</p> + +<p>On a Wednesday evening in November, he presented himself once more at +the Regent Street Polytechnic and at the door of an office where, on +Wednesday evenings, an experienced legal adviser held himself in +readiness to give advice, that legal adviser who had been the jest of +his adolescence, whose services he had not conceived it possible that he +should require.</p> + +<p>He had a curiously uplifting sense of the gravity and impressiveness of +the business upon which at last, inconceivably, he came. But this odd +elation was controlled and finally overpowered by disgust and shame, as +one by one, under the kind but acute examination of the legal man, he +brought out for his inspection the atrocious details. And he had to show +Violet's letter of September, the document, supremely valuable, +supremely infamous, supported by the further communication of November. +The keen man asked him, as his uncle and his father-in-law had asked, if +he had given any provocation, any cause for jealousy, misunderstanding, +or the like? Had his own conduct been irreproachable? When all this part +of it was over, settled to the keen man's satisfaction, Ranny was told +that there was little doubt that he could get his divorce if—that was +the question—he could afford to pay. Divorce was, yes, it was a costly +matter, almost, you might say, the luxury of the rich. A matter, for +him, probably of forty or fifty pounds—well, say, thirty, when you'd +cut expenses down to the very lowest limit. Could he, the keen but +kindly man inquired, afford thirty?</p> + +<p>No, he couldn't. He couldn't afford twenty even. With all his existing +debts upon him he couldn't now raise ten.</p> + +<p>He asked whether he could get his divorce if he put it off a bit until +he could afford it?</p> + +<p>The legal man looked grave.</p> + +<p>"Well—yes. If you can show poverty—"</p> + +<p>Ranny thought he could undertake to show <i>that</i> all right.</p> + +<p>At the legal man's suggestion he wrote a letter to his wife assuring her +that it was impossible for her to desire a divorce more than he did; +that he meant to bring an action at the very moment when he could afford +it, pointing out to her that her debts which he had paid had not made +this any easier for him; that in the meanwhile she need not be anxious; +that he would not follow her or molest her in any way; and that in no +circumstances would he take her back.</p> + +<p>And now Ranny's soul and all his energy were set upon the one aim of +raising money for his divorce. It was impossible to lay his hands upon +that money all at once. He could not do it this year, nor yet the next, +for his expenses and his debts together exceeded the amount of his +income; but gradually, by pinching and scraping, it might be done +perhaps in two or three years' time.</p> + +<p>His chief trouble was that in all these weeks he had seen nothing of +Winny. He had called twice at the side door of Johnson's, but they had +told him that she was not in; and, hampered as he was with the children, +he had not had time to call again. Besides, he knew he had to be +careful, and Winny knew it too. That, of course, would always help him, +her perception of the necessity for care. There were ways of managing +these things, but they required his mother's or his friends' +co-operation; and so far Mrs. Ransome had shown no disposition to +co-operate. Winny was not likely to present herself at Wandsworth +without encouragement, and she had apparently declined to lend herself +to any scheme of Maudie's or of Fred Booty's. With Winny lying low there +was nothing left for him but the way he shrank from, of persistent and +unsolicited pursuit.</p> + +<p>November passed and they were in December, and he had not seen her. +After having recovered somewhat under the influence of the drug +strophanthus, he now became depressed, listless, easily fatigued.</p> + +<p>Up till now there had been something not altogether disagreeable to Mrs. +Ransome in the misfortunes of her son. They had brought him back to her. +But he had not wanted to come back; and now she wondered whether she had +done well to make him come, whether (after all he had gone through) it +was not too much for him, realizing as he did his father's awful state. +It had gone so far, Mr. Ransome's state, that there was no way in which +it could be taken lightly.</p> + +<p>And she was depressed herself, perceiving it. Mr. Ransome's state made +him unfit for business now, unfit to appear in the shop, above all +unfit for the dispensary. Fit only to crawl from room to room and +trouble them with the sad state of his peaked and peevish face. He +required watching. He himself recognized that in his handling of tricky +drugs there was a danger. The business was getting out of hand. It was +small and growing smaller every month, yet it was too much for Mr. +Ponting to cope with unassisted. They were living, all three of them, in +a state of tension most fretting to the nerves.</p> + +<p>The whole house fairly vibrated with it. It was as if the fearful +instability of Mr. Ransome's nervous system communicated itself to +everybody around him. At the cry or the sudden patter of Ranny's +children overhead, Mr. Ransome would be set quivering and shaking, and +this disturbance of his reverberated. Ranny set his teeth and sat tight +and "stuck it"; but he felt the shattering effect of it all the same.</p> + +<p>And the children felt it too, subtly, insidiously. Dossie became +peevish, easily frightened; she was neither so good nor so happy with +her Granny and the little girl as she had been with Winny. Baby cried +oftener. Ranny sometimes would be up half the night with him.</p> + +<p>All this Mrs. Ransome saw and grieved over and was powerless to help.</p> + +<p>In Christmas week the state of Mr. Ransome became terrible, not to be +borne. Ranny was working hard at the counting-house; he was worn out, +and he looked it.</p> + +<p>The sight of him, so changed, broke Mrs. Ransome down.</p> + +<p>"Ranny," she said, "I wish you'd get away somewhere for Christmas. Me +and Mabel'll look after the children. You go."</p> + +<p>He said there wasn't anywhere he cared to go to.</p> + +<p>"Well—is there anything you'd like to do?"</p> + +<p>"To do?"</p> + +<p>"For Christmas, dear. To make it not so sad like. Is there anybody," she +said, "you'd like to ask?"</p> + +<p>No, there wasn't. At any rate, if there was he wouldn't ask them. It +wouldn't be exactly what you'd call fun for them, with the poor old +Humming-bird making faces at them all the time.</p> + +<p>His mother looked at him shrewdly and said nothing. But she sat down and +wrote a letter to Winny Dymond, asking her to come and spend Christmas +Day with them, if, said Mrs. Ransome, she hadn't anywhere better to go +to and didn't mind a sad house.</p> + +<p>And Winny came. She hadn't anywhere better to go to, and she didn't mind +a sad house in the least.</p> + +<p>They wondered, Ranny and his mother, how they were ever going to break +it to the Humming-bird.</p> + +<p>"Your Father won't like it, Ranny. He's not fit for it. He'll think us +heartless, having strangers in the house when he's suffering so."</p> + +<p>But Mr. Ransome, when asked if he was fit for it, replied astoundingly +that he was fit enough if it would make Randall any happier.</p> + +<p>It did. It made him so happy that his recovery dated from that moment. +He had only one fear, that Dossie would have forgotten Winky.</p> + +<p>But Dossie hadn't, though after two months of Wandsworth she had +forgotten many things, and had cultivated reserve. When Ranny said, +"Who's this, Dossie?" she tucked her head into her shoulder and smiled +shyly and said, "Winty." But they had to pretend that Baby remembered, +too. He hadn't really got what you would call a memory.</p> + +<p>And, after all, it was Ranny (Winny said to herself) who remembered +most. For he gave her for a Christmas present, not only a beautiful +white satin "sashy," scented with lavender (lavender, not violets, this +time), but a wonderful hot-water bag with a shaggy red coat that made +you warm to look at it.</p> + +<p>"Ranny! Fancy you remembering that I had cold feet!"</p> + +<p>That night he went home with her to Johnson's side door, carrying the +sachet and the hot-water bag and the things his mother had given her.</p> + +<p>Upstairs, in the attic she shared with three other young ladies, the +first thing Winny did was to turn to the Cookery Book she had bought a +year ago and read the directions: "How to Preserve Hot-Water Bags"—to +preserve them forever.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> + + +<p>Thus nineteen-seven, that dreadful year, rolled over into +nineteen-eight. By nineteen-ten, at the very latest, Ransome looked to +get his divorce. He had no doubt that he could do it, for he found it +far less expensive to live with his mother at Wandsworth than with +Violet at Granville. He knew exactly where he was, he had not to allow +so considerably for the unforeseen. His income had a margin out of which +he saved. To make this margin wider he pinched, he scraped, he went as +shabby as he dared, he left off smoking, he renounced his afternoon cup +of tea and reduced the necessary dinner at his A B C shop to its very +simplest terms.</p> + +<p>The two years passed.</p> + +<p>By January, nineteen-ten, he had only paid off what he already owed. He +had not raised the thirty pounds required for his divorce. Indomitable, +but somewhat desperate, he applied to his Uncle Randall for a second +loan at the same interest. He did not conceal from him that divorce was +his object. He put it to him that his mind was made up unalterably, and +that since the thing had got to be, sooner or later, it was better for +everybody's sake that it should be sooner.</p> + +<p>But Mr. Randall was inexorable. He refused, flatly, to lend his money +for a purpose that he persisted in regarding as iniquitous. Even if he +had not advanced a further sum to young Randall's father, he was not +going to help young Randall through the Divorce Court, stirring all that +mud again. Not he.</p> + +<p>"You should wash your dirty linen at home," he said.</p> + +<p>"You mean keep it there and never wash it. That's what it comes to," +said young Randall, furiously.</p> + +<p>"It's been kept. And everybody's forgotten that it's there by this time. +Why rake it up again?" said his Uncle Randall.</p> + +<p>And there was no making him see why. There was no making any of them +see. Mrs. Ransome wouldn't hear of the divorce. "It'll kill your Father, +Ranny," she said, and stuck to it.</p> + +<p>And Ranny set his mouth hard and said nothing. He calculated that if he +put by twelve shillings a week for twenty-five weeks that would be +fifteen pounds. He could borrow the other fifteen in Shaftesbury Avenue +as he had done before, and in six months he would be filing his +petition.</p> + +<p>As soon as he was ready to file it he would tell Winny he cared for her. +He would ask her to be his wife.</p> + +<p>He had not told any of them about Winny. But they knew. They knew and +yet they had no pity on him, nor yet on her. When he thought of it Ranny +set his face harder.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Yet Winny came and went, untroubled and apparently unconscious. She was +not only allowed to come and go at Wandsworth as she had come and gone +at Granville, by right of her enduring competence; she was desired and +implored to come. For if she had (and Mrs. Ransome owned it) a "way" +with the children, she had also a way with Mrs. Ransome, and with Mr. +Ransome. The Humming-bird, growing weedier and weaker, revived in her +presence; he relaxed a little of his moroseness and austerity. "I don't +know how it is," said Ranny's mother, "but your Father takes to her. He +likes to see her about."</p> + +<p>Saturday afternoons, and Sundays, and late evenings in summer were her +times, so that of necessity she and Ranny met.</p> + +<p>Not that they pleaded necessity for meeting. Since his awful +enlightenment and maturity, Ransome had never thought of pleading +anything; for he did not hold himself accountable to anybody or require +anybody to tell him what was decent and what wasn't. And Winny was like +him. He couldn't imagine Winny driven to plead. She had gone her own way +without troubling her head about what people thought of her, without +thinking very much about herself. As long as she was sure he wanted her, +she would be there, where he was. He felt rather than knew that she +waited for him, and would wait for him through interminable years, +untroubled as to her peace, profoundly pure. He was not even certain +that she was aware that she was waiting and that he waited too.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>In the spring of nineteen-ten it looked as if they would not have very +long to wait. He had measured his resources with such accuracy that by +June, if all went well, he could set about filing his petition.</p> + +<p>And now, seeing the thing so near and yet not accomplished, Ranny's +nerve went. He began to be afraid, childishly and ridiculously afraid, +of something happening to prevent it. He had a clear and precise idea of +that something. He would die before he could file his petition, before +he could get his divorce and marry Winny. His heart to be sure was +better; but at any moment it might get worse. It might get like his +father's. It might stop altogether. He thought of it as he had never +thought of it before. He humored it. He never ran. He never jumped. He +never rode uphill on his bicycle. He thought twice before hurrying for +anything.</p> + +<p>Against these things he could protect himself.</p> + +<p>But who could protect him against excitement and worry and anxiety? Why, +this fear that he had was itself the worst thing for him imaginable. And +then worry. He <i>had</i> to worry. You couldn't look on and see the poor old +Humming-bird going from bad to worse, you couldn't see everybody else +worrying about him, and not worry too. He would go away and forget about +it for a time, and when he came back again the terrible and intolerable +thing was there.</p> + +<p>And at the heart of the trouble there was a still more terrible and +intolerable peace. It was as if Mr. Ransome had made strange terms with +the youth and joy and innocent life that had once roused him to such +profound resentment and disgust. His vindictive ubiquity had ceased. +When the spring came he could no longer drag himself up and down stairs. +His feet and legs were swollen; they were like enormous weights +attached to his pitifully weedy body. His skin had the sallow +smoothness, the waxen substance that marked the deadly, unmistakable +progress of his disease. He could not always lie down in his bed. +Sometimes he lived, day and night, motionless in his invalid's chair, +with his legs propped before him on a footrest. He would sit for hours +staring at them in lamentable contemplation. He could measure his span +of life from day to day as the swelling rose or sank. On his good days +they wheeled him from his bedroom at the back to the front sitting-room.</p> + +<p>And through it all, as by some miracle, he preserved his air of +suffering integrity.</p> + +<p>It was quite plain to Ranny that his father could not live long. And if +he died? Even in his pity and his grief Ranny could not help wondering +whether, if his father died any time that year, it would not make a +difference, whether it would not, perhaps, at the last moment prevent +his marrying?</p> + +<p>Partly in defiance of this fear, partly by way of committing himself +irretrievably, he resolved to speak to Winny. He desired to be +irretrievably committed, so that, whatever happened, decency alone would +prevent him from drawing back. Though he could not in as many words ask +Winny to marry him before he was actually free, there were things that +could be said, and he saw no earthly reason why he should not say them.</p> + +<p>For this purpose he chose, in sheer decency, one of his father's good +days which happened to be a fine, warm one in May and a Saturday. He had +arranged with Winny beforehand that she should come over as early as +possible in the afternoon and stay for tea. He now suggested that, as +this Saturday was such a Saturday as they might never see again, it +would be a good plan if they were to go somewhere together.</p> + +<p>"Where?" said Winny.</p> + +<p>Wherever she liked, he said, provided it was somewhere where they'd +never been before. And Winny, trying to think of something not too +expensive, said, "How about the tram to Putney Heath?"</p> + +<p>"Putney Heath," Ranny said, "be blowed!"</p> + +<p>"Well, then—how about Hampton Court or Kew?"</p> + +<p>But he was "on to" her. "Rot!" he said. "You've been there."</p> + +<p>"Well—" Obviously she was meditating something equally absurd.</p> + +<p>"What d'you say to Windsor?"</p> + +<p>But Winny absolutely refused to go to Windsor. She said there was one +place she'd never been to, and that was Golder's Hill. You could get tea +there.</p> + +<p>"Right—O!" said Ranny. "We'll go to Golder's Hill."</p> + +<p>"And take the children," Winny said.</p> + +<p>Well, no, he rather thought he'd leave the kids behind for once.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny!" Voice and eyes reproached him. "You couldn't! You may never +get a day like this again."</p> + +<p>"I know. That's why," said Ranny.</p> + +<p>The kids, Stanley, aged three, and Dossie, aged five, understanding +perfectly well that they were being thrown over, began to cry.</p> + +<p>"Daddy, take <i>me</i>—take <i>me</i>," sobbed Dossie.</p> + +<p>"And me!" Stanley positively screamed it.</p> + +<p>"I say, you know, if they're going to howl," said Ranny.</p> + +<p>"You <i>must</i>—"</p> + +<p>"That's it, I mustn't. They can't have everything they choose to howl +for."</p> + +<p>"There," said Winny. "See! Daddy can't take you if you cry. He can't, +really."</p> + +<p>(She had gone—perfidious Winny!—to the drawer where she knew Stanley's +clean suit was. Stanley knew it too.)</p> + +<p>The children stopped crying as by magic. With eyes where pathos and +resentment mingled they gazed at their incredible father. Tears, large +crystal tears, hung on the flame-red crests of their hot cheeks.</p> + +<p>Winny turned before she actually opened the drawer.</p> + +<p>"Who wants," said she, "to go with Daddy?"</p> + +<p>"Me," said Dossie.</p> + +<p>"Me," said Stanley.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, give Daddy a kiss and ask him nicely. Then perhaps he'll +take you."</p> + +<p>And they did, and he had to take them. But it was mean, it was +treacherous of Winny.</p> + +<p>"What did you do that for, Winky?" he said, going over to her where she +rummaged in the drawer.</p> + +<p>"Because," she said, "you promised."</p> + +<p>"Promised what?"</p> + +<p>"Promised you'd take them. Promised Stanny he should wear his knickers. +They told me you'd promised."</p> + +<p>And he had.</p> + +<p>"I forgot," he said.</p> + +<p>"<i>They'd</i> never have forgotten."</p> + +<p>She was holding them, the ridiculous knickers, to the nursery fire.</p> + +<p>It took ten minutes to get Stanley into them, into the little blue linen +knickers he had never worn before, and into his tight little white +jersey; and then there was Dossie and her wonderful rig-out, the clean, +white frock and the serge jacket of turquoise blue and the tiny mushroom +hat with the white ribbon. It took five minutes more to find Stanley's +hat, the little soft hat of white felt, in which he was so adorable. +They found it on Ranny's bed, and then they started.</p> + +<p>It was a great, an immense adventure, right away to the other side of +London.</p> + +<p>"We'll take everything we can," said Ranny. And they did. They took the +motor bus to Earl's Court Tube Station, and the Tube (two Tubes they had +to take) to Golder's Green. The adventure began in the first lift.</p> + +<p>"Where we goin'?" the children cried. "Where we goin', Daddy?"</p> + +<p>"We're going down—down—ever so far down, with London on the top of +us—All the horses"—Winny worked the excitement up and up—"All the +people—All the motor buses on the top of us—"</p> + +<p>"On top of me?"</p> + +<p>"And on me?" cried Dossie. "And on Daddy and on Winky?"</p> + +<p>"Will it make us <i>dead</i>?" said Stanley. He was thrilled at the prospect.</p> + +<p>"No. More alive than ever. We shall come rushing out, like bunny +rabbits, into the country on the other side."</p> + +<p>Ever so far down into the earth they went, with London, and then Camden +Town, and then Hampstead Heath—a great big high hill—right on the top +of them; and then, all of a sudden, just as Winny had said, they came +rushing out, more alive than ever, into the country, into the green +fields.</p> + +<p>But there was something wrong with Ranny. He wasn't like himself. He +wasn't excited or amused or interested in anything. He looked as if he +were trying not to hear what Winny was saying to the children. He was +abstracted. He went like a man in a dream. He behaved almost as if he +wanted to show that he didn't really belong to them.</p> + +<p>Of course, he did all the proper things. He carried his little son. He +lifted him and Dossie in and out of the trains as if they had been +parcels labeled "Fragile, with Care." But he did it like a porter, a +sulky porter who was tired of lifting things; and they might really have +been somebody else's glass and china for all he seemed to care.</p> + +<p>Ranny was angry. He was angry with the little things for being there. He +was angry with himself for having brought them, and with Winny for +having made him bring them; and he was angry with himself for being +angry. But he couldn't help it. Their voices exasperated him. The +children's voices, the high, reiterated singsong, "Where we goin'?" +Winny's voice, poignantly soft, insufferably patient, answering them +with all that tender silliness, that persistent, gentle, intolerably +gentle tommy-rot.</p> + +<p>For all the time he was saying to himself, "She doesn't care. She +doesn't care a hang. It's them she cares for. It's them she wants. It's +them she's wanted all the time. She's that sort."</p> + +<p>And as he brooded on it, hatred of Winky, who had so fooled him, crept +into his heart.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Daddy!" Dossie shouted, with excitement. (They had emerged into the +beautiful open space in front of Golder's Green Station.) "Daddy, we're +bunnies now! We'll be dea' little baby bunnies. You'll be Father Bunny, +and Winky'll be Mrs. Mother Bun! <i>Be</i> a bunny, Daddy?"</p> + +<p>Perceiving his cruel abstraction, Dossie entreated and implored. "<i>Be</i> +it!"</p> + +<p>But Daddy refused to be a bunny or anything that was required of him. So +silent was he and so stern that even Winny saw that there was something +wrong. She knew by the way he let Stanny down from his shoulder to the +ground, a way which implied that Stanny was not so young nor yet so +small and helpless as he seemed. He could walk.</p> + +<p>Stanny felt it; he felt it in the jerk that landed him; but he didn't +care, he was far too happy.</p> + +<p>"He's a young Turk," said Winny, and he was. By his whole manner, by the +swing of his tiny arms, by his tilted, roguish smile, by his eyes, +impudent and joyous (blue they were, like his mother's, but clear, +tilted, and curled like Ranny's), Stanny intimated that Daddy was sold +if he imagined that to walk was not just what Stanny wanted. And in +spite of it he was heartrending, pathetic; so small he was, with all his +baby roundness accentuated absurdly by the knickers.</p> + +<p>"He's just such another as you, Ranny," Winny said. (She was +uncontrollable!) "Such a little man as he is, in those knickers."</p> + +<p>"Damn his knickers," said Ranny to himself, behind his set teeth. But he +smiled all the same; and by the time they had got into the wonderful +walled garden of Golder's Hill he had recovered almost completely.</p> + +<p>It was not decent to keep on sulking in a place which had so laid itself +out to make you happy; where the sunshine flowed round you and soaked +into you and warmed you as if you were in a bath. The garden, inclosed +in rose-red walls and green hedges, was like a great tank filled with +sunshine; sunshine that was visible, palpable, audible almost in its +intensity; sunshine caught and contained and brimming over, that +quivered and flowed in and around the wall-flowers, tulips and +narcissus, that drenched them through and through and covered them like +water, and was thick with all their scents. You walked on golden paths +through labyrinths of brilliant flowers, through arches, tunnels and +bowers of green. You were netted in sunshine, drugged with sweet live +smells, caged in with blossoms, pink and white, of the espaliers that +clung, branch and bud, like carved latticework, flat to the garden wall.</p> + +<p>Neither could he well have sulked in the great space outside, where the +green lawns unrolled and flung themselves generously, joyously to the +sun, or where, on the light slope of the field beyond, the trees hung +out their drooping vans, lifted up green roof above green roof, +sheltering a happy crowd.</p> + +<p>And even if these things, in their benignant, admonishing, reminding +beauty, had not restored his decency, he was bound to soften and unbend, +when, as they were going over the rustic bridge, Stanny tried to turn +himself upside down among the water lilies. And as he captured Stanny by +a miracle of dexterity, just in time, he realized, as if it had been +some new and remarkable discovery, that his little son was dear to him.</p> + +<p>By slow stages, after many adventures and delays, they reached the +managerie on the south side.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Daddy, Daddy, look at that funny bird!"</p> + +<p>Dossie tugged and shouted.</p> + +<p>In a corner of his yard, round and round, with inconceivable rapidity +and an astounding innocence, as if he imagined himself alone and +unobserved, the Emu danced like a bird demented. On tiptoe, absurdly +elongated, round and round, ecstatically, deliriously, he danced. He +danced till his legs and his neck were as one high perpendicular pole +and his body a mere whorl of feathers spinning round it, driven by the +flapping of his wings.</p> + +<p>"He <i>is</i> making an almighty fool of himself," said Ranny.</p> + +<p>"What does he do it for, Daddy?"</p> + +<p>"Let's ask the keeper."</p> + +<p>And they asked him.</p> + +<p>"'E's a Emu, that's what 'e is," said the keeper. "That's what he does +when he goes courtin'. Only there won't be no courtin' for him this +time. 'Is mate died yesterday."</p> + +<p>"And yet he dances," Winny said.</p> + +<p>"And yet he dances. Heartless bird!" said Ranny.</p> + +<p>They looked at the Emu, who went on dancing as if unobserved.</p> + +<p>"Scandalous, I call it," Ranny said. "Unfeelin'."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," said Winny, "the poor thing doesn't know."</p> + +<p>"Per'aps he does know, and that's why he's dancin'."</p> + +<p>Winny gazed, fascinated, at the uplifted and ecstatic head.</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> know," she said. "It's his grief. It's affected his brain."</p> + +<p>"It's Nacher," said the keeper, "that's what it is. Nacher's wound 'im +up to go, and he goes, you see, whether or no. It's the instint in 'im +and the time of year. 'E don't know no more than that."</p> + +<p>"But that," said Winny, "makes it all the sadder."</p> + +<p>She was sorry for the Emu, so bereaved and so deluded, dancing his +fruitless, lamentable dance.</p> + +<p>"He <i>is</i> funny, isn't he?" said Stanny.</p> + +<p>And they went slowly, spinning out their pleasure, back to that part of +the lawn where there were innumerable little tables covered with pink +cloths, set out under the trees, and seated at the tables innumerable +family parties, innumerable pairs of lovers, pairs of married people, +pairs of working women and of working girls on holiday; all happy for +their hour, all whispering, laughing, chattering, and drinking tea.</p> + +<p>On the terrace in front of the big red house were other tables with +white covers under awnings like huge sunshades, where people who could +afford the terrace sat in splendor and in isolation and listened to the +music, played on the veranda, of violins and cello and piano.</p> + +<p>Ransome and Winny and the children chose a pink-covered table on the +lawn under a holly tree in a place all by themselves. And they had tea +there, such a tea as stands out forever in memory, beautiful and +solitary. What the children didn't have for tea, Ranny said, was not +worth mentioning.</p> + +<p>And after tea they sat in luxurious folding-chairs under the terrace and +listened to the violins, the cello, and piano. Other people were doing +the same thing as if they had been invited to do it, as if they were all +one party, with somewhere a friendly host and hostess imploring them to +be seated, to be happy and to make themselves at home.</p> + +<p>And down the slope of the lawn, Stanny and Dossie rolled over and over +in the joy of life. And up the slope they toiled, laughing, to roll +interminably down.</p> + +<p>And the moments while they rolled were golden, priceless to Ranny. +Winny, seated beside him on her chair, watched them rolling.</p> + +<p>"It's Stanny's knickers," she said, "that I can't get over!"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to hear of them again" (the golden moments were so few). +"You make me wish I hadn't brought those kids."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny!" Her eyes were serious and reproachful.</p> + +<p>"Well—I can't get you to myself one minute."</p> + +<p>"But aren't we having quite a happy day?" she said. "What with the +beautiful flowers and the music and the Emu—"</p> + +<p>"You were sorry, Winky, for that disgraceful bird, and you're not a bit +sorry for me."</p> + +<p>"Why should I be?"</p> + +<p>"My case is similar."</p> + +<p>Her eyes were serious still, but round the corners of her mouth a little +smile was playing in secret by itself. She didn't know it was there, or +she never would have let it play.</p> + +<p>"Don't you know that I want to say things to you?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him and was frightened by the hunger in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Not now, Ranny," she said. "Not yet."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"I want"—she was desperate—"I want to listen to the music."</p> + +<p>At that moment the violins and the cello were struggling together in a +cry of anguish and of passion.</p> + +<p>"You <i>don't</i>," he said, savagely.</p> + +<p>He was right. She didn't. The music, yearning and struggling, tore at +her heart, set her nerves vibrating, her breast heaving. It was as if it +drew her to Ranny, urgently, irresistibly, against her will.</p> + +<p>"Not now, Ranny," she said, "not now." And it was as if she asked him to +take pity on her.</p> + +<p>"No," he said. "Not now. But presently, when I see you home."</p> + +<p>"No. Not even then. Not at all. You mustn't, dear," she whispered.</p> + +<p>"I shall."</p> + +<p>They sat silent and let the music do with them as it would.</p> + +<p>And the sun dropped to the fields and flooded them and sank far away, +behind Harrow on the Hill. And they called the children, the tired +children, to them and went home.</p> + +<p>Stanny had to be carried all the way. He hung on his father's shoulder, +utterly limp, utterly helpless, utterly pathetic.</p> + +<p>"He's nothing but a baby after all," said Winny.</p> + +<p>They were going over Wandsworth Bridge.</p> + +<p>"Do you remember, Ranny, the first time you ever saw me home, going over +this bridge? What a moon there was!"</p> + +<p>"I do. That <i>was</i> a moon," said Ranny.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>There was no moon for them to-night.</p> + +<p>It was in a clear twilight, an hour later, that he saw her home.</p> + +<p>They went half the way without speaking, till they came to the little +three-cornered grove beside the public footpath. It was deserted. He +proposed that they should sit there for a while.</p> + +<p>"It's the only chance I'll ever get," he said to himself.</p> + +<p>She consented. The plane trees sheltered them and made darkness for them +where they sat.</p> + +<p>"Winky," he said, after an agonizing pause, "you must have thought it +queer that I've never thanked you for all you've done for me."</p> + +<p>"Why should you? It's so little. It's nothing."</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose I don't know what it is and what you've done it for?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Ranny, you know what I did it for, and you see, it's been no +good."</p> + +<p>"How d'you mean, no good?"</p> + +<p>"It didn't do what I thought it would."</p> + +<p>"What was that?"</p> + +<p>"It didn't keep poor Vi and you together."</p> + +<p>"Reelly"—She went on as if she were delivering her soul at last of the +burden that had been too heavy for it—"I can see it all now. It did +more harm than good."</p> + +<p>"How do you make that out?"</p> + +<p>"D'you mind talking about it?"</p> + +<p>"Not a bit."</p> + +<p>"Well, don't you see—it made it easier for her. It gave her the time +and everything she wanted. If I hadn't been there that night she +couldn't have gone, Ranny. She wouldn't have left the children. She +wouldn't, reelly. And I hadn't the sense to see it then."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you hadn't."</p> + +<p>"Oh, why?"</p> + +<p>"Because then you wouldn't have been there. I knew you were trying to +keep it all together. But it was bound to go. It couldn't have lasted. +<i>She'd</i> have gone anyhow. You don't worry about that now, do you?"</p> + +<p>"Sometimes I can't help thinking of it."</p> + +<p>"Don't think of it."</p> + +<p>"I won't so long as you know what I did it for."</p> + +<p>He meditated.</p> + +<p>"I know what you did it for in the beginning. But—Winks—you were there +<i>afterward</i>."</p> + +<p>"Afterward—?"</p> + +<p>"After Virelet went you were doing things."</p> + +<p>"Well—and didn't you want me?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I wanted you. Did you never wonder why I let you do things? +Why I can bear to take it from you? Don't you know I couldn't let any +other woman do what you do for me?"</p> + +<p>"I'm glad if you feel like that about it."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe you've any idea how I feel about it. I don't believe +you understand it yet." His voice thickened.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't have let you, Winny, if I hadn't cared for you. I should +have been a low animal, a mean swine to let you if I hadn't cared. I'm +not talking as if my caring paid you back in any way. I couldn't pay you +back if I worked for you for the rest of my life. But that's what I'm +going to do if I can get the chance."</p> + +<p>She could feel him trembling beside her and she was afraid.</p> + +<p>"Would you let me?" he said. "Would you have me, Winny? Do you care for +me enough to have me?"</p> + +<p>"You know I've always cared for you."</p> + +<p>"Would you marry me if I was free?"</p> + +<p>"Don't talk about it, dear. You mustn't."</p> + +<p>"And why mustn't I?"</p> + +<p>"It's no good. You're not free. You married Vi, dear, and whatever she's +done you can't un-marry her."</p> + +<p>"Can't I? That's precisely what I can do; and it's what I'm going to +do."</p> + +<p>"You're not. You couldn't."</p> + +<p>It seemed to him that she shrank from him in horror.</p> + +<p>"You don't understand. You're talking as if she and I cared for each +other. That's at an end. It's done for. She's asked me to divorce her."</p> + +<p>"Asked you? When?"</p> + +<p>"More than two years ago, and I promised. She wants to marry Mercier, +and she'd better. I'd have been free two years ago if I'd had the money. +But I've got it now. I've been saving for it. I've been doing nothing +else, thinking of nothing else from morning till night for more than two +years, because I meant to ask you to marry me."</p> + +<p>"All that time?"</p> + +<p>"All that time."</p> + +<p>"But Ranny, you know you <i>needn't</i>. I'm quite happy."</p> + +<p>"Are you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. You mustn't think I'm not and that you've got to make anything up +to me, because that would make me feel as if I'd—there's a word for it, +I know, but I can't think of it. It's what horrid girls do to men when +they're trying to get hold of them—as if I'd comp—comprised—"</p> + +<p>"D'you mean compromised?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I make you feel as if you'd compromised me?"</p> + +<p>"That's right."</p> + +<p>"Well, I <i>am</i> jiggered! If that doesn't about take the biscuit! Winky, +you're a blessing, you're a treasure, you're a treat; I could live for a +fortnight on the things you find to say."</p> + +<p>He would have drawn her to him, but she held herself rigid.</p> + +<p>"Well, but—I haven't—have I?"</p> + +<p>"If you mean, have you made me want to marry you, you <i>have</i>. Haven't I +told you I've thought of nothing else for more than two years?"</p> + +<p>"D'you want it so badly, Ranny?"</p> + +<p>"I want <i>you</i> so badly. Didn't you know I did? Of course you knew."</p> + +<p>"No, Ranny, I didn't. I thought all the time perhaps some day poor +Virelet would come back."</p> + +<p>"She'll never come back."</p> + +<p>"But, if she did? If she changed her mind? Perhaps she's changed it now +and wants to come back and be good."</p> + +<p>"If she did I wouldn't take her."</p> + +<p>He felt her eyes turn on him through the dark in wonder.</p> + +<p>"But you'd have to. You couldn't not."</p> + +<p>"I could, and I would."</p> + +<p>"No, Ranny, you wouldn't. You'd never be cruel to poor Vi."</p> + +<p>"Don't talk about her. Don't think about her."</p> + +<p>"But we must. There she is. There she's always been—"</p> + +<p>"And here we are. And here we've always been. Have you ever thought for +a minute of <i>yourself</i>? Have you ever thought of <i>me</i>? I'm sick of +hearing you say 'poor Vi.' Poor Vi! D'you know why I won't take her +back? Why I can't forgive her? It's not for what you know she's done. +It's for something you never knew about. I've a good mind to tell you."</p> + +<p>"No—don't. I'd rather not know. Whatever it was, she couldn't help it."</p> + +<p>"You ought to know. It was something she did to you."</p> + +<p>"She never did anything to me, Ranny."</p> + +<p>"Didn't she? She did something to me that came to the same thing. I +suppose you think I cared for her before I cared for you?"</p> + +<p>"Well—yes."</p> + +<p>"I didn't then. It was the other way about. And she knew it. And she +lied to me about you. She told me you didn't care for me."</p> + +<p>"She told you—?"</p> + +<p>"She told me."</p> + +<p>"I didn't think that Virelet would have done that."</p> + +<p>"Nor I."</p> + +<p>She paused, considering it.</p> + +<p>"How did you find out it was a lie, Ranny? Oh—oh—I suppose I showed +you—"</p> + +<p>"Not you. She owned up herself."</p> + +<p>"When?"</p> + +<p>"That night she went off. She wrote it in that letter. She told me why +she did it, too. It was because she knew I cared for you and was afraid +I'd marry you. She wasn't going to have that. Now you know what she is."</p> + +<p>"Why did you believe her?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Winky, you, you little wretch, you took care of that all right."</p> + +<p>"But, Ranny, if you cared for me, why did you marry her?"</p> + +<p>"Because I was mad and she was mad, and we neither of us knew what we +were doing. It was something that got hold of us."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you mad now, Ranny?"</p> + +<p>"Rather! But I know what I'm doing all the same. I didn't know when I +married Violet."</p> + +<p>"Don't talk as if you didn't care for her. You <i>did</i> care."</p> + +<p>"Of course I cared for her. But even that was different somehow. <i>She</i> +was different. Why do you bother about her?"</p> + +<p>"I'm only wondering how you'd feel if you was to see her again."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't feel anything—anything at all. Seeing her would have no +more effect on me than if she was a piece of clockwork." He paused.</p> + +<p>"I say—you're not afraid of her?" he said.</p> + +<p>"No. I've been through all that and got over it. I'm not afraid of +anything."</p> + +<p>"You mean you're not afraid to marry me?"</p> + +<p>"No. I'm not afraid."</p> + +<p>He felt her smile flicker in the darkness.</p> + +<p>It was then that in the darkness he drew her to him, and she let herself +be drawn, her breast to his breast and her head against his shoulder. +And as she rested there she trembled, she shivered with delight and +fear.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> + + +<p>He had seen her home. At her door in the quiet Avenue he had held her in +his arms again and kissed her. Her eyes shone at his under the +lamplight.</p> + +<p>He went back slowly, reviving the sweet sense of her.</p> + +<p>A great calm had followed his excitement. He was sustained by an +absolute certainty of happiness. It was in his grasp, nothing could take +it from him. He would raise the rest of the money on Monday. He would +see that lawyer on Wednesday. Then he would take proceedings. Once he +had set the machinery going it couldn't be stopped. The law simply took +the thing over, took it out of his hands, and he ceased to be +responsible.</p> + +<p>So he argued; for at the back of his mind he saw more clearly than ever +(he could not help seeing) something that might stop it all, disaster so +great, so overwhelming that when it came his affairs would be swallowed +up in it. In the face of that disaster it would be indecent of him to +have any affairs of his own, or at any rate to insist on them. But he +refused to dwell on this possibility. He persuaded himself that his +father was better, that he would even recover, and that the business +would recover too. For the last six months Ponting had been running it +with an assistant under him, and between them they had done wonders with +it, considering.</p> + +<p>And on the Sunday something occurred that confirmed him in his rosy +optimism.</p> + +<p>His father was having another good day, and they had wheeled him into +the front sitting-room. Upstairs in the small back room Ransome was +getting the children ready for their Sunday walk, when his mother came +to him.</p> + +<p>"Ranny," she said, "take off their hats and coats, dear. Your Father +wants them."</p> + +<p>"What does he want them for?"</p> + +<p>"It's his fancy. He's gettin' better, I think. I don't know when I've +seen him so bright and contented as he's been these last two days. And +so pleased with everything you do for him—There, take them down, dear, +quick."</p> + +<p>He took them down and led them into the room. But they refused to look +at their grandfather; they turned from him at once; they hid their faces +behind Ranny's legs.</p> + +<p>"They're afraid of me, I suppose," said Mr. Ransome.</p> + +<p>"No," said Ranny, "they're not." But he had to take Stanny in his arms +and comfort him lest he should cry.</p> + +<p>"You're not afraid of Gran, are you? Show Gran your pretty pinny, Doss."</p> + +<p>He gave her a gentle push, and the child stood there holding out her +pinafore and gazing over it at her grandfather with large, frightened +eyes. Mr. Ransome's eyes looked back at her. They were sunken, somber, +wistful, unutterably sad. He did not speak. He did not smile. It was +impossible to say what he was thinking.</p> + +<p>This mutual inspection lasted for a moment so intense that it seemed +immeasurable. Then Mr. Ransome closed his eyes as if pained and +exhausted.</p> + +<p>And Ranny stooped and whispered, "Kiss him, Dossie, kiss poor Gran."</p> + +<p>The child, perceiving pity somewhere and awed into submission, did her +best, but her kiss barely brushed the sallow, waxen face. And as he felt +her there Mr. Ransome opened his eyes suddenly and looked at her again, +and Dossie, terrified, turned away and burst out crying.</p> + +<p>"She's shy. She's a silly little girl," said Ranny, as he led her away. +He knew that, in the moment when the child had turned from him, his +father had felt outcast from life and utterly alone.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ransome stirred and looked after him. "You come back here," he said. +"I've something to say to you."</p> + +<p>Ranny took the children to his mother and went back. Mr. Ransome was +sitting up in his chair. He had roused himself. He looked strangely +intelligent and alert.</p> + +<p>He signed to his son to sit near him.</p> + +<p>"How old are those children?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Dossie was five in March, and Stanny was three in April."</p> + +<p>"And they've been—how long without their mother?"</p> + +<p>"It'll be three years next October."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you get rid of that woman?" said Mr. Ransome. It was as if +with effort and with pain and out of the secret, ultimate sources of his +being that he drew the energy to say it. They would never know what he +was thinking, never know (as Ranny had once said) what was going on +inside him. And of all impossible things, <i>this</i> was what he had come +out with now!</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that, Father?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I mean it."</p> + +<p>"Well, then—as it happens—it's what I'm going to do."</p> + +<p>"You should have done it before."</p> + +<p>"I couldn't."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"I hadn't the money."</p> + +<p>Mr. Ransome closed his eyes again as if in pain.</p> + +<p>"I'd have given it you, Randall," he said, presently. He had opened his +eyes, but they wandered uneasily, avoiding his son's gaze. "If I'd had +it. But I hadn't. I've been doing badly."</p> + +<p>And again his eyelids dropped and lifted.</p> + +<p>"Things have gone wrong that hadn't ought to if I'd been what I should +be."</p> + +<p>There was anguish in Ranny's father's eyes now. They turned to him for +reassurance. As if in some final act of humility and contrition, he +unbared and abased himself, he laid down the pretension of integrity.</p> + +<p>His shawl had slipped from his knees. His hands moved over it as if, +having unbared, he now sought to cover himself. Ransome stooped over him +and drew the shawl up higher and wrapped it closer with careful, tender +touches.</p> + +<p>"Don't worry about that," he said.</p> + +<p>"Your Mother'll be all right, Randall. She's got a bit of her own. It's +all there, except what she put into the business. You won't have to +trouble about her." He paused. "Have you got the money now?" he said.</p> + +<p>"I shall have. To-morrow, probably."</p> + +<p>"Then don't you wait."</p> + +<p>"It'll be beastly work, you know, Father. Are you sure you don't mind?"</p> + +<p>"What <i>I</i> mind is your being married to that woman. I never liked it, +Randall."</p> + +<p>He closed his eyes. His face became more than ever drawn and peaked. His +mouth opened. With short, hard gasps he fought for the breath he had so +spent.</p> + +<p>Ransome's heart reproached him because he had not cared enough about his +father. And he said to himself, "He must have cared a lot more than he +ever let on."</p> + +<p>The way to the Divorce Court had been made marvelously smooth for him. +His mother couldn't say now that it would kill his father.</p> + +<p>But on Monday morning things did not go with Ransome entirely as he had +expected. Shaftesbury Avenue refused to lend him more than ten pounds on +the security of his furniture. Still, that was a trifling hitch. Now +that the proceedings had been consecrated by his father's sanction, +there could be no doubt that his mother would be glad to lend him the +five pounds. He would ask her for it that evening as soon as he got +home.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>But he did not ask her that evening, nor yet the next. He did not ask +her for it at all. For as soon as he got home she came to him out of his +father's room. She stood at the head of the stairs by the door of the +room, leaning against the banisters. And she was crying.</p> + +<p>"Is Father worse?" he said.</p> + +<p>"He's going, my dear. There's a trained nurse just come. She's in there +with the doctor. But they can't do anything."</p> + +<p>He drew her into the front room, and she told him what had happened.</p> + +<p>"He was sittin' in his chair there like he was yesterday—so bright—and +I thought he was better, and I made him a drop of chicken broth and sat +with him while he took it. Then I left him there for a bit and went +upstairs to the children—Dossie was sick this morning—"</p> + +<p>"Dossie—?"</p> + +<p>"It's nothing—she's upset with something she's eaten—and I was there +with her ten minutes per'aps, and when I came back I found your Father +in a fit. A convulsion, the doctor says it was; he said all along he +might have them, but I thought he was better. And he's had another this +evening, and he hasn't come round out of it right. He doesn't know me, +Ranny."</p> + +<p>He had nothing to say to her. It was as if he had known that it would +happen, and that it would happen like this, that he would come home at +this hour and find his mother standing at the head of the stairs, and +that she would tell him these things in these words. He even had the +feeling that he ought to have told <i>her</i>, to have warned her that it +would be so.</p> + +<p>On Wednesday evening, at eight o'clock, when Ransome should have been in +the lawyer's room at the Polytechnic, he was standing by his father's +bed. Mr. Ransome had partially recovered consciousness, and he lay +supported by his son's arms in preference to his own bed. For his bed +had become odious to him, sinking under him, falling from him +treacherously as he sank and fell, whereas Ranny's muscles adjusted +themselves to all his sinkings and fallings. They remained and could be +felt in the disintegration that presently separated them from the rest +of Ranny, Ranny's arms being there, close under him, and Ranny's face a +long way off at the other end of the room.</p> + +<p>The process of dissolution had nothing to do with Mr. Ransome. It went +on, not in him but outside him, in the room. He was almost unaware of +it, it was so inconceivably gradual, so immeasurably slow. First of all +the room began to fill with gray fog, and for ages and ages Ranny's face +and his wife's face hung over him, bodiless, like pale lumps in the fog. +Then for ages and for ages they were blurred, and then withdrawn from +him, then blotted out.</p> + +<p>This dying, which was so eternally tedious to Mr. Ransome, lasted about +twenty minutes, so that at half past eight, when Ranny should have been +listening to his legal adviser, he was trying to understand what the +doctor was trying to tell him about the causes, the very complicated +causes of his father's death.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>And with Mr. Ransome's death there came again on Ranny and his mother, +and on all of them, the innocence and the immense delusion in which they +had lived, in which they had kept it up, in the days before Ranny's wife +had run away from him and before Ranny's enlightenment and his awful +outburst. Only the innocence was ten times more persistent, the delusion +ten times more solemn and more unutterably sacred now. Mr. Ransome's +death made it impossible for them to speak or think or feel about him +otherwise than if he had been a good man. If Ranny could have doubted it +he would have stood reproved. From the doctor's manner, from his Uncle +Randall's manner and his Aunt Randall's, from Mr. Ponting's and the +assistant's manner, and from the manner, the swollen grief, uncontrolled +and uncontrollable, of the servant Mabel, he would have gathered that +his father was a good man.</p> + +<p>But Ransome never doubted it. He spoke, he thought, he felt as if his +father's death had left him inconsolable. It was the death of a man who +had made them all ashamed and miserable; who had tried to take the joy +out of Ranny's life as he had already taken it out of Ranny's mother's +face; who had hardly ever spoken a kind word to him; who, if it came to +that, had never done anything for him beyond contributing, +infinitesimally, to his existence. And even this Mr. Ransome had done by +accident and inadvertence, thinking (if he could be said to have been +thinking at all) of his own pleasure and not of his son's interests; for +Ranny, if he had been consulted, would probably have preferred to owe +his existence to some other parent.</p> + +<p>And even in his last act, his dying, in his choice of that hour, of all +hours open to him to die in, Mr. Ransome had inflicted an incurable +injury upon his son. He had timed it to a minute. And Ranny knew it. He +had had the idea firmly fixed in his head that if he did not go to the +Polytechnic and find out how to set about filing his petition that +Wednesday night, he would never get his divorce. Things would happen, +they were bound to happen if he gave them time.</p> + +<p>And yet that death, so ill-timed, so disastrous for Ranny in its +consequences, Ranny mourned as if it had been in itself an affliction, +an irreparable loss. He felt with the most entire sincerity that now +that the Humming-bird was dead he would never be happy again.</p> + +<p>On the Sunday after the funeral, which was on the Saturday, he sat in +the front parlor with his mother and Mr. and Mrs. Randall, listening +with a dumb but poignant acquiescence to all that they were saying about +his father. Their idea now was that Mr. Ransome was not only a good man, +a man of indissoluble integrity, but a man of unimaginably profound +emotions, of passionate affections concealed under the appearance of +austerity.</p> + +<p>"No one knows," Mrs. Ransome was saying, "what 'E was thinking and what +'E was feeling—what went on inside him no one ever knew. For all he +said about it you'd have thought he didn't take much notice of what +happened—Ranny's trouble—and yet I know he felt it something awful. It +preyed on 'is mind, poor Ranny being left like that. Why, it was after +that, if you remember, that he began to break up. I put all his illness +down to that.</p> + +<p>"And then the children—you might say he didn't take much notice of +them, but 'E was thinking about them all the time, you may depend upon +it. 'E sent for them the Sunday before he died. I'm glad he did, too. +Aren't you, Ranny?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Mother," Ranny said, and choked.</p> + +<p>"It'll be something for them to remember him by when they grow up. But +they'll never know what was in his heart. None of us ever knew nor ever +will know, now."</p> + +<p>"He was a good man, Emmy, and a kind man—and just. I never knew any one +more just than Fulleymore. We were saying so only last night, weren't +we?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, John," said Mrs. Randall. "We were saying you could always depend +upon his word. And, as <i>you</i> say, there were things in him we never +knew—and never shall know."</p> + +<p>And so it went on, with tearful breaks and long, oppressive silences, +until some one would think of some as yet unmentioned quality of Mr. +Ransome's. Every now and then, in the silences, one of them would be +visited by some involuntary memory of his unpleasantness and of the +furtive vice that had destroyed him, and would thrust the thought back +with horror, as outrageous, indecent, and impossible. They all spoke in +voices of profound emotion and with absolute, unfaltering conviction.</p> + +<p>"We shall never know what was in him." Always they came back to that, +they dwelt on it, they clung to it. Under all the innocence and the +delusion it was as if, through their grief, they touched reality, they +felt the unaltered, unapparent splendor, and testified to the mystery, +to the ultimate and secret sanctity of man's soul.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Of all that Ransome was aware obscurely, he shared their sense of that +hidden and incalculable and enduring life. But his own grief was +different from theirs. It was something unique, peculiar to himself and +incommunicable.</p> + +<p>Even he had not realized what was at the bottom of his grief until he +found himself alone with it, walking with it on the road to Southfields. +He had left the Randalls with his mother and had escaped, with an +irritable longing for the darkness and the open air. He knew that the +reason why he wanted to get away from them was that his grief was so +different from theirs.</p> + +<p>For they were innocent; they had nothing to reproach themselves with. If +they had not loved his father quite so much as they thought they did, +they had done the next best thing; they had never let him know it. They +had behaved to him, they had thought of him, in consequence, more +kindly, more tenderly than if they <i>had</i> loved him; in which case they +would not have felt the same obligation to be careful. They had never +hurt him. Whereas he—</p> + +<p>That was why he would give anything to have his father back again. It +was all right for them. He couldn't think what they were making such a +fuss about. They had carried their behavior to such a pitch of +perfection that they could perfectly well afford to let him go. There +was no reason why they should want him back again, to show him—</p> + +<p>All this Ranny felt obscurely. And the more he thought about it the more +it seemed to him horrible that anybody should have lived as his father +had lived and die as he had died, without anybody having really loved +him. It was horrible that he, Ranny, should not have loved him. For that +was what it came to; that was what he knew about himself; that and +nothing else was at the bottom of his grief, and it was what made it so +different from theirs. It was as if he realized for the first time in +his life what pity was. He had never known what a terrible, what an +intolerable thing was this feeling that was so like love, that should +have been love and yet was not. For he didn't deceive himself about it +as his mother (mercifully for her) was deceiving herself at this moment. +This intolerable and terrible feeling was not love. In love there would +have been some happiness.</p> + +<p>Walking slowly, thinking these things, or rather feeling them, vaguely +and incoherently, he had come to the grove by the public footpath. It +was there that he had sat with his mother more than six years ago, when +she had as good as confessed to him that she had not loved her husband; +not, that was to say, as she had loved her child.</p> + +<p>And it was there, only the other night, that he had sat with Winny. One +time seemed as long ago as the other.</p> + +<p>And it was there that Winny was sitting now, on their seat, alone, +facing the way he came, as if positively she had known that he would +come.</p> + +<p>He realized then that it was Winny that he wanted, and that the grief he +found so terrible and intolerable was driving him to her, though when he +started he had not meant to go to her, he had not known that he would +go.</p> + +<p>She rose when she saw him and came forward.</p> + +<p>"Ranny! Were you coming to me?"</p> + +<p>"Yes." (He knew it now.) "Let's stay here a bit. I've left Uncle and +Aunt with Mother."</p> + +<p>"How is she?"</p> + +<p>"Oh—well, it's pretty awful for her."</p> + +<p>"It must be."</p> + +<p>He was sitting near her but a little apart, staring at the lamplit road. +She felt him utterly removed from her. Yet he was there. He had come to +her.</p> + +<p>"I don't think," he said, presently, "Mother'll ever be happy again. <i>I</i> +sha'n't, either."</p> + +<p>She put her hand on his hand that lay palm downward between them on the +seat and that was stretched toward her, not as if it sought her +consciously, but in utter helplessness. There was no response in it +beyond a nervous quivering that struck through her fingers to her heart.</p> + +<p>He went on. "It's not as if <i>he</i> had been happy. He wasn't. Couldn't +have been."</p> + +<p>She fell to stroking gently that hand under her own. Its nervous +quivering ceased.</p> + +<p>"You know that funny way he had—the way he used to go poppin' in and +out as if he was lookin' for somebody? That's what I can't bear to think +of. Like as if he'd wanted something badly and wouldn't let on to +anybody about it. Nobody knew what was going on inside him all these +years. That's the horrible thing. We ought to have known and we didn't. +There he was, poppin' in and out, and he might have been a mile off for +all we could get at him. We didn't know anything about him—not reelly."</p> + +<p>He mused.</p> + +<p>"That's it. We don't know anything about anybody—ever. I didn't know +anything about Virelet—don't know now. I never shall know. Come to +that, I don't know anything about you. Nor you about me—reelly."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny," she whispered. It was her one protest against the agony he +was making her share with him.</p> + +<p>"What do we know about anything? What does it all mean? The whole +bloomin' show? The Combined Maze? They shove us into it without our +leave. They make us do things we don't want to do and never meant to do. +I didn't want to care for Virelet. I wanted to care for you. I didn't +want to marry her, nor she me. I didn't mean to. I meant to marry you. +But I did care for her, and I did marry her. I don't suppose <i>he</i> wanted +to do like he did or ever meant to. And look how he was treated—shoved +in—livin' his horrible little life down there—doin' the things he +didn't mean—lookin' for things he never got—and then shunted like +this, all anyhow, God knows where—before he could put a hand on +anything. There's no sense in it.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't mind so much if I'd only cared for him. But I didn't. I +wanted to—I meant to—but I didn't. There you are again. It's all like +that and there's no sense in it."</p> + +<p>"But you <i>did</i> care, Ran, dear. You're caring now. You couldn't talk +like this about him if you didn't care."</p> + +<p>"No. I'm talkin' like this—because I didn't care. Not a rap. My God! If +I thought Stanny would ever feel to me as I felt to my father, I'd go +and kill myself."</p> + +<p>"But he won't, dear. You haven't behaved to him like your father behaved +to you," said Winny, calmly.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"You know what I mean. At any rate, you will know presently when you can +look at it as it reelly is. Nobody could have done more for your father +than you did. If he'd been the best father in the world you couldn't +have done more."</p> + +<p>"Doin' things is nothing. Besides, I didn't. D'you know, I wouldn't go +into his business when he wanted me to? I wouldn't do it, just because I +couldn't bear bein' with him all the time. And he knew it."</p> + +<p>"I don't care if he did know it, Ranny. You'd a perfect right to live +your own life. You'd a right to choose what you'd do and where you'd be. +As it was, you never had any life of your own where your father was +about. I can remember how it was, dear, if you don't. If you'd given in +because he wanted you to; if you'd been boxed up with him down there +from morning till night, you'd never have had any life at all. Not as +much as <i>that</i>! And then, instead of caring for him as you did, you'd +have got to hate him, and then he'd have hated you; and your mother +would have been torn between you. That's how it would have been, and you +knew it. Else you'd never have left him."</p> + +<p>"I say—fancy your knowin' all that!"</p> + +<p>"Of course I know it. I knew it all the time."</p> + +<p>"Who told you?"</p> + +<p>"You don't have to be told things like that, Ranny."</p> + +<p>The hand she was stroking moved from under her hand and caught it and +grasped it tight.</p> + +<p>"Didn't I always know you were a dear?" she went on. "You said I didn't +know anything about you. But I knew that much."</p> + +<p>"Yes—but—how did you know I cared for him?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, why—because—you couldn't have called him the Humming-bird and +all those funny names you did if you hadn't cared. And, of course, he +knew that too. That's what he wouldn't let on, dear—the lot he knew. It +must have made him feel so nice and comfortable inside him to know that +whatever he was to do you'd go on calling him a Humming-bird."</p> + +<p>"D'you think it did—reelly?"</p> + +<p>"Why—don't you remember how it used to make your mother smile? Well, +then."</p> + +<p>Well, then, she seemed to say, it was all right.</p> + +<p>That was how she brought him round, to sanity when he thought his brain +was going and to happiness when he felt it so improbable, not to say +impossible, that he should ever be happy again.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>A fortnight passed.</p> + +<p>In the three days following the death he had not thought once about his +own concerns. He simply hadn't time to think of them. Every minute he +could spare was taken up with the arrangements for his father's funeral. +Sunday had been given over to mourning and remorse. It was Monday +morning and the weeks following it that brought back the thought of his +divorce. They brought it back, first, in all its urgency, as a thing +vehemently and terribly desired, then as a thing, urgent indeed, but +private and personal and, therefore, of secondary importance, a thing +that must perforce stand over until the settlement of his father's +affairs, till finally (emerging from the inextricable tangle in which it +had become involved) it presented itself as it was, a thing hopeless and +unattainable.</p> + +<p>His father's affairs were worse than anything he had believed. For, +except for that terror born of his own private superstition, he had not +really looked forward to disaster on an overwhelming scale.... He had +imagined his father's business as surviving him only for a little while, +and his father's debts as entailing perhaps strict economy for years. +But for the actual figures he was not prepared.</p> + +<p>And how his father, limited as he was in his resources and destitute, +you would have thought, of all opportunity for wild expenditure, how he +could have contrived to owe the amount he did owe passed Ranny's +understanding.</p> + +<p>Into that pit of insolvency there went all that was fetched by the sale +of the stock and the goodwill of the business and all that Mrs. Ransome +had put into the business, including what she had saved out of her tiny +income. As for Ranny's savings and the sum he had borrowed—the whole +thirty pounds—they went to pay for the funeral and the grave and the +monumental stone.</p> + +<p>There could be no divorce. Divorce was not to be thought of for more +than two years, when he would have got his rise.</p> + +<p>He broke the news to Winny, sitting with her in their little halfway +grove, the place consecrated to Ranny's confidences.</p> + +<p>"I can't do different," he said, summing it all up.</p> + +<p>"Of course, you can't. Never mind, dear. Let's go on as we are."</p> + +<p>It was what Violet had said to him, but with how different a meaning!</p> + +<p>"But Winky—it means waiting years. It'll be more than two before I can +get a divorce—and we can't marry till six months after. That's three +years. I can't bear to ask you to wait so long."</p> + +<p>"Don't worry about me. I'm quite happy."</p> + +<p>"You don't know how much happier you would be. Me too."</p> + +<p>She pressed her face against his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"I don't think I could be any happier than I am."</p> + +<p>"You don't know," he repeated. "You don't know anything at all."</p> + +<p>"I know I love you and you me, and that's enough."</p> + +<p>"Oh—<i>is</i> it?"</p> + +<p>"It's the great thing."</p> + +<p>"Winny, d'you know, that if poor Father hadn't died when he did—we +missed it by a day. To think it could happen like that!"</p> + +<p>He clinched it with, "This Combined Maze has been a bit too much for you +and me."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2> + + +<p>Mrs. Ransome for the first time in her life was thinking. She called it +thinking, although that was no word for it, for its richness, its +amplitude, its peculiar secret certainty. You might say that for the +first time in her life Mrs. Ransome was fully conscious; that, with an +extraordinary vividness and clarity she saw things, not as she believed +and desired them to be, but as they were.</p> + +<p>She saw, for the first time since Mr. Ransome's death, that she was +happy; or rather, that she had been happy for more than two years, that +is to say, ever since Mr. Ransome's death. And this vision of her +happiness, of her iniquitous and disgraceful satisfaction, was shocking +to Mrs. Ransome. She would have preferred to think that ever since Mr. +Ransome's death she had been heartbroken.</p> + +<p>But it was not so. Never in all her life had she been so at peace; never +since her girlhood had she been so gay. This state of hers had lasted +exactly two years and four months, thus clearly dating from her +bereavement. For it was in May of nineteen-ten that he had died, and she +was now in September nineteen-twelve.</p> + +<p>She might not have been aware of it but that it, her happiness, had only +six months more to run.</p> + +<p>For two years and four months she had had her son Ranny to herself. She +had been the mistress of his house, the little house that she loved, +and the mother of his children whom (next to her son Ranny) she adored. +For two years and four months she had made him comfortable with a +comfort he had never dreamed of, which most certainly he had never +known. With tenderness and care and vigilance unabridged and unremitted, +she had brought Granville and Stanley and Dossie to perfection. It had +not been so hard. Stanley and Dossie she had found almost perfect from +the first, more perfect than Ranny she had found them, because they were +not so near to her own flesh, and not loved so passionately as he.</p> + +<p>And Granville, once far from perfect, had responded to treatment like a +living thing. Maudie and Fred Booty had cherished it, they handed it on +to Mrs. Ransome spotless and intact. Spotless and intact she had kept +it. Spotless and intact no doubt it would be kept when, in six months' +time, she in turn would hand it over to Winny Dymond, to Ranny's second +wife.</p> + +<p>He had only just told her.</p> + +<p>That was what hurt her most, that she had only just been told, when for +more than two years he had been thinking of it. It was no use saying +that he couldn't have told her before, because he wasn't free. He wasn't +free now; not properly, like a widower.</p> + +<p>That he would, after all, get rid of poor Violet, who hadn't, in all +those years, troubled him or done him any harm, <i>that</i> had been a blow +to her. She hadn't believed it possible. She had thought the question of +divorce had been settled once for all, five years ago, by his Uncle +Randall. And John Randall in the meanwhile had justified his claim to +be heard, and his right to settle things. He had canceled the debt that +poor Fulleymore had owed him. To be sure, he could afford it. He was +more prosperous and prominent than ever. He was, therefore, less than +ever likely to approve of the divorce.</p> + +<p>If the idea of divorce had been appalling five years ago, it was still +more appalling now. Since, after all, poor Violet had removed herself so +far and kept so quiet, the scandal of her original disappearance had +somehow diminished with every year, while, proportionately, with every +year, the scandal, the indecency, the horror of the Divorce Court had +increased, until now it seemed to be a monstrous thing.</p> + +<p>And that Ranny should have chosen this time of all times! When they'd +paid off all the creditors and got clear, and stood respected and +respectable again. As if his poor father's insolvency, which, after all, +he couldn't help (since it was the Drug Stores that had ruined him), as +if that wasn't enough disgrace for one family, he must needs go and rake +up all that awful shame and trouble, after all these years, when +everybody had forgotten that there <i>had</i> been any trouble and any shame.</p> + +<p>That was what Mrs. Ransome found so hard to bear. And that she had been +deceived; that he should have let her go on thinking that it wasn't +possible, up to the last minute (it was Saturday and he was going to the +lawyer on Monday), she who had the first right to be told.</p> + +<p>All these years he had deceived her. All these years he had meant to do +it the very minute he had got his rise.</p> + +<p>For Ransome had attained the summit of his ambition. He was now a petty +cashier with a pen all to himself at the top of the counting-house, and +an income of two hundred a year. Short of making him assistant secretary +(which was ridiculous) Woolridge's could do no more for him.</p> + +<p>And Winny Dymond (Mrs. Ransome reflected bitterly), though he hadn't +been free to speak to her, though he was practically (it didn't occur to +Mrs. Ransome that what she meant was theoretically) a married man, Winny +had known it all the time.</p> + +<p>It was extraordinary, but Mrs. Ransome, who was really fond of Winny, +felt toward her more acute and concentrated bitterness than she had felt +toward Violet, whom she hated. She was able to think of Ranny's first +wife as poor Violet, though Violet had made him miserable and destroyed +his home and had left him and his children. And the thought of his +marrying Winny Dymond was intolerable to Mrs. Ransome, though she had +recognized her as the one woman Ranny ought to have married, the one +woman worthy of him, and she would have continued to welcome her in that +capacity as long as Ranny had refrained from marrying her.</p> + +<p>For Ranny's mother knew that in Violet her motherhood had had no rival. +Violet's passion for Ranny, Ranny's passion for Violet, had not robbed +her of her son. Violet, not having in her one atom of natural feeling, +and caring only for her husband's manhood and his physical perfection, +had left to Mrs. Ransome all that was most dear to her in Ranny. Married +to Violet, he was still dependent on his mother. He clung to her, he +deferred to her judgment, he came to her for comfort. If he had been +ill it was she and not Violet who would have nursed him. Whereas Winny +would take all that away from her. She would take—she could not help +taking—Ranny utterly away; not from malice, not from selfishness, not +because she wanted to take him, but because she could not help it. She +was so made as to be all in all to him, so made as to draw him to her +all in all. There would be absolutely nothing of Ranny left over for his +mother, except the affection he had always felt for her, which, for a +woman of Mrs. Ransome's temperament, was the least thing that she +claimed. Her instinct had divined Winny infallibly, not only as a wife +to Ranny, but as a mother. A mother Winny was and would be to him far +more than if she had used her womanhood to bear him children.</p> + +<p>So that, without the smallest preparation, she saw herself required at +six months' notice to give up her son. And while she blamed him for not +having told her, she overlooked the fact that if she had been told she +could not have borne the knowledge. It would have poisoned for her every +day of the eight hundred and forty-five days for which in her ignorance +she had been so happy.</p> + +<p>She did not attempt to deny that she had been happy. But what she had +<i>said</i> to Ranny when he told her was, "It's a mercy your poor father +doesn't know."</p> + +<p>And in that moment she thought of her happiness with a sharp pang as if +it had been unfaithfulness to her dead husband.</p> + +<p>It was at half past seven on a Saturday evening in the last week of +September, nineteen-twelve, that Mrs. Randall sat alone in the back +sitting-room at Granville and meditated miserably on those things.</p> + +<p>Upstairs in his bedroom overhead she could hear Ranny moving very +softly, for fear of waking Stanley. She knew what he was doing. He was +changing, making himself smart enough to take Winny Dymond to the Earl's +Court Exhibition.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Upstairs in his bedroom overhead, Ranny moved very softly, for fear of +waking Stanley. He was changing into a new gray suit, making himself +more smart than he had been for years to take Winny to the Earl's Court +Exhibition.</p> + +<p>In that shirt, glistening, high-collared, in a gray-blue tie, in +gray-blue socks and brown boots, Ranny looked very smart indeed. And the +suit, the suit looked splendid, the fold down the legs of the trousers +being as yet unimpaired.</p> + +<p>And Ranny looked young, ever so young still, though he was thirty-two. +The faint lines at the corner of his eyes and of his mouth accentuated +agreeably their upward tilt. He had gained distinction by the increasing +firmness of his face. Virile in its adolescence, it had kept its youth +in its maturity. Ranny's face expressed him. It was fine and clean; it +had not one mean or faltering line in it. And his figure had not, after +all, deteriorated. Flabbiness was as far from him as it had been in his +youth.</p> + +<p>With infinite precautions, Ranny opened a drawer where he found a small +japanned tin box, very new. This he unlocked softly, and from a little +canvas bag that lay in the compartment specially reserved for it he took +a sovereign, one of four, that represented rather more than a week's +proportion of his new salary.</p> + +<p>He had made up his mind that when the day came he would spend no less a +sum. So great a rise could not be celebrated on less. If a cashier of +Woolridge's could have been capable of saving, say, one and ninepence +out of that sovereign, the man who was engaged to Winny Dymond would +have died rather.</p> + +<p>Of course, it was a thundering lot to spend. But then Ranny desired, he +was determined to spend a thundering lot. It was extravagant, but he +wished to be extravagant. It was reckless, irresponsible, but reckless +and irresponsible was what he felt. He meant to go it. He meant to have +his fling just for once. And he meant that Winny, who had never had +hers, nor any share in anybody else's, should taste, just for once, the +rapture of a fling. She should have it for three solid hours of that +delicious night, in one mad, flaming, stupendous orgy at the Earl's +Court Exhibition.</p> + +<p>For it wasn't really his rise that called for it. That was only a means +to his divorce and marriage. It was his engagement that he proposed to +celebrate.</p> + +<p>The engagement, though he could hardly believe it, was a fact. True, it +could not be made public until a decent interval after the divorce; but +it had been acknowledged and settled between him and Winny as soon as +ever he knew that he had got his rise. They would never celebrate it at +all if they didn't celebrate it now before all the beastliness began.</p> + +<p>For he knew perfectly well that it would be beastly. Winny would feel it +even more than he did. She would feel it for him. Things that they had +both forgotten would be raked up again, all the misery and all the +shame. Now that it was imminent he dreaded the Divorce Court. His Uncle +Randall could not have shrunk more painfully from this public washing of +his dirty linen. He would come out of the Great Washhouse feeling +almost, but not quite as unclean as if his linen had been kept at home +and never washed at all.</p> + +<p>And the trail of all that nastiness would spread over the six months of +their engagement; it would poison everything.</p> + +<p>He didn't mean to think about it or let Winny think. They were going to +enjoy themselves to-night while they could, while they still felt +innocent and clean and jolly.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He stooped for a moment over the crib where his little son lay curled +and snuggling, his face hidden, his head, with its crop of dark hair, +showing like the fur of some soft burrowing animal. He freed the little +mouth muffled in bedclothes, and tucked the blankets closer. He picked +up Stanny's Teddy bear that had fallen lamentably to the floor, and laid +it where Stanny would find it beside him when he woke.</p> + +<p>Treading softly, he went into the next room where Dossie lay in her own +little bed beside his mother's, her little seven-year-old girl body +stretched out in all its dainty slenderness (so unlike Stanny's. He saw +with a pang of sudden passion the sweet difference). Her face, laid +sideways in her golden-brown hair, showed already a fine edge, nose, and +mouth and chin turned subtly, and carved out of their baby softness to +the likeness of his own. He stooped and kissed Dossie's hair, and took +without touching the sweetness of her mouth. Then he ran softly down the +stairs.</p> + +<p>His mother heard him running and came to the door of the room. "You're +not going out like that," she said, "without an overcoat? It'll rain +before you're back, I know, and that new suit'll be ruined."</p> + +<p>"Rot! It <i>can't</i> rain on a night like this. Good night, Mother. Don't go +sittin' up. I don't know when I'll be in."</p> + +<p>"I'll hot some cocoa for you last thing and leave it on the trivet."</p> + +<p>"Sha'n't want cocoa."</p> + +<p>"What shall you want then?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord!" His nerves were all on edge. He couldn't bear it. +"<i>Nothing!</i>" he cried, as he rushed out.</p> + +<p>At the gate it struck him that he had been a brute to her. He turned. He +rushed back to her. He put his arm round her and kissed her.</p> + +<p>"You're all right now, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Ran, dear, I'm all right." She smiled. "Run away and don't keep +Winny waiting."</p> + +<p>(Heaven only knew what it cost her.)</p> + +<p>And Ranny looked back, laughing, through the doorway. "You know, Mother, +it reelly <i>is</i> all right. And you're an angel."</p> + +<p>And she said, "There! Go along with you."</p> + +<p>He went.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Ranny, how nice you look!"</p> + +<p>Winny herself was looking nice and knew it. She wore a green cotton +gown trimmed with white pipings, and a thing she called a Peggy hat that +was half a bell and half a bonnet and had diminutive roses sewn on it +here and there like buttons.</p> + +<p>They were going down the long entrance to the Exhibition, between +painted walls, in brilliant illumination, and in publicity that might +have been trying if they had had eyes for anything except each other.</p> + +<p>Winny's eyes were brimming with joy and tenderness as she looked at him. +If she loved the new gray suit, the brown boots, and the Trilby hat, she +did not love them more than the shabby blue serge with the place she +knew in the lining where she had mended it. All the same, it was +impossible to see him in such things without that little breathless +thrill of wonder and excitement. There wasn't one man at Earl's Court +that night who could compare with Ranny. He made them all look weedy, +flabby; pitiful, uninteresting things.</p> + +<p>And then, all of a sudden (they were at the paygate), as she looked, +astonishment, grief, and anxiety appeared on Winny's face. Something had +dismayed her tenderness, dashed her joy. She had seen Ranny take out of +his waistcoat pocket gold—not ten shillings, but a whole sovereign. And +a dreadful fear awoke in her.</p> + +<p>He was going to spend it all.</p> + +<p>She knew it, something told her; she could see by the way he smacked it +down, careless like. And Winny couldn't bear it; she couldn't bear to +think that Ranny, who had pinched and scraped and done without things +for years, should go and throw away all that on her!</p> + +<p>But anybody could see that he was going to do it, by the strange +excitement and abstraction in his eyes, by the way he gathered up the +change and took Winny by the arm and walked off with her. His eyes and +the close crook of his arm drawing her along with him in his course, the +slight leaning of his body toward hers as they went, his stride and the +set of his head proclaimed that he had got her, that she couldn't +escape, that he meant to go it, that he had the right to spend on her +more than he could possibly afford.</p> + +<p>She could see what he was thinking. In one tremendous burst he was going +to make up to her now for all that she had missed. What was more, he was +going to rub it into her that he had the right to. She couldn't realize +their happiness as he did. They had been cheated out of it so long that +she couldn't believe in it, couldn't believe that it was actually in +their grasp, the shining, palpitating joy that for five years had been +dangled before them only to be jerked out of their hands. He wanted to +make her feel it; to make her taste and touch and handle the thing that +seemed impossible and yet was certain.</p> + +<p>Ranny was intoxicated, he was reckless with certainty.</p> + +<p>And Winny couldn't bear it. All the way up between the painted walls she +was trying to think what she could do to prevent his spending a whole +sovereign. She knew that it was no use fighting Ranny. The more she hung +on to him to stop him, the more Ranny would struggle and break loose. +Persuasion was no good. The more she reasoned, the more determined he +would be to spend that sovereign, and the more ways he would find to +spend it.</p> + +<p>It was to be one of those mortal combats between man's will and woman's +wit. Winny meant to circumvent Ranny and to defeat him by guile.</p> + +<p>And at first it looked as if it could be done easily. For at first the +Exhibition seemed to be on Winny's side.</p> + +<p>They had emerged from between the painted walls into Shakespeare's +England, into the narrow, crooked streets under the queer old +overhanging houses with the swinging signs—hundreds of years old Ranny +said they were. And in the streets there were strange crowds, young men +and young women who went shouting and singing and were marvelously and +fantastically dressed. And they had glimpses through lattice windows of +marvelous and fantastic merchandise. Marvelous and fantastic it seemed +to Winny at first sight. But when she saw that it was just what they +were selling in the shops to-day the delicious confusion in her mind +heightened the effect of fantasy and of enchantment.</p> + +<p>"I didn't think it would be like this," she said.</p> + +<p>But why it was like that and why it was called Shakespeare's England, +what on earth Shakespeare had to do with it, Winny couldn't think.</p> + +<p>"Shakespeare? Why, he wrote books, didn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Plays, Winky, plays."</p> + +<p>"Plays then."</p> + +<p>And when Ranny told her that it meant that England was like this in +Shakespeare's time, hundreds of years ago, and reminded her that they +had a scene from one of his plays on at the Coliseum the other day, +Winny thought that only made it more marvelous and more like a dream +than ever.</p> + +<p>And she thought Ranny was more marvelous than ever, with the things he +knew.</p> + +<p>And then, having lured him into this tangled side issue, she began, as +cool and offhand as you please. He gave her the opening when he asked +her what she'd like to do next.</p> + +<p>"This is good enough for me," she said.</p> + +<p>For the most marvelous thing about Shakespeare's England was that you +could walk about in it free of charge.</p> + +<p>He looked at her almost as if he knew what she was up to.</p> + +<p>"But you've seen it, Winky. You've seen all there is of it. You don't +want to stay here all night, do you?"</p> + +<p>He had her there, with his reminder of the hours they had to put in.</p> + +<p>"Well"—she was lingering in the most natural manner, as if fascinated +by the exterior of the Globe Theater. For she wished to spin out the +time.</p> + +<p>She saw Ranny's hand sliding toward his pocket.</p> + +<p>"Would you like to go inside it?" he said.</p> + +<p>"No, Ranny, dear, I wouldn't. At least, I'd rather not if you've no +objection."</p> + +<p>She spoke firmly, seriously, as if she knew something against the Globe +Theater, as if the Globe Theater were disreputable or improper.</p> + +<p>Then (it was wonderful how she contrived the little air of excited +inspiration), "Tell you what," she said, "let's go and sit down +somewhere and listen to the band. There's nothing I love so much as +listening to a band."</p> + +<p>She knew that they charged nothing for listening to the band.</p> + +<p>It was a prompting from the Exhibition itself, proving, here again, that +it was on her side, an entirely friendly and benignant power.</p> + +<p>"All right," said Ranny. "<i>That's</i> in the Western Garden."</p> + +<p>He took her by the arm and drew her, not to the Western Garden, but to a +street (he seemed to know it by instinct) through which Shakespeare's +England, iniquitously, treacherously, led them to their doom, the Water +Chute.</p> + +<p>For there the Exhibition threw off her mask and revealed herself as the +dangerous Enchantress that she was. Hung with millions of electric +bulbs, crowned and diademed, and laced with jewels of white flame, she +signaled to them out of the mystery and immensity of the night. For a +moment they were dumb, they stood still, as if they paused on the brink +and struggled, protesting against this ravishing of their souls by the +Exhibition. Straight in front of them, monstrous yet fragile, its +substance withdrawn into the darkness, its form outlined delicately in +beads of light, in brilliants, in crystals strung on invisible threads, +the Water Chute reared itself like a stairway to the sky, arch above +arch, peak above peak, diadem above diadem, tilted at a frightful pitch. +Chains of light, slung like garlands from tall standards, ringed the +long lake that stretched from their feet to the bottom of the stair. The +water, dark as the sky, showed mystic and enchanted, bordered with +trembling reeds of light.</p> + +<p>From somewhere up in the sky, under the topmost diamonded arch, there +came a rumbling and a rushing—</p> + +<p>It thrilled them, agitated them.</p> + +<p>And their youth rose up in them. They looked at each other, and their +eyes, the eyes of their youth, shone with the same excitement and the +same desire.</p> + +<p>She knew that he had deceived her, that this was not the Western Garden, +where the band played; she was aware that the Exhibition was not to be +trusted either; that it was in league with him against her; that if she +yielded to it they were lost. And yet she yielded. The deep and high +enchantment was upon her. The Exhibition had her by the hair. She was +borne on, breathless, unprotesting, to the white palings where the +paygate was.</p> + +<p>It was worth it. She had to own it. Never before had either of them +tasted such ecstasy; from the precipitous climb in the truck that hauled +them, up and up, to the head of the high diamonded stair; the brief, +exciting passage along the gangway to the boat that waited for them, its +prow positively overhanging the topmost edge, the sliding lip of danger, +where the rails plunged shining to the blackness below; the race they +had for the front seat where, Ranny said, they would get the best of it; +and then—the downrush!</p> + +<p>It was as if they had been shot, exulting, from the sky to the water, +sitting close, sitting tight, linked together, each with an arm round +the other's waist, and the hand that was free grasping the rail, their +bodies bowed to the hurricane of their speed, with the rapture in their +throats mounting and mounting, a towering, toppling climax of delight +and fear, as the boat shot from the rails into the water and rose like +a winged thing and leaped, urging to the heights that had sent it forth, +and dropped, perilously again, with a shudder and a smack, once, twice; +so tremendous was the impetus.</p> + +<p>They heard young girls behind them scream for joy; but they were dumb, +they were motionless; they drank rapture through set teeth; it went +throbbing through them and thrilling, prolonging its brief life in +exquisite reverberations.</p> + +<p>And as if that wasn't enough, they went and did it all over again.</p> + +<p>And Winny struggled; she tried to hold him back; she put forth all her +innocent guile; she pitted her fragile charm against the stupendous +magic of the Exhibition. She loitered, spellbound to all appearance, in +the bazaar, before the streaming, shining booths that poured out their +strange merchandise, Italian, French, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese.</p> + +<p>"I don't want to do anything but walk about and look at things," she +said. "Why, we might have traveled for years and not seen as much."</p> + +<p>Winny seemed to be scoring points in the bazaar.</p> + +<p>Then, before she knew where she was, Ranny, with all the power of the +Exhibition at his back, had bought her a present, a little heart-shaped +brooch made of Florentine turquoises.</p> + +<p>That came of looking at things. She might have known it would.</p> + +<p>"I'm tired of these shops," said Winny. "We shall be too late to hear +anything of the band."</p> + +<p>Thus she drew him to the Western Garden, so that for the moment she +seemed to have it all in her own hands. For here there were more +lights, and even more extravagant and fantastic display of electric +jewelry, more garlands of diamond and crystal, illuminating, decorating +everything. And there were rubies hanging in strange trees, and at their +feet the glamour of light dissolved, half of it perished, gone from the +world, drunk up by the earth, half living on where gray walks wound like +paths in a dream, between rings of spectral green, islands of dimmed, +mysterious red, so transformed, so unclothed and clothed again by +glamour, as to be hardly discernible as beds of geraniums in grass.</p> + +<p>Here they wandered for what seemed an eternity of bliss.</p> + +<p>"What more do you want?" said Winny. "Isn't this beautiful enough for +anybody?" Neither of them had any idea that the beauty and the glamour +of it was in their own souls as they drank each other's mystery.</p> + +<p>"Let's just sit and listen to the band," she said. And they sat and +listened to it for another eternity, till Ranny became restless. For +thirteen and eleven pence halfpenny was burning in his pocket.</p> + +<p>The thought of it made him take her to a restaurant where they sat for +quite a long time and drank coffee and ate ices. Winny submitted to the +ices. They were delicious, and she enjoyed them without a shadow of +misgiving. She was, in fact, triumphant, for she looked on ices as the +close and crown of everything, and she calculated that out of that +sovereign there would be exactly eleven and twopence halfpenny left.</p> + +<p>"Well—it's been lovely. And now we must go home," she said.</p> + +<p>"Go home? Not much. Why, we've only just begun." He looked at her. +"D'you suppose I don't know what <i>you're</i> up to? You're jolly clever, +but you can't take <i>me</i> in, Winky. Not for a single minute."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, Ranny, let me pay for <i>something</i>." And she took out her +little purse.</p> + +<p>After that it was sheer headlong, shameful defeat for Winky. He had +found her out, he had seen through her man[oe]uvers, and he and the +Exhibition, the destructive and terrible Enchantress, had been laughing +at her all the time. A delirious devil had entered into Ranny with the +coffee and the ices, urging him to spend. And Winny ceased to struggle. +He knew at what point she would yield, he knew what temptations would be +irresistible. He got round her with the Alpine Ride; the Joy Wheel +fairly undermined her moral being; and on the Crazy Bridge Ranny's +delirious devil seized her and carried her away, reckless, into the +Dragon's Gorge.</p> + +<p>Emerging as it were from the very jaws of the Dragon, they careered arm +in arm through the rest of the Exhibition, two rushing portents of youth +and extravagance and laughter; till, as if the Enchantress had twisted +her wand and whisked them there, they found themselves inside the +palisades of the Igorrote Village.</p> + +<p>A swarm of half-naked savages leaped at them.</p> + +<p>It was Ranny who recovered first.</p> + +<p>"It's all right, Winky. They're the Philippine Islanders."</p> + +<p>"Well, I never—"</p> + +<p>"Nor I. Talk of travelin'—"</p> + +<p>But it was all very well to talk. The sight had sobered them. Gravely +and silently they went through that village. At last, Ranny paused +outside a hut no bigger than a dog-kennel. It bore the label: "Beda And +His Fiancée Kodpat Undergoing Trial Marriage."</p> + +<p>Ranny laughed. "By Jove, that tickles <i>me</i>!" he said.</p> + +<p>"What does it mean, Ranny?"</p> + +<p>"Why, I suppose it means they try it first and if they don't like it +they can chuck it."</p> + +<p>"What an idea!"</p> + +<p>"It's a rippin' good idea, Winky. Shows what a thunderin' lot of sense +these simple savages have got. You bet they're not quite so simple as +they seem. They know a thing or two. Why, they must be hundreds of years +ahead of us in civilization, to have thought it all out like that. Think +of it, that fellow Beda's had a better chance than me."</p> + +<p>They turned away from Beda and Kodpat, and presently Winny stood +entranced before the little house that contained Baby Francis (born in +the Exhibition) and his mother. She looked so long at Baby Francis that +Ranny couldn't bear it.</p> + +<p>"Oh, look at him, Ranny! Isn't he a little lamb?" Winny's eyes were +tender, and her face quivered with a little dreamy smile.</p> + +<p>"D'you want to take him home and play with him? Shall I ask if he's for +sale?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny!"</p> + +<p>She turned away. And he drew her arm in his. "You won't be happy till +you've got him, Winky."</p> + +<p>She said nothing to that; only her mouth, without her knowing it, kept +for him its little dreamy smile.</p> + +<p>"I believe," said Ranny, "you've never reelly got over Stanley's goin' +into knickers."</p> + +<p>"I <i>love</i> his knickers," she protested.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but you'd love <i>him</i> better if he was that size, wouldn't you?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't love him better than I do, Ranny. You know I couldn't. And I +wouldn't like him to be any different to what he is."</p> + +<p>She was very serious, very earnest, almost as if she thought he'd really +meant it.</p> + +<p>Silent in the grip of an emotion too thick and close for utterance, they +wandered back again to the enchanted garden where the band had played +for them. The garden was silent, too. The bandstand was empty, black, +unearthly as if haunted by some thin ghost of passionate sound; and +empty, row after row of seats in the great parterre, except for a few +couples who sat leaning to each other, hand in hand, finding a happy +solitude in that twilight desolation.</p> + +<p>Like worshipers strayed into some church, they joined this enraptured, +oblivious company of devotees, choosing seats as far as possible from +any other pair.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Hadn't we better be going?"</p> + +<p>They had sat there in silence, holding each other's hands. The +excitement, the delirious devil in them, had spent itself, and under it +they felt the heaving, dragging groundswell of their passion.</p> + +<p>To Winny it had never come before like this. Up till now it had been +enough simply to be with Ranny. Merely to look at him gave her profound +and poignant pleasure. To touch him in those rare accidental contacts +the adventure brought them, to feel the firm muscles of his arm under +his coat sleeve, stopped her breath with a kind of awe and wonder, as if +in Ranny's body thus discerned she came unaware upon some transcendent +mystery.</p> + +<p>Yet Winny knew now why, in what way, and with what terrible strength she +loved him and he her. She loved him, primarily and supremely, for +himself, for the simple fact that he was Ranny. She loved him also for +his body, for his slenderness, and for his strong-clipping limbs, and +she loved him for his face because it could not by any possibility be +anybody else's.</p> + +<p>And in her joy and tenderness, in their engagement and in the whole +adventure, this going out with him and all the rare, shy contacts it +occasioned, instalments of delight, windfalls of bliss that Heaven sent +her to be going on with, in the very secrecy and mystery of it all, +Winny felt that disturbing yet delicious sense of something iniquitous, +something perilous, something, at any rate, unlawful. It was the same +sense that she had known and enjoyed in the days when she went into the +scullery at Granville to make beefsteak pies for Ranny; the same sense, +but far more exquisite, far more exciting.</p> + +<p>She did not connect it in any way with Violet. Violet had ceased to +exist for them. Violet had of her own act annihilated herself. But Winny +knew that until Ranny was divorced from his wife the law continued to +regard him as married to her. So that, while firm land held and would +always hold her, she was aware that he and she were walking on the +brink, and that by the rule of the road Ranny went, so to speak, upon +the outer edge where it was far more dangerous. She knew that he had +more than once looked over; and she knew (though nothing would induce +<i>her</i> to look) that the gulf was there, not far from her adventurous +feet.</p> + +<p>Still, it was wonderful how all these years they had kept their heads.</p> + +<p>So she said: "Hadn't we better be going? I think we ought to."</p> + +<p>She had unlaced her hand from his, and had turned in her seat to face +him with her decision.</p> + +<p>"Not yet."</p> + +<p>"Well—soon. It's getting rather chilly, don't you think?"</p> + +<p>At that he jumped up. "Are you cold, Winky?"</p> + +<p>"My feet are, sitting."</p> + +<p>"I forgot your little feet."</p> + +<p>He raised her.</p> + +<p>"It isn't late," he said. "We can walk about a bit."</p> + +<p>They walked about, for he was very restless again.</p> + +<p>"Wherever does that music come from?" Winny said.</p> + +<p>Sounds came to them of violins and 'cellos, of trombones and clarinets, +playing a gay measure, a dance, insistent, luring, irresistible.</p> + +<p>They followed it.</p> + +<p>In a vast room fronted by a latticed screen, all green and white, roofed +by a green and white awning, and having a pattern of latticework, green +and white, upon its inner walls, on a vast polished floor was a crowd of +couples dancing to the music they had heard. It came loud through the +open lattices, the insistent, luring, irresistible measure, violent now +in solicitation, in appeal; and over it and under went the trailing, +shuffling slur of the feet of the dancers and the delicate swish of +women's gowns as they whirled.</p> + +<p>Standing close outside, they could see into the hall through the +lattices of the screen. They saw forty or fifty couples whirling slowly +round and round to the irresistible measure; some were stiff and +awkward, palpably shy; some with invincible propriety whirled upright +and rigid, like toys wound up to whirl; some were abandoned to the +measure with madness, with passion, with a corybantic joy. Here and +there a girl leaned as if swooning in her lover's arms; her head hung +back; her lower lip drooped; her face showed the looseness and blankness +of a sensuous stupor. Other faces, staring, upraised, wore a look of +exaltation and of ecstasy. All were superbly unaware.</p> + +<p>Winny's face pressed closer and closer to the lattice. One of her little +feet went tap-tapping on the gravel, beating the measure of the waltz. +For at the sound of the music, at the sight of the locked and whirling +couples, her memory revived; she heard again the beating of the measure +old as time; she felt in her limbs the start and strain of the wild +energy; and instinct, savage and shy, moved in the rhythm of her blood, +and desire for the joy of the swift running, of the lacing arms and +flying feet.</p> + +<p>In her body she was standing outside the Dancing Saloon at the Earl's +Court Exhibition, with her face pressed to the lattice; she was +twenty-seven last birthday in her body; but in her soul she was +seventeen, and she stood on the floor of the Polytechnic Gymnasium, +beating time to the thud of the barbell. She was Winny of the short +tunic and the knickers, and the long black stockings, and had her hair +(tied by a great bow of ribbon) in a door-knocker plat.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny—" She looked at him with her shining eyes, half tender and +half wild. "If we only <i>could</i>—"</p> + +<p>Something gave way in him and dissolved, and he was weak as water when +he looked at her.</p> + +<p>The violins gave forth a penetrating, excruciating cry. And he felt in +him the tumult evoked, long ago, one Sunday evening by the music in the +Mission Church of St. Matthias's.</p> + +<p>Only he knew now what it meant.</p> + +<p>His voice went thick in his throat.</p> + +<p>"I mustn't, Winky. I daren't. Some day—you and I—"</p> + +<p>It was the supreme temptation of the great Enchantress; and they fled +from it. The violins shrieked out and cried their yearning as they went.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>A scud of rain lashed the carriage windows as their train shot out of +the Underground at Walham Green. When they stepped out onto the platform +at Southfields, the big drops leaped up at them.</p> + +<p>"Well, I never," said Winny. "Who'd have thought it would have done +that?"</p> + +<p>They scuttled into shelter.</p> + +<p>"It'll be a score for Mother. She said it would come, and I said it +wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"It'll ruin your new suit."</p> + +<p>"And there won't be much left of your dress."</p> + +<p>"My dress'll iron out again. It's me poor hat."</p> + +<p>(The Peggy hat was not made for rain.)</p> + +<p>"I'll take it off and pin it up in me skirt. It's you I'm thinking of."</p> + +<p>She felt his coat to see what resistance it would offer to the rain. It +offered none. It made no pretense about it.</p> + +<p>"It'll be soaked, and it 'll never be the same again," she wailed.</p> + +<p>But Ranny remained godlike in his calm. There was still one and sixpence +of his sovereign left.</p> + +<p>"You can keep your hat on. We're going to take a cab."</p> + +<p>If he had said he was going to take an aeroplane she couldn't have been +more amazed. It was only seven minutes' walk to Acacia Avenue. And it +was not a common cab, it was Parker's fly that he was taking.</p> + +<p>She surrendered because of the new suit.</p> + +<p>"I can count the times I've ridden in a cab," she said. "This is the +third. First time it was going to Father's funeral. Second time it was +poor Mother's funeral. I've never been happy in a cab till now."</p> + +<p>"Poor little girl! Next time it'll be coming from our wedding. Will you +be happy then?"</p> + +<p>"I'm so happy now, Ranny, that I can't believe it."</p> + +<p>"It'll only be six months, or seven at the outside."</p> + +<p>"Are you sure?"</p> + +<p>"Certain."</p> + +<p>The worst of the cab was that it cut short their moments.</p> + +<p>It had been standing a whole minute before Johnson's side door. He sent +it away.</p> + +<p>For fifteen seconds, measured by hammer strokes of their hearts, they +were alone. On the streaming doorstep, under the dripping eaves, he held +her. He kissed her sweet face all wet with rain.</p> + +<p>"Little Winky—little darling Winky." He pushed back her Peggy hat, and +his voice lost itself in her hair.</p> + +<p>"They're coming," she whispered.</p> + +<p>There was a sound of footsteps and of a bolt drawn back. Somebody behind +the door opened it just wide enough to let Winny through, then shut it +on him.</p> + +<p>It was intolerable, unthinkable, that she should disappear like that. +Through a foot of space, in a hair's breadth of time, she had slipped +from him.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2> + + +<p>Nobody had seen them, for at this hour Acacia Avenue was deserted. The +long monotonous pattern of it stretched before him, splendidly blurred, +rich with lamplight and rain, bordered with streaming stars, striped +with watered light and darkness, glowing, from lamp to lamp, with dim +reds and purples that the daylight never sees, and with the strange +gas-lit green of its tree tufts shivering under the rain.</p> + +<p>Otherwise the Avenue was depressing in its desolation. The more so +because it was not quite deserted. At the far end of it the lamplight +showed a woman's figure, indistinct and diminished. This figure, visibly +unsheltered, moved obliquely as if it were driven by the slanting rain +and shrank from its whipping.</p> + +<p>He could not tell whether it were approaching or going from him. It +seemed somehow to recede, to have got almost to the end of the road, +past all the turnings; in which case, he reflected, the poor thing could +not be far from her own door.</p> + +<p>There was no mistaking his. Among all those monotonous diminutive houses +it was distinct because of its lamp-post and its luxuriantly tufted +tree. The gas was still turned on in the passage, so that above the door +the white letters of its name, Granville, could be seen. There was no +other light in the windows. Entering, he closed the door noiselessly, +locked it, slipped the chain, and turned the gas out in the passage. The +lamplight from outside came in a turbid dusk through the thick glass of +the front door. A small bead of gas made twilight in the sitting-room at +the back.</p> + +<p>The house was very still.</p> + +<p>His mother had evidently gone to bed; but she had left a fire burning in +the sitting-room, and she had set a kettle all ready for boiling on the +gas ring, and on the table a cup and saucer, a tin of cocoa, and a plate +of bread and cheese.</p> + +<p>He turned up the gas, put the tin of cocoa back into its cupboard, and +carried the bread and cheese to the larder in the scullery. He tried the +back door to make sure that it was locked, and paused for a moment on +the mat. He was thinking whether he had better not undress in there by +the fire and spread his damp things round the hearth to dry.</p> + +<p>And as he stood there at the end of the passage he was aware of +something odd about the window of the front door. Properly speaking, +when the passage was dark, the window should have shown clear against +the light of the lamp outside, with its broad framework marking upon +this transparency the four arms of a cross. Now it showed a darkness, a +queer shadowy patch on the pane under the left arm of the cross.</p> + +<p>The patch moved sideways to and fro along the lower panes; then suddenly +it rose, it shot up and broadened out, darkening half the window, its +form indiscernible under the covering cross.</p> + +<p>And as it stood still there came a light tapping on the pane. He thought +that it was Winny, that she had run after him with some message, or +that perhaps somebody else had run to tell him that something was +wrong.</p> + +<p>He went to the door; and as he went the tapping began again, louder, +faster, a nervous, desperate appeal.</p> + +<p>He opened the door, and the lamplight showed them to each other.</p> + +<p>"Good God!" He muttered it. "What are you doing here?"</p> + +<p>It was his instinct, not his eyes that knew her.</p> + +<p>She had not come forward as the door opened; she had swerved and stepped +back rather, gripping her skirts tighter round her as she cowered. +Sleeked by the rain, supple, sinuous, and shivering, she cowered like a +beaten bitch.</p> + +<p>Yet she faced him. Shrinking from him, cowering like a bitch, backing to +the edge of the porch where the rain beat her, she faced him for a +moment.</p> + +<p>Then she crept to him cowering; and as she cowered, her hands, as if in +helplessness and fear, let fall the skirts they had gathered from the +rain. Her eyes, as she came, gazed strangely at him; eyes that cowered, +bitchlike, imploring, agonized, desirous.</p> + +<p>She crept to the very threshold.</p> + +<p>"Let me in," she said. "You will, won't you?"</p> + +<p>"I can't," he whispered. "You know that as well as I do."</p> + +<p>Her eyes looked up sideways from their cowering. They were surprised, +bewildered, incredulous.</p> + +<p>"But I'm soaked through. I'm wet to me skin."</p> + +<p>She was on the threshold. She had her hand to the door.</p> + +<p>He could see her leaning forward a little, ready to fling her body upon +the door if he tried, brutally, to shut it in her face. It was as if +she actually thought that he would try.</p> + +<p>He knew then that he was not going to shut the door.</p> + +<p>"Come in out of the rain. And for God's sake don't make a noise."</p> + +<p>"I'm not making a noise. I didn't even ring the bell."</p> + +<p>He drew back before her as she came in, creeping softly in a pitiful +submission. Though the passage was lighted from the street through the +wide-open door, she went as if feeling her way along it, with a hand on +the wall.</p> + +<p>Ransome turned. He had no desire to look at her.</p> + +<p>He struck a match and lit the gas, raised it to the full flame, and +then, though he had no desire to look at her, he looked. He stared +rather.</p> + +<p>Outside in the half darkness he had known her, as if she stirred in him +some sense, subtler or grosser than mere sight. Now, in the full light +of the hanging lamp, he did not know her. He might have passed her in +the street a score of times without recognizing this woman who had been +his wife; though he would have stared at her, as indeed he would have +been bound to stare. It was not only that her body was different, that +her figure was taller, slenderer, and more sinuous than he had ever seen +it, or that her face was different, fined down to the last expression of +its beauty, changed, physically, with a difference that seemed to him +absolute and supreme. It was that this strange dissimilarity, if he +could have analyzed it, would have struck him as amounting to a +difference of soul. Or rather, it was as if Violet's face had never +given up her soul's secret until now; never until now had it so much as +hinted that Violet had any soul at all. The comparative fineness and +sharpness of outline might have reminded him of his wife as she had +looked when she came out of her torture after the birth of her first +child, but that no implacable resentment and no revolt was there. It was +plainly to be seen (nor did Ransome altogether miss it) that here were a +body and a soul that had suffered to extremity, and were now utterly +beaten, utterly submissive.</p> + +<p>This suggestion of frightful things endured was more lamentable by +contrast with the shining sleekness, the drenched splendor of her +attire. Ransome saw that her clothes helped to build up the impression +of her strangeness. Violet was dressed as his wife, at the most frenzied +height of her extravagance, had never dressed, as even Mercier's wife +could not have dressed, nor yet his mistress. The black satin coat and +gown that clung to her body like a sheath showed flawless, though they +streamed with rain; the lace at her throat, the black velvet hat with +the raking plume that had once been yellow, the design and quality of +the flat bag slung on her arm were details that belonged (and Ransome +knew it) to a world that was not his nor Mercier's either. And as he +took them in he conceived from them an abominable suspicion.</p> + +<p>His eyes must have conveyed his repulsion, for she spoke as if answering +them.</p> + +<p>"You mustn't mind my clothes. They're done for."</p> + +<p>She looked down, self-pitying, at her poor slippered feet standing in a +pool of rain.</p> + +<p>"I'm making such a mess of your nice hall."</p> + +<p>A little laugh shook in her throat and turned into a fit of coughing. He +saw how instantly one hand went to her mouth and pressed there while the +other struggled blindly, frantically, with the opening of her bag.</p> + +<p>"What is it?"</p> + +<p>"My hanky—" She coughed the words out. It, the childish word, moved him +to a momentary compassion.</p> + +<p>"Here you are."</p> + +<p>She stepped back from him as she stretched out her arm; then she turned +and leaned against the wall, hiding her face and muffling her cough in +Ransome's pocket handkerchief.</p> + +<p>Each gesture, each surreptitious and yet frantic effort at suppression, +showed her a creature that some brute had beaten, had terrified and +cowed. The old Violet would have come swinging up the path; she would +have pushed past him into the warm and lighted room; this one had come +creeping to his door. She took no step to which he did not himself +invite her.</p> + +<p>"Come in here a minute," he said.</p> + +<p>He put his hand upon her arm to guide her. He led her into the warm room +and drew up a chair for her before the fire.</p> + +<p>"Sit down and get warm."</p> + +<p>She shook her head; and by that sign he conceived the hope that she +would soon be gone. She looked after him as he went to the door of the +room to close it. When she heard the click of the latch her cough burst +out violently and ceased.</p> + +<p>She crouched down by the hearth, holding out her hands to the blaze. He +stood against the chimney-piece, looking down at her, silent, not +knowing what he might be required to say.</p> + +<p>She peeled off the wet gloves that were plastered to her skin; she drew +out the long pins from her hat, took it off, and gazed ruefully at the +lean plume lashed to its raking stem. With the coquetry of pathos, she +held it out to him.</p> + +<p>"Look at me poor feather, Ranny," she said.</p> + +<p>He shuddered as she spoke his name.</p> + +<p>"You'd better take your shoes off, and that coat," he said.</p> + +<p>She took them off. He set the shoes in the fender. He hung the coat over +the back of the chair to dry. As she stood upright the damp streamed +from her skirts and drifted toward the fire.</p> + +<p>"How about that skirt?"</p> + +<p>"I could slip it off, and me stockings, too, if you didn't mind."</p> + +<p>"All right," he muttered, and turned from her. He could hear the +delicate silken swish of her draperies as they slid from her to the +floor.</p> + +<p>She was slenderer than ever in the short satin petticoat that was her +inner sheath. Her naked feet, spread to the floor, showed white but +unshapely. She stood there like some beautiful flower rising superbly +from two ugly, livid, and distorted roots.</p> + +<p>But neither her beauty nor her ugliness could touch him now.</p> + +<p>"Look here," he said, "I'll get you some dry things."</p> + +<p>His mind was dulled by the shock of seeing her, so that it was unable to +attach any real importance or significance to her return. He knew her to +be both callous and capricious; therefore, he told himself that there +was no need to take her seriously now. The thing was to get rid of her +as soon as possible. He smothered the instinct that had warned him of +his danger, and persuaded himself that dry things would meet the +triviality of her case.</p> + +<p>He went upstairs very softly to his room. In a jar on the chimney-piece +he found a small key. Still going softly, he let himself into the little +unfurnished room over the porch where boxes were stored. Among them was +the trunk which contained Violet's long-abandoned clothes. He unlocked +it, rummaged, deliberated, selected finally a serge skirt, draggled but +warm; a pair of woolen stockings, and shoes, stout for all their +shabbiness.</p> + +<p>And as he knelt over the trunk his mind cleared suddenly, and he knew +what he was going to do. He was going to fetch a cab, if he could get +one, and take her away in it. If she was staying in London he would take +her straight back to whatever place she had come from. If she came from +a distance he would see her started on her journey home. He was +prepared, if necessary, to hang about for hours in any station, waiting +for any train that would remove her. If the worst came to the worst he +would take a room for her in some hotel and leave her there. But he +would not have her sitting with him till past midnight in his house. It +was too risky. He knew what he was about. He knew that there was danger +in any course that could give rise to the suspicion of cohabitation. He +knew, not only that cohabitation in itself was fatal, but that the +injured husband who invoked the law must refrain from the very +appearance of that evil.</p> + +<p>Of course, he knew what Violet had come for. She was beginning to get +uneasy about her divorce. And, personally, he couldn't see where the +risk came in unless the suit was defended. And it wasn't going to be +defended. It couldn't be. The suspicion of collusion would in his case +be a far more dangerous thing. It was what he had been specially warned +against.</p> + +<p>These two ideas, collusion and cohabitation, struggled for supremacy in +Ranny's brain. They seemed to him mutually exclusive; and all it came to +was that, with his suit so imminent, he couldn't be too careful. He must +not, even for the sake of decency, show Violet any consideration that +would be prejudicial to his case.</p> + +<p>Whereupon it struck him that the most perilous, most embarrassing detail +of the situation was the disgusting accident of the weather. In common +decency he couldn't have turned her out of doors in that rain.</p> + +<p>And under all the confused working of his intelligence his instinct told +him that what happened was not an accident at all. His inmost prescience +hinted at foredoomed, irremediable suffering; profound, irreparable +disaster.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>But with his mind set upon its purpose he gathered up the shabby skirt, +the stockings, and the shoes, he took his own thick overcoat from its +peg in the passage; he warmed them well before the sitting-room fire.</p> + +<p>Violet watched him with an air of detachment, of innocent +incomprehension, as if these preparations in no way concerned herself. +She was sitting in the chair now, with her bare feet in the fender.</p> + +<p>He then put the kettle on the fire, and her eyes kindled and looked up +at him.</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to make you a cup of hot tea before you go."</p> + +<p>"I <i>can't</i> go," she whispered.</p> + +<p>He was firm.</p> + +<p>"I'm awfully sorry, Violet. But you've got to."</p> + +<p>"But, Ranny—you couldn't turn a cat out on a night like this."</p> + +<p>"Don't talk nonsense about turning out. You know you can't stay here. I +can't think what on earth possessed you to come. You haven't told me +yet."</p> + +<p>She did not tell him now. She did not look at him. She sat bowed +forward, her elbows on her knees, and her chin propped on her hands, +while she cried, quietly, with slow tears that rolled down her bare, +undefended face.</p> + +<p>He made the tea and poured it out for her, and she took the cup from him +and drank, without looking at him, without speaking. And still she cried +quietly. Now and then a soft sob came from her in the pauses of her +drinking.</p> + +<p>Ransome sat on the table and delivered himself of what he had to say.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what's upsetting you," he said. "And you don't seem +inclined to tell me. But if you're worrying about that divorce, you +needn't. You'll get it all right. The—the thing'll be sent you in a +week or a fortnight."</p> + +<p>"Ranny," she said, "are you really doin' it?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I'm doing it."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know."</p> + +<p>"Well—you might have known."</p> + +<p>He was deaf to the terror in her voice.</p> + +<p>"I'd have done it years ago if I'd had the money. It isn't my fault +we've had to wait for it. It was hard luck on both of us."</p> + +<p>He stopped to look at her, still, like some sick animal, meekly +drinking, and still crying.</p> + +<p>He waited till her cup was empty and took it from her.</p> + +<p>"More?"</p> + +<p>"No, thank you."</p> + +<p>He put down the cup, turned, and went toward the door. There was a +savage misery in his heart and in all his movements an awful gentleness.</p> + +<p>She started up.</p> + +<p>"Don't go, Ranny. Don't leave me."</p> + +<p>Her voice was dreadful to his instinct.</p> + +<p>"I must."</p> + +<p>"You're going to do something. What are you going to do?"</p> + +<p>"I'm going to leave you to change into those things. I'm going to look +for a cab, and I'm going to take you back to wherever you came from."</p> + +<p>"You don't know where I came from. You don't know why I've come."</p> + +<p>There was the throb of all disaster in her voice. His instinct heard it. +But his intelligence refused to hear. It went on reasoning with her who +was unreasonable.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," it said, "why you want to stick here. It won't do either +of us any good."</p> + +<p>"Has it began?" she said. "Can't anything stop it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. You can stop it if you stay here all night. If you want it to go +right you must keep away. It's madness your coming here at this time of +night. I can't think why you—I should have thought you'd have known—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ranny, don't be hard on me."</p> + +<p>"I'm not hard on you. You're hard on yourself. You want a divorce and I +want it. Don't you know we sha'n't get it—if—"</p> + +<p>"But I <i>don't</i> want it—I don't indeed."</p> + +<p>"What's that?"</p> + +<p>"I don't want it. I didn't know you were divorcing me. I never thought +you'd go and do it after all these years."</p> + +<p>"Rot! You knew I was going to do it the minute I had the money."</p> + +<p>"You don't understand. I've come to ask you if you'll forgive me—and +take me back."</p> + +<p>"I forgave you long ago. But I can't take you back. You know <i>that</i> well +enough."</p> + +<p>She made as if she had not heard him.</p> + +<p>"I'll be good, Ranny. I <i>want</i> to be good."</p> + +<p>He also made as if he had not heard.</p> + +<p>"Why do you want me to take you back?"</p> + +<p>"That's why. So as I can be good. Father's turned me out, Ranny."</p> + +<p>"Your father?"</p> + +<p>"I went to him first. I didn't think I'd any right to come to you—after +I'd served you like I did."</p> + +<p>"Oh, never mind how you served me. What's Mercier been doing?"</p> + +<p>"He's got married."</p> + +<p>"Just like him. I thought he was going to marry <i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>"He wouldn't wait for me. He couldn't. He thought you were never going +to get your divorce. He <i>had</i> to settle down so as to get on in his +business. He wanted a Frenchwoman who could help him, and he daren't so +much as look at me—after, for fear she'd divorce him."</p> + +<p>"I told you he was a swine."</p> + +<p>"He wasn't. It wasn't <i>his</i> fault. He'd have married me two years ago if +you could have divorced me then."</p> + +<p>Her mouth was loose to the passage of her sigh, as if for a moment she +felt a sensuous pleasure in her own self-pity. She did not see how his +mouth tightened to the torture as she turned the screw.</p> + +<p>She went on. "Lenny was all right. He was good to me as long as I was +with him. <i>He</i> wouldn't have turned me into the street to starve."</p> + +<p>"Who <i>has</i> turned you into the street?" He could not disguise his +exasperation.</p> + +<p>Then he remembered. "Oh—your father."</p> + +<p>"I don't mean Father. I mean the other one."</p> + +<p>"There <i>was</i> another one? And you expect me to take you back?"</p> + +<p>"I'm only <i>asking</i> you," she said. "Don't be so hard on me. I <i>had</i> to +have some one when Lenny left me. He's been the only one since Lenny. +And he was all right until he tired of me."</p> + +<p>"Who's the brute you're talking about?"</p> + +<p>"He's a gentleman. That's all I can tell you."</p> + +<p>"Sounds pretty high class. And where does this gentleman hang out?"</p> + +<p>"I oughtn't to tell you. He's a painter, and he's awfully well known. +Well—it's somewhere in the West End, and we had a flat in Bloomsbury."</p> + +<p>She answered his wonder. "I met him in Paris. He took me away from +there, and I've been with him all the time. There wasn't anybody else. I +swear there wasn't—I swear."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you needn't."</p> + +<p>He got up and walked away.</p> + +<p>"Ranny—don't go for the cab until I've told you everything."</p> + +<p>"I'm <i>not</i> going. What more have you got to say?"</p> + +<p>"Don't look at me like that, as if you could murder me. You wouldn't if +you knew how he's served me. He beat me, Ranny. He beat me with his +hands and with his stick."</p> + +<p>She rolled up the sleeves of her thin blouse.</p> + +<p>"Look here—and here. That's what he was always doing to me. And I've +got worse—bigger ones—on me breast and on me body."</p> + +<p>"Good God—" The words came from him under his breath, and not even his +instinct knew what he would say next.</p> + +<p>He said—or rather some unknown power took hold of him and said it—"Why +didn't you come to me before?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated.</p> + +<p>"He never turned me out until last night."</p> + +<p>Her pause gave him time to measure the significance of what she said.</p> + +<p>"He didn't really tire of me till I got ill. I had pneumonia last +spring. I nearly died of it, and I've not been right since. That's how I +got me cough. He couldn't stand it."</p> + +<p>She paused.</p> + +<p>"I ought to have gone when he told me to. But I didn't. I was awfully +gone on him.</p> + +<p>"And—last night—we were to have gone to the theater together; but he'd +been drinkin' and I said I wouldn't go with him. Then he swore at me and +struck me, and said I might go by myself. And I went. And when I came +home he shut the door on me and turned me into the street with nothing +but the clothes on me back and what I had in me purse. And he said if I +came back he'd do for me."</p> + +<p>She got it out, the abominable history, in a succession of jerks, in a +voice dulled to utter apathy.</p> + +<p>And an intolerable pity held him silent before this beaten thing, +although with every word she dragged him nearer to the ultimate, +foreseen disaster.</p> + +<p>She went on.</p> + +<p>"I was scared to walk about the streets all night in these things. I +always was more afraid of that than anything. Though <i>he</i> never would +believe me when I said so. You don't know the names he called me. So I +took a taxi and I went to the first hotel I could think of—the +Thackeray. But I hadn't enough money with me, and they wouldn't take me +in. Then I went and sat in the waiting-room at Euston Station till they +closed. Then I sat outside on the platform and pretended to be waitin' +for a train. <i>He</i> wouldn't believe me if I told him I'd spent the night +in that station. But I did. And I got me death of cold. And in the +morning me cough started, and they wouldn't take me in any of the shops +because of it.</p> + +<p>"I tried all morning. Starker's first. Then in the afternoon I went to +Father, and he wouldn't have me. He won't believe I haven't been bad, +because of me things and me cough. I suppose he thinks I've got +consumption or something. He saw me coming in at the gate and he turned +me out straight. I didn't even get to the door."</p> + +<p>"He couldn't—"</p> + +<p>"He did—reelly, Ranny, he did. He said he'd washed his hands of me and +I could go back to you. He said—No, I can't tell you what he said."</p> + +<p>There was no need to tell. He knew.</p> + +<p>She looked at him now, straight, for the first time.</p> + +<p>"Ranny—he knows. He knows what we did."</p> + +<p>"Did you tell him?"</p> + +<p>"Not me! He'd guessed it. He'd guessed it all the time. Trust <i>him</i>. And +he taxed me with it. And I lied. I wasn't goin' to have him thinkin' +<i>that</i> of you."</p> + +<p>"Of <i>me</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—<i>you</i>." It was her first flash of feeling since she began her +tale. "It doesn't matter what he thinks of me. I told him so."</p> + +<p>"Well? Then?"</p> + +<p>"Then I started lookin' for work again. Couldn't get any. Then I came +here. If you turn me out there'll be nothing but the streets. If I was +to get work nobody'll keep me. I haven't properly got over that illness. +I'm so weak I couldn't stand to do anything long. There are times when I +can hardly hold myself together."</p> + +<p>And still there was no feeling in her voice, and barely the suggestion +of appeal; only the flat tones of the last extremity.</p> + +<p>"I've come here because I'm afraid of going to the bad. I don't want to +be bad—not reelly bad. But I'll be driven to it if you turn me out."</p> + +<p>It might have been a threat she held out to him but that her voice +lacked the passion of all menace. Passion could not have served her +better than her dull, unvibrating statement of the fact.</p> + +<p>"If you won't take me back—"</p> + +<p>Her spent voice dropped dead on the last word and her cough broke out +again.</p> + +<p>Ransome's next movement averted it. She revived suddenly.</p> + +<p>"Ranny—are you going for that cab?"</p> + +<p>He turned.</p> + +<p>"No," he said. "You know I'm not."</p> + +<p>"Then, what are you thinking of?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He was thinking: "I won't have Dossie and Stanny sleeping with her. And +I can't turn Mother out. So there's no room for her. Yes, there is. I +can get a camp bed and put it in the box room. I shall be all right in +there, and she can have my room to herself."</p> + +<p>No other arrangement seemed endurable or possible to him.</p> + +<p>And yet, while his flesh cried out in the agony of its repulsion, it +knew that in the years, the terrible, interminable years before them, it +could not be as he had planned. There would be a will stronger than his +own will that would not be frustrated.</p> + +<p>And he told himself that he could have borne it if it had not been for +that.</p> + +<p>There was a knocking at the door. The handle turned, and through the +slender opening which was all she dared make, Mrs. Ransome spoke to her +son.</p> + +<p>"Ranny, do you know you've left the front door open? Who's that +coughing?" she said.</p> + +<p>Neither of them answered.</p> + +<p>"Hasn't Winny gone yet? You shouldn't keep her out so late, dear. It's +time both of you were in bed."</p> + +<p>At that he rose and went to her.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Presently they could be heard moving Stanny's little cot into his +grandmother's room.</p> + +<p>That night Violet slept in Ransome's bed.</p> + +<p>Ransome lay on the sofa in the front sitting-room. He did not sleep, and +at dawn he got up and looked out. The rain had ceased. It was the +beginning of a perfect day.</p> + +<p>He remembered then that he had promised Winny to walk with her to +Wimbledon Common.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2> + + +<p>"She's ill. Fair gone to pieces. But the doctor says she'll soon be all +right again if we take care of her."</p> + +<p>It was early evening of Sunday. They were going slowly up the steep hill +that winds, westward and southward, toward the heights of Wimbledon.</p> + +<p>He had just told her that Violet had come back.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't in common decency turn her out."</p> + +<p>In a long silence he struggled to find words for what he had to say +next. She saw him struggling and came to his help.</p> + +<p>"Ranny, you're going to take her back," she said.</p> + +<p>"What must you think of me?"</p> + +<p>"Think of you? I wouldn't have you different." The whole spirit of her +love for him was in those words.</p> + +<p>She continued. "You see, dear, it comes to the same thing. If you didn't +take her back I couldn't marry you, for it wouldn't be you. You'll have +to take her."</p> + +<p>"You talk as if I'd nobody but her to think of. Look what she's making +me do to you—"</p> + +<p>"I'm strong enough to bear it and she isn't. She'll go straight to the +bad if we don't look after her."</p> + +<p>"That's it. She said there was nothing but the streets for her." He +brooded. "If I was a rich man I could divorce her and give her an +allowance to live away. I can't stand it, Winny, when I think of you."</p> + +<p>"You needn't think of me, dear. It isn't as if I hadn't known."</p> + +<p>"How <i>could</i> you know?"</p> + +<p>"I knew all the time she'd come back—some day."</p> + +<p>"Yes. But if Father hadn't died when he did we should have been safe +married. We missed it by a day. Mercier'd have married her two years +ago. If I'd had thirty pounds then it couldn't have happened. But I was +a damned fool. I should have thought of you <i>then</i>—I should have let +everything else go and married you."</p> + +<p>Slowly, drop by drop, he drank his misery. But she had savored sorrow so +far off that now that the cup was brought to her it had lost half its +bitterness.</p> + +<p>"You couldn't have done different, even then, dear. Don't worry about +me. It's not as if I hadn't been happy with you. I've had +you—reelly—Ranny, all these years."</p> + +<p>But the happiness that by way of comfort she held out to him was the +very dregs of Ranny's cup.</p> + +<p>"That's it," he said. "I don't know how it's going to be now. She's the +same, somehow, and yet different."</p> + +<p>It was his way of expressing the fact that Violet's suffering had given +her a soul, and that this soul, this subtler and more inscrutable +essence of her, would not necessarily be good. It might even be +malignant. Most certainly it would be hostile. It would come between +them.</p> + +<p>"It's a good thing the children'll be at school now—out of her way."</p> + +<p>"P'raps she's better—kinder, p'raps."</p> + +<p>"I don't know about that, Winny. I'm afraid. Anyhow, it'll never be the +same for you and me."</p> + +<p>He paused, and then seeing suddenly the full extent of their calamity, +he broke out.</p> + +<p>"What'll you <i>do</i>, Winny?"</p> + +<p>"I'll ask Mr. Randall if he'll take me on."</p> + +<p>"You won't stay here?"</p> + +<p>"No. Better not. I mustn't be too near, this time. That was the mistake +I made before. And you've got your mother."</p> + +<p>"And what have <i>you</i> got?" he cried, fiercely.</p> + +<p>"I've got plenty—all I've ever had. These things don't go away, dear."</p> + +<p>They stood still, looking before them, with their unspoken misery in +their eyes.</p> + +<p>At their feet, down there, creeping low on the ground, spreading its +packed roofs for miles over the land that had once been green fields, +its red and purple smoldering and smoking in the autumn mist and sunset, +there lay the Paradise of Little Clerks.</p> + +<p>They turned and went slowly toward it down the hill.</p> + +<h3>THE END</h3> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Combined Maze, by May Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMBINED MAZE *** + +***** This file should be named 28461-h.htm or 28461-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/4/6/28461/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Combined Maze + +Author: May Sinclair + +Release Date: March 31, 2009 [EBook #28461] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMBINED MAZE *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + THE COMBINED MAZE + + BY MAY SINCLAIR + + AUTHOR OF "THE DIVINE FIRE" + + +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS +NEW YORK AND LONDON +MCMXIII + +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA +PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1913 + + + + +[Illustration: SHE CLOSED HER EYES, AND HIS HOLD TIGHTENED] + + + + +THE COMBINED MAZE + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +You may say that there was something wrong somewhere, some mistake, from +the very beginning, in his parentage, in the time and place and manner +of his birth. It was in the early eighties, over a shabby chemist's shop +in Wandsworth High Street, and it came of the union of Fulleymore +Ransome, a little, middle-aged chemist, weedy, parched, furtively +inebriate, and his wife Emma, the daughter of John Randall, a draper. + +They called him John Randall Fulleymore Ransome, and Ranny for short. + +Ranny should have been born in lands of adventure, under the green light +of a virgin forest, or on some illimitable prairie; he should have +sailed with the vikings or fought with Cromwell's Ironsides; or, better +still, he should have run, half-naked, splendidly pagan, bearing the +torch of Marathon. + +And yet he bore his torch. + +From the very first his mother said that Ranny was that venturesome. He +showed it in his ill-considered and ungovernable determination to be +born, and it was hard to say which of them, Ranny or his mother, more +nearly died of it. She must have been aware that there was a hitch +somewhere; for, referring again and again, as she did, to Ranny's +venturesomeness, she would say, "It beats me where he gets it from." + +He may have got some of it from her, for she, poor thing, had sunk, +adventurously, in one disastrous marriage her whole stock of youth and +gaiety and charm. It was Ranny's youth and charm and gaiety that made +him so surprising and so unaccountable. + +Circumstances were not encouraging to Ranny's youth, nor to his private +and particular ambition, the cultivation of a superb physique. For, not +only was he a little chemist's son, he was a great furniture dealer's +inexpensive and utterly insignificant clerk, one of a dozen confined in +a long mahogany pen where they sat at long mahogany desks, upon high +mahogany stools, making invoices of chairs and tables and wardrobes and +washstands and all manner of furniture. You would never have known, to +see him sitting there, that John Randall Fulleymore Ransome was a leader +in Section I of the London Polytechnic Gymnasium. + +So far, in his way, he testified, he bore his torch. Confined as he was +in a mahogany pen, born and brought up in the odor of drugs, and +surrounded by every ignominious sign of disease and infirmity, his dream +was yet of cleanness, of health, and the splendor of physical +perfection. The thing that young Ransome most loathed and abhorred was +Flabbiness, next to Flabbiness, Weediness. The years of his adolescence +were one long struggle and battle against these two. He had them ever +before him, and associated them, absurdly but inveterately, with a +pharmaceutical chemist's occupation; of Weediness his father being the +prime example; while for Flabbiness, young Mercier, his father's +assistant--well, Mercier, as he said, "took the biscuit." It was +horrible for young Ransome to inhabit the same house with young Mercier, +because of his flabbiness. + +In all cities there are many thousand Ransomes, more or less confined in +mahogany cages, but John Randall Fulleymore stands for all of them. He +was one of those who, in a cold twilight on a Saturday afternoon, +stagger from the trampled field, hot-eyed under their wild hair, whose +garments are stained from the torn grass and uptrodden earth, with here +and there a rent and the white gleam of a shoulder or a thigh; whose +vivid, virile odor has a tang of earth in it. He is the image and the +type of these forlorn, foredoomed young athletes, these exponents of a +city's desperate adolescence, these inarticulate enthusiasts of the +earth. He bursts from his pen in the evening at seven or half past, he +snatches somewhere a cup of cocoa and a sandwich, and at nine he is +seen, half pagan in his "zephyr" and his "shorts," sprinting like mad +through the main thoroughfares. In summer some pitch, more or less +perfect, waits for him in suburban playing fields; and the River knows +him, at Battersea, at Chelsea, at Hammersmith, and at Wandsworth, the +River knows him as he is, the indomitable and impassioned worshiper of +the body and the earth. + +And if the moon sees him sometimes haggard, panting, though indomitable, +though impassioned, reeling on the last lap of his last mile, and +limping through Wandsworth High Street home to the house of the weedy +pharmaceutical chemist his father, if the moon sees Ransome, why, the +Moon is a lady, and she does not tell. + + * * * * * + +If you asked him what he did it for, he would say you did it because it +kept you fit, also (if you pressed him) because it kept you decent. + +And to know how right he was you had only to look at him, escaped from +his cage; you had only to follow his progress through the lighted +streets and observe his unbending behavior before the salutations of the +night. His fitness, combined with his decency, made him a wonder, a +desire, and a despair. Slender and upright, immaculately high-collared, +his thin serge suit molded by his sheer muscular development to the +semblance of perfection, Ranny was a mark for loitering feet and +wandering eyes. Ranny was brown-faced and brown-haired; he had brown +eyes made clear with a strain of gray, rather narrow eyes, ever so +slightly tilted, narrowing still, and lengthening, as with humor, at the +outer corners. There was humor in his mouth, wide but fine, that tilted +slightly upward when he spoke. There was humor even in his nose with its +subtle curve, the slender length of its bridge, and its tip, wide +spread, and like his mouth and eyes, slightly uptilted. + +Ranny, in short, was fascinating. And at every turn his mysterious +decency betrayed the promise of his charm. + + * * * * * + +It was Fred Booty, his friend and companion of the pen, who first put +him in the right way, discerning in him a fine original genius for +adventure. + +For when Ranny's mother said he was that venturesome, she meant that he +was fond, fantastically and violently fond of danger, of adventure. His +cunning in this matter beat her clean--how he found the things to do he +did do; the things, the frightful things he did about the house with +bannisters and windows, of which she knew. As for the things he found to +do with bicycles on Wandsworth Common and Putney Hill they were known +mainly to his Maker and Fred Booty. Booty, who could judge (being "a bit +handy with a bike" himself), said of them that they were "a fair treat." + +But these were the deeds of his boyhood, and in nineteen-two Ransome +looked back on them with contempt. Follies they were, things a silly kid +does; and it wasn't by those monkey tricks that a fellow developed his +physique. Booty had found Ransome in his attic one Saturday afternoon, a +year ago, half stripped, and contemplating ruefully what he conceived to +be the first horrible, mushy dawn of Flabbiness in his biceps muscle. +All he wanted, Booty had then declared, was a turn or two at the Poly. +Gym. Then Booty took Ransome round to his place in Putney Bridge Road, +and they sat on Booty's bed with their arms round each other's shoulders +while Booty read aloud to Ransome from the pages of the Poly. +Prospectus. Booty was a slender, agile youth with an innocent, sanguine +face, the face of a beardless faun, finished off with a bush of blond +hair that stood up from his forehead like a monumental flame. + +He read very slowly, in a voice that had in it both an adolescent croak +and an engaging Cockney tang. + +"The Poly.," said Booty, "really was a Club, '_where_,'" he underlined +it, "'every reasonable facil'ty shall bee offered fer the formation of a +steadfast character, _and_--_of_--true friendships; fer trainin' the +intellec'--'" + +"Int'lec' be blowed," said Ransome. + +"'_And_ fer leadin' an upright, unselfish life. Day by day,'" read +Booty, "'the battle of life becomes more strenuous. To succeed entyles +careful preparation and stern'--stern, Ranny--'deetermination, it +deemands the choice of _good friends_ and the avoid'nce of those persons +and things which tend _to_ lessen, instead of _to_ increase the +reesources of the individyool.' There, wot d'you think of _that_, Ran?" + +Ran didn't think much of it until Booty pointed out to him, one by one, +the privileges he would enjoy as a member of the Poly. + +For the ridiculous yearly sum of ten-and-six (it was all he could rise +to) Ransome had become a member of the Poly. Ten-and-six threw open to +him every year the Poly. Gym., the Poly. Swimming Bath, and the Poly. +Circulating Library. For ten-and-six he could further command the +services (once a week) of the doctor attached to the Poly. and of its +experienced legal adviser. + +That tickled Ransome. He didn't see himself by any possibility requiring +communion with that experienced man. But it tickled him, the sheer +fantastic opulence and extravagance of the thing. It tickled him so much +that whenever you disagreed with or offended Ransome his jest was to +refer you, magnificently, to "my legal adviser." + +Yes, for fantastic opulence and extravagance, Ransome had never seen +anything to beat the Poly. There was no end to it, no end to the +privileges you enjoyed. He positively ran amuck among his +privileges--those, that is to say, offered him by the Poly. Swimming +Bath and the Poly. Gym. As he said, he "fair abused 'em." But he +considered that the Poly. "got home again" on his exceptionally moderate +use of the Circulating Library, and his total abstention from the Bible +Classes. He was not yet aware of any soul in him apart from that +abounding and sufficing physical energy expressed in Fitness, nor was he +violently conscious of any moral sense apart from Decency. + +And Ranny despised the votaries of intellectual light; he more than +suspected them of Weediness, if not of Flabbiness. Yet (as he waited for +Booty in the vestibule), through much darkness and confusion, and always +at an immeasurable distance from him, he discerned, glory beyond glory, +the things that the Poly., in its great mercy and pity, had reserved for +those "queer johnnies." It made him giddy merely to look at the posters +of its lectures and its classes. It gave him the headache to think of +the things the fellows--fellows of a deplorable physique--and girls, +too, did there. For his part, he looked forward to the day when, by a +further subscription of ten-and-six, he would enroll himself as a member +of the Athletic Club. + +It was as if the Poly. put out feeler after feeler to draw him to +itself. Only to one thing he would not be drawn. When Booty advised him +to join the Poly. Ramblers he stood firm. For some shy or unfathomable +reason of his own he refused to become a Poly. Rambler. When it came to +the Poly. Ramblers he was adamant. It was one of those vital points at +which he resisted this process of absorption in the Poly. Booty +denounced his attitude as eminently anti-social--uppish, he called it. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +All that winter Ransome's nights and days were regulated in a perfect +order--making statements of account for nine hours on five days of the +week and four on Saturdays. Three evenings for the Poly. Gym. One for +the Swimming Bath. One for sprinting. One (Saturday) for rest or +relaxation after the violence of Rugger. One (Sunday) for the +improvement of the mind. On Sundays he was very seldom good for anything +else. + +But in the spring of nineteen-two something stirred in him, something +watched and waited; with a subtle agitation, a vague and delicate +excitement, it exulted and aspired. The sensation, or whatever it was, +had as yet no separate existence of its own. So perfect, in this spring +of nineteen-two, was the harmony of Ransome's being that the pulse of +the unborn thing was one with all his other pulses; it was one, +indistinguishably, with the splendor of life, the madness of running, +and the joy he took in his own remarkable performances on the horizontal +bar. It had the effect of heightening, mysteriously and indescribably, +the joy, the madness, and the splendor. And it was dominant, insistent. +Like some great and unintelligible _motif_ it ran ringing and sounding +through the vast rhythmic tumult of physical energy. + +Not for a moment did he connect it with the increasing interest that he +took in the appearance of the Young Ladies of the Poly. Gym. He was not +aware how aware he was of their coming, nor how his heart thumped and +throbbed and his nerves trembled at the tramp, tramp of their feet along +the floor. + +For sometimes, it might be twice a year, the young men and the young +women of the Gymnasium met and mingled in a Grand Display. + +He was fairly well used to it; and yet he had never got over his +amazement at finding that girls, those things of constitutional and +predestined flabbiness, could do very nearly (though not quite) +everything that he could, leaving him little besides his pre-eminence on +the horizontal bar. And yearly the regiment of girls who could "do +things" at the Poly. increased under his very eyes. Their invasion +disturbed him in his vision of their flabbiness; it rubbed it into him, +the things that they could do. + +Not but what he had felt it--he had felt _them_--all about him, outside, +in the streets where they jostled him, and in the world made mostly of +mahogany, the world of counters and of desks, of pens where they too +were herded and shut up and compelled, like him, to toil. Queer things, +girls, for they seemed, incomprehensibly, to like it. Their liking it, +their businesslike assumption of equality, their incessant appearance +(authorized, it is true, by business) at the railings of his pen, the +peculiar disenchanting promiscuity of it all, preserved young Ransome in +his eccentricity of indifference to their sex. In fact, if you tried to +talk about sex to young Ransome (and Mercier did try) he would denounce +it as "silly goat's talk," and your absorption in it as "the most +mutton-headed form of Flabbiness yet out." + + * * * * * + +But that was before the Grand Display of the autumn of last year, when +Winny Dymond appeared in the March Past of Section I of the Women's +Gymnasium; before he had followed Winny as she ran at top speed through +all the turnings and windings of the Combined Maze. + +There were about fifty of them, picked; all attired in black stockings, +in dark-blue knickerbockers, and in tunics that reached to the knee, +red-belted and trimmed with red. Stunning, he called them; so much so +that they fair took away his breath. + +That was what he said when it was all over. By that time he was ashamed +to confess that at the moment of its apparition the March Past had been +somewhat of a shock to him. He had his ideas, and he was not prepared +for the uniform; still less was he prepared for a personal encounter +with such quantities of young women all at once. + +All sorts of girls--sturdy and slender girls; queer girls with lean, +wiry bodies; deceptive girls with bodies curiously plastic under the +appearance of fragility; here a young miracle of physical culture; there +a girl with the pointed breasts and flying shoulders, the limbs, the +hips, the questing face that recalled some fugitive soul of the woods +and mountains; long-nosed, sallow, nervous Jewish girls; English girls +with stolid, colorless faces; here and there a face rosy and full-blown, +or a pretty tilted profile and a wonderful, elaborate head of hair. One +or two of these heads positively lit up the procession with their red +and gold, gave it the splendor and beauty of a pageant. + +They came on, single file and double file and four abreast, the long +line doubling and turning upon itself; all alike in the straight drop +of the arms to the hips, the rise and fall of their black-stockinged +legs, the arching and pointing of the feet; all deliciously alike in +their air of indestructible propriety. Here you caught one leashing an +iniquitous little smile in the corners of her eyes under her lashes; or +one, aware of her proud beauty, and bearing herself because of it, with +the extreme of indestructible propriety. + +There were no words to express young Ransome's indifference to proud +beauty. + +If he found something tender and absurd in the movements of all those +long black stockings, it was for the sake and on account of the long +black stockings worn by little Winny Dymond. + +Winny Dymond was not proud, neither was she what he supposed you would +call beautiful. She was not one of those conspicuous by their flaming +and elaborate hair. + +What he first noted in her with wonder and admiration was the absence of +weediness and flabbiness. Better known, she stirred in him, as a child +might, an altogether indescribable sense of tenderness and absurdity. +She stood out for him simply by the fact that, of all the young ladies +of the Polytechnic, she was the only one he really knew--barring Maudie +Hollis, and Maudie, though she was the proud beauty of the Polytechnic, +didn't count. + +For Maudie was ear-marked, so to speak, as the property (when he could +afford a place to put her in) of Fred Booty. Ransome would no more have +dreamed of cultivating an independent acquaintance with Maudie than he +would of pocketing the silver cup that Booty won in last year's Hurdle +Race. It was because of Maudie, and at Booty's irresistible request, +that he, the slave of friendship, had consented, unwillingly and +perfunctorily at first, to become Miss Dymond's cavalier. Maudie, also +at Booty's passionate appeal, had for six months shared with Winny +Dymond a room off Wandsworth High Street, so that, as he put it, he +might feel that she was near him; with the desolating result that they +weren't by any means, no, not by a long chalk, so near. For Maudie, out +of levity or sheer exuberant kindness of the heart, had persuaded Winny +Dymond to join the Polytechnic. In her proud beauty and in her affianced +state she could afford to be exuberantly kind. And Booty in his vision +of nearness had been counting on the long journey by night from Regent +Street to Wandsworth High Street alone with Maudie; and, though Miss +Dymond practically effaced herself, it wasn't--with a girl of Maudie's +temperament--the same thing at all. For Maudie in company was apt to be +a little stiff and stand-offish in her manner. + +Then (one afternoon in the autumn of last year it was) Booty sounded +Ransome, finding himself alone with him in the mahogany pen when the +senior clerks were at their tea. "I say," he said, "there's something I +want _you_ to do for me," and Ransome, in his recklessness, his +magnificence, said "Right-O!" + +He said afterward that he had gathered from the expression of his +friend's face that his trouble was financial, a matter of five bob, or +fifteen at the very worst. And you could trust Boots to pay up any day. +So that he was properly floored when Boots, in a thick, earnest voice, +explained the nature of the service he required--that he, Ransome, +should go with him, nightly, to a convenient corner of Oxford Street, +and there collar that kid, Winny Dymond, and lug her along. + +"Do you mean," asked Ransome, "walk home with her?" + +Well, yes; that, Booty intimated, was about the size of it. She was a +Wandsworth girl, and they'd got, he supposed, all four of them, to get +there. + +He was trying to carry it off, to give an air of inevitability to his +preposterous proposal. But as young Ransome's face expressed his agony, +Booty became almost abject in supplication. He didn't know, Ranny +didn't, what it was to be situated like he, Booty, was. Booty wanted to +know how he'd feel if it was him. To be gone on a girl like he was and +only see her of an evenin' and then not be able to get any nearer her, +because of havin' to make polite remarks to that wretched kid she was +always cartin' round. At that rate he might just as well not be engaged +at all--to Maudie; better engage himself to the bloomin' kid at once. It +wasn't as if he had a decent chance of bein' spliced for good in a year +or two's time. His evenin's and his Sundays and so forth were jolly well +all he'd got. It was all very well for Ransome, _he_ wasn't gone on a +girl, else he'd know how erritatin' it was to the nerves. And if Ranny +hadn't got the spunk to stand by a pal and see him through, why, then +he'd cut the Poly. and make Maudie cut it too. + +To most of this Ranny was silent, for it seemed to him that Boots was +mad, or near it. But at that threat, so terrible to him, so terrible to +the Polytechnic, so terrible to Booty, and so palpable a sign of his +madness, he gave in. He said it was all right, only he didn't know what +on earth he was to say to her. + +Booty recovered his natural airiness. "Oh," he threw it off, "you say +nothing." + +And for the first night or so, as far as Ransome could remember, that +was what he did say. + +And he wasn't really clever at collaring her, either. There was +something elusive, fugitive, uncatchable about Winny Dymond. It was +Booty, driven by love to that extremity, who collared Maudie and walked +off with her, with a suddenness and swiftness that left them stranded +and amazed. "Fair pace-makin'," Ransome called it. + +And Winny struggled and strove with those little legs of hers (jolly +little legs he knew they were, too, in their long black stockings), +strove and struggled, as if her life depended on it, to overtake them. +And it was then that Ransome felt the first pricking of that sense of +tenderness and absurdity. + +He felt it again after a long silence when, as they were going toward +Wandsworth Bridge, Winny suddenly addressed him. + +"You know," she said, "you needn't trouble about _me_." + +"I'm not troublin'," he said. "Leastways--that is--" he hesitated and +was lost. + +"You are," said she, with decision, "if you think you've got to see me +home." + +He said he thought that, considering the lateness of the hour and the +loneliness of the scene, it was better that he should accompany her. + +"But I can accompany myself," said she. + +He smiled at the vision of Miss Dymond accompanying herself, at eleven +o'clock at night, too--the idea! He smiled at it as if he saw in it +something tender and absurd. He knew, of course, for he was not +absolutely without experience, that girls said these things; they said +them to draw fellows on; it was their artfulness. There was a word for +it; Ransome thought the word was "cock-a-tree." But Winny Dymond didn't +say those things--the least like that. She said them with the utmost +gravity and determination. You might almost have thought she was +offended but for the absence in her tone of any annoyance or +embarrassment. Her tone, indeed, suggested serene sincerity and a sort +of sympathy, the serious and compassionate consideration of his painful +case. It was as if she had been aware all along of the frightful +predicament he had been placed in by Fred Booty; as if she divined and +understood his anguish in it and desired to help him out. That was +evidently her idea--to help him out. + +And as it grew on him--her idea--it grew on him also that there was a +kind of fascination about the little figure in its long dark-blue coat. + +She wasn't--he supposed she wasn't--pretty, but he found himself +agreeably affected by her. He liked the queer look of her face, which +began with a sort of squarishness in roundness and ended, with a sudden +startling change of intention, in a pointed chin. He liked the clear +sallow and faint rose of her skin, and her mouth which might have been +too large if it had not been so firm and fine. He liked, vaguely, +without knowing that he liked it, the quietness of her brown eyes and +the faint, half-wondering arch above them; and quite definitely he liked +the way she parted her brown hair in the middle and smoothed it till it +lay in two long, low waves (just discernible under the brim of her hat) +upon her forehead. He did not know that long afterward he was never to +see Winny Dymond's eyes and parted hair without some vision of strength +and profound placidity and cleanness. + +All he said was he supposed there was no law against his occupying the +same pavement; and then he could have sworn that Winny's face sent a +little ghost of a smile flitting past him through the night. + +"Well, anyhow," she said, "you needn't talk to me unless you like." + +And at that he threw his head back and laughed aloud. And quite suddenly +the moon came out and stared at them; came bang up on their left above +the River (they were on the bridge now) out of a great cloud, a blazing +and enormous moon. It tickled him. He called her attention to it, and +said he didn't remember that he'd ever seen such a proper whopper of a +moon and with such a shine on him. They hadn't half polished him, he +said. Any one would think that things had all busted, got turned bottom +side upward, and it was the bally old sun that was up there, grinnin' at +them, through the hole he'd made. + +"The idea!" said Winny; but she laughed at it, a little shrill and +irresistible titter of delight always, as he was to learn, her homage to +"ideas." He had them sometimes; they came on him all of a sudden, like +that, and he couldn't help it; he couldn't stop them; he got them all +the worse, all the more ungovernably, when Booty lunged at him, as he +did, with his "Dry up, you silly blighter, you!" But that anybody should +take pleasure in his ideas, that _was_ an idea, if you like, to +Ransome. + +They got on after that like a house on fire. + + * * * * * + +But only for that night. For many nights that followed Winny proved more +fugitive, more uncatchable than ever. As often as not, when they arrived +in Oxford Street, she would be gone, fled half an hour before them, +accompanying herself all the way to Wandsworth. Once he pursued her down +Oxford Street, coming up with her as she boarded a bus in full flight; +and they sat in it in gravity and silence, as strangers to each other. +But nearly always she was too quick for him; she got away. And never (he +thanked Heaven for that, long afterward), never for a moment did he +misunderstand her. She made that impossible for him; impossible to +forget that in her and all her shyness there was no art at all of +"cock-a-tree," only her fixed and funny determination not "to put upon +him." + +And so the seeing home of Winny Dymond became a fascinating and +uncertain game, fascinating because of its uncertainty; it had all the +agitation and allurement of pursuit and capture; if she had wanted to +allure and agitate him, no art of "cock-a-tree" could have served her +better. He was determined to see Winny Dymond home. + +And all the time it grew, it grew on him, that sense of tenderness and +absurdity. He found it--that ineffable and poignant quality--in +everything about her and in everything she did--in the gravity of her +deportment at the Poly.; in her shy essaying of the parallel bars; in +the incredible swiftness with which she ran before him in the Maze; in +the way her hair, tied up with an immense black bow in a door-knocker +plat, rose and fell forever on her shoulders as she ran. He found it in +the fact he had discovered that her companions called her by absurd and +tender names; Winky, and even Winks, they called her. + +That was in the autumn of nineteen-one; and he was finding it all over +again now in the spring of nineteen-two. + +At last, he didn't know how it happened, but one night, having caught up +with her after a hot chase, close by the railings of the Parish Church +in Wandsworth High Street, in the very moment of parting from her he +turned round and said, "Look here, Miss Dymond, you think I don't like +seeing you home, don't you?" + +"To be sure I do. It must be a regular nuisance, night after night," she +answered. + +"Well, it isn't," he said. "I like it. But look here--if you hate it--" + +"Me?" + +She said it with a simple, naive amazement. + +"Yes, you." + +He was almost brutal. + +"But I don't. What an idea!" + +"Well, if you don't, that settles it. Don't it?" + +And it did. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +It was the night of the Grand Display of the spring of nineteen-two. + +To the Gymnasium of the London Polytechnic you ascended (in +nineteen-two) as to a temple by a flight of steps, and found yourself in +a great oblong room of white walls, with white pillars supporting the +gallery that ran all round it. The railing of the gallery was of iron +tracery, painted green, with a brass balustrade. The great clean white +space, the long ropes for the trapezes which hung from the ceiling and +were looped up now to the stanchions, the coarse canvas of the +mattresses, the disciplined lines, the tramping feet, the commanding +voices of the instructors, gave a confused and dreamlike suggestion of +the lower deck of a man-of-war. To-night, under the west end of the +gallery, a small platform was raised for the Mayor of Marylebone and a +score of guests. The galleries themselves were packed with members of +the Polytechnic and their friends. + +The programme of the Grand Display announced as its first item: + + PARALLEL BARS + _Tableau by_ + MESSRS. BOOTY, TYSER, BUIST, WAUCHOPE, AND + J. R. F. RANSOME + +There was a murmur of surreptitious, half-ironic applause. "Stick it, +Ransome; stick it, old boy!" + +The reference was to his extraordinary attitude. + +J. R. F. Ransome appeared as the apex and the crown of a rude triangular +structure whose base was formed by the high parallel bars, flanked at +each end by two bodies (Booty and Tyser front), two supple adolescent +bodies, bent backward like two bows. He stood head downward on his hands +that grasped and were supported by the locked arms of two solid +athletes, Buist and Wauchope, themselves mounted gloriously and +perilously on the straining bars. + +Considered as to his arms, and the white "zephyr" and flannels that he +wore, he was merely a marvelous young man balancing himself with +difficulty in an unnatural posture. But his body, uptilted, poised as by +a miracle in air, with the slender curve of its back, its flattened +hips, its feet laid together like wings folded in the first downrush, +might have been the body of a young immortal descending with facile +precipitancy to earth. + +He maintained for a sensible moment his appearance of having just flown +from the roof of the Gymnasium. Far below, the photographer fumbled +leisurely with his apparatus. + +"Hurry up, there!" "Stick it, Ransome!" "Half a mo!" "Stick it, Ranny; +stick it!" they whispered. "Steady does it." + +And Ranny stuck it. Ranny actually, from his awful eminence, sang out, +"No fear!" + +The flashlight immortalized his moment. + +That was his way--to stick it; to see it out; to go through with the +adventure alert and gay, wearing that fine smile of his, so +extravagantly uplifted at the corners. "Stick it!" was the motto of his +individual recklessness and of the dogged, enduring conservatism of his +class. It kept him in a mahogany pen, at a mahogany desk, for forty-four +hours a week, and it sustained him in his orgies of physical energy at +the Poly. Gym. + +Best of all, it sustained him in his daily and nightly encounters with +young Mercier. + +He was all the more determined to stick it by the knowledge that young +Mercier was up there in the gallery looking at him. He could see him +leaning over the balustrade and smiling at him atrociously. He took +advantage of an interval and joined him. He was half inclined to ask him +what he meant by it. For he was always at it. Whenever young Mercier +caught Ranny doing a sprint he smiled atrociously. At Wandsworth, behind +the counter, or in the little zinc-roofed dispensing-room at the back, +among the horribly smelling materials of his craft, he smiled, +remembering him. + +Mercier was a black-haired, thick-set youth with heavy features in a +heavy, pasty face, a face oddly decorated by immense and slightly +prominent blue eyes, a face where all day long the sensual dream brooded +heavily. His black eyebrows gave it a certain accent and distinction. It +was because of his dream that Leonard Mercier could afford to smile. + +He was one of those who wanted to know what Ranny did it for. He +couldn't see what fun the young goat got out of his evenings. Not half, +no, nor a quarter of what he, Mercier, could get from one night at the +Empire or when he took his girl to Earl's Court or the Wandsworth +Coliseum. And, though up there in the gallery he had said "By Jove!" and +that he was blowed, and that that young Ransome was a corker, though he +boasted to three entire strangers that that young fellow was a friend of +his, his curiosity was still unsatisfied. He still wanted to know what +the young goat did it for. + +He wanted to know it now. And at his insistence young Ransome was +abashed. How could he explain to old Eno what he did it for or what it +felt like? He couldn't explain it to himself, he had no words for it, +for that ecstasy of living, that fusion of all faculties in one rhythm +and one vibration, one continuous transport of physical energy. Take +sprinting alone. How could he convey to Jujubes in his disgusting +flabbiness any sense of the fine madness of running, of the race of the +blood through the veins, of the hammer strokes of the heart, of the soft +pad of the feet on the highway? To Jujubes, who went in like a cushion +no matter where you prodded him, how describe the feel of a taut muscle, +the mounting swell of it, the resistance, and the small, almost +impalpable ripple and throb under the skin? He couldn't have described +it to himself. + +So he gave Jujubes his invariable casual answer. You did it because it +kept you fit and because (he let old Eno have it) it kept you decent. +Old Eno would be a lot decenter if he went in for it. It would do him +worlds of good. + +To which old Eno replied that he thought he saw himself! As for joining +Ranny's precious old Poly., why, for all the Life you were likely to see +there, you might as well be in a young ladies' boarding-school. And +Ransome said that that was where Jujubes ought to be. He liked young +ladies. Among them (he intimated) his flabbiness might not excite +remark. Girls (he pondered it) were flabby things. + +Chivalry constrained him to a mental reservation: Winny Dymond and the +young ladies of the Poly. Gym. excepted. + +But he was glad that Mercier didn't stay to see them. Young Leonard +(whose smile was growing more and more atrocious) had declared that the +young ladies of the Empire ballet were a bit more in his line, and he +had made off, elbowing his way through the crowded gallery and crooning +"Boys of the Empire!" as he went, while Ransome pursued him with the +scornful adjuration to "Go home and take a saline draught!" + +But you couldn't shame old Eno. He triumphed and exulted in his +flabbiness. For he was a Boy of the Empire. He had seen Life, and would +see more and more of it. + + * * * * * + +Ransome went down again into the hall. He removed himself from the crowd +and leaned against a pillar, in abstraction, arms folded, showing the +great muscles; a splendid figure in his white "zephyr" trimmed with +crimson, with the crimson sash of leadership knotted at his side. Thus +withdrawn, he watched, half furtively, the performance of the young +ladies of the Polytechnic Gymnasium. + +One by one, with an air incorruptibly decorous, the young ladies of the +Polytechnic Gymnasium hurled themselves upon the parallel bars; they +waggled themselves by their hands along them; they swung themselves from +side to side of them, and outstretched themselves between them with a +foot and a hand upon each bar; they raised their bodies, thus supported, +like an arch; they slackened them and flung themselves (with a crescendo +of decorous delirium) from side to side again, and over; alighting on +their feet in a curtseying posture and with the left arm extended in a +little perfunctory gesture of demonstration to the audience, as much as +to say, "There you are, and nothing could be easier!" + +Nothing could be more conventional and more unspeakably correct. Only +when Winny Dymond did it there was a difference, or it seemed so to +young Ransome. Winny approached the bars with shyness and a certain +earnestness and gravity of intent. She hesitated; for a moment she was +adorable in vacillation. She shook her head at the bars, she bit her lip +at them; she set her face at them in defiance; then, with a sudden +amazing celerity she gave a little run forward and leaped upon them; she +swung herself in perfect rhythm and motion onward and upward and from +side to side; she arched her sturdy but exquisitely supple body like a +bridge, flung herself over as if in pure abandonment of joy and lighted +on her feet, curtseying correctly but with something piteous in the +gesture of the outstretched arm, and upon her face an expression of +great surprise and wonder at herself, as if Winny said, not "There you +are!" but "Here I am, and oh, I never thought I should be!" + +And from his place by the pillar Ransome gave the little inarticulate +murmur he reserved for Winny. It was charged with his sense of +tenderness and absurdity. + + * * * * * + +A quarter to ten. His own performances--his wonderful performances on +the horizontal bar--were over; and over the demonstration by F. Booty +with the Indian clubs, where young Fred, slender and supple as a faun, +played on his own muscles in faultless rhythm. And now with an eye upon +the Mayor the order was given for the last item on the programme: + + +/# + THE COMBINED MAZE +#/ + +There was a rush of energetic young men who flung themselves upon the +properties of the Gymnasium. They ran them--the parallel bars, the +horses, the mattresses--in under the galleries; they uprooted the posts +of the horizontal bar; they cleared the whole of the vast oblong space +bounded by the pillars. + +An attendant then appeared with a bit of chalk in his hand, and with the +chalk he drew upon the floor certain mystic circles, one at each corner +of the oblong, one in the center, the heart of the Maze, and facing it +two smaller circles, one at each side on a visionary line. Seven mystic, +seven sacred circles in all did he draw, and vanished, unconscious of +the sanctity and symbolism of his deed. + +For he, with his bit of white chalk, had marked the course for the great +running, for the race that the young men and the young girls run +together with the racing of the stars, for the unloosening of the holy +primal energies in a figure and a measure and a ritual old as time. + +It was all very well for the instructor (blind instrument of unspeakably +mysterious forces) to pretend that he invented it, that august figure of +the seven-circled Maze; to explain it, as he does to the inquiring, by +the analogy of a billiard table with its pockets. For never yet, on any +billiard table, was a race run and a contest waged like that in which +these young men and girls ran and contended. Drawn up at the far end of +the hall under the east gallery in two ranks, four-breasted, the men on +the one side and the women on the other, they waited, and the leader of +each rank had a foot on a corner circle. They waited, marking time with +their feet, first, to the thudding beat of the barbell on the floor and +then to an unheard measure, secret and restrained, the murmur of life in +the blood, the rhythm of the soundless will, the beat of the unseen, +urging energy, that gathered to intensity, desirous of the race. + +As yet the soul of it slept in their rigid bodies, their grave, +forward-looking faces, their behavior, so excessively correct. Somebody +whispered the word, and on a sudden they let themselves go; they +started. Young Tyser, breasting the wind of his own speed, his head +uplifted and thrown backward, led the men, and she with the questing +face and wide-pointing breasts of Artemis led the girls; and he had +young Ransome on his heels and she Winny; and behind them the fourfold +serried ranks thinned and thinned out and spun themselves in two lines +of single file, two threads, one white, one dark blue, both flecked with +crimson, two threads that in their running were wound and unwound and +woven in a pattern, dark blue and white and crimson, that ran and never +paused and never ended and was never the same. For first, each line was +flung slantwise from the corner circle whence it had started, and where +the two met, point by point perpetually, in the center circle, they as +it were intersected, men and women wriggling, sliding, and darting with +incredible dexterity through each other's ranks; and the pattern was a +cross, a tricolor. Then they wheeled round the circle that was and was +not their goal, and did it all over again; but instead of intersecting +at the center circle they struck off there at a tangent, and the +pattern, blue by blue divided from white by white, and all red-flecked, +was two wide V's set point to point, a pattern that ran away and +vanished as each thread, returning, wheeled round the circle whence the +other thread had started. + +And all this at the top speed set by Tyser, and with the thud of the +men's feet and the pad of the women's; all this with a secret challenge +and defiance of one sex to the other, with separation and estrangement, +with a never-ending, baffling approach and flight, with the furtive +darting of man from woman and of woman from man, whirled in their +courses from each other as they met. + +And now the lines doubled; they were running two abreast, slantwise; and +as they intersected in the sacred center circle it was with a mingling +of the threads, a weaving of blue with white, and white with blue; so +that each man had in flight before him a maiden, and so that at their +circles, east and west, where they wheeled they wheeled together, side +by side, as the Maze flung them. And now they were circling and +serpentining up and down, and down and up, with contrary motion, in a +double figure of eight; they were winding in and out among the pillars +and wheeling round the middle circles north and south, side by side, +till they split there and parted and met again in the center and were +flung from it, to wheel again deliriously, double-ringed, round all the +six outermost circles at once. + +And now, as if they were torn from the ends of the earth by the +irresistible attraction of the seventh circle, they were whirling round +the center in a double ring, a ring of young men round a ring of girls; +and then, as by some mysterious compulsion, they divided and cast +themselves off in rows of two couples, man and girl by man and girl, +linked with arms on each other's shoulders, eight rows in all, eight +spokes that sprang from the sacred circle ringed with eight, four men +and four girls, who were the felly of the wheel, all running, all +revolving. Such was the magic of the Maze, and the unconscious genius of +the instructor, that the pattern of the running wound and unwound and +knit itself together in the supreme symbol of the great Wheel of Eight +Spokes, the Wheel of Life. + +And the ancient rhythmic rush and race of the worlds, and the wheeling +of all stars, the swinging and dancing of all atoms, the streaming and +eddying of the ancestral stuff of life was in the whirling of that +living Wheel; it was one immortal motion, continuous and triumphant in +the bodies of those men and maidens as they ran. And they, shop-girls +and shop-boys and young clerks, slipped off their memories of the desk +and counter, and a joy, an instinct, and a sense that had no memory woke +in them, savage, virgin, and shy; the pure and perfect joy of the young +body in its own strength and speed; the instinct of the hunter of the +hills and woodlands; the sense of feet padding on grass and fallen +leaves, of ears pricking alert, of eyes that face the dawn on the high +downs and go glancing through the coverts. And as this radiant and +vehement life rose in them like a tide their gravity and shyness and +severity passed from them; here and there hair was loosened, combs were +shed, and nobody stopped to gather them; for frenzy seized on the young +men, and their arms pressed on the girls' shoulders, urging the pace +faster and faster; and light, swift as their flying feet, shot from +their eyes, and they laughed each to the other as they ran. So divine +was now the madness of their running, so inspired the whirling of the +Wheel, that the thing showed plainly as the undying, immemorial ecstasy; +showed as the secret dance of magic and of mystery, taken over by the +London Polytechnic, and, at the very moment when its corybantic nature +most declared itself, constrained to an order and a beauty tremendous +and austere. + +So wise and powerful was the London Polytechnic. + +For Ransome, mixed with that joy of the running, there was a joy of his +own, an instinct and a sense, virgin and shy, absolved from memory. He +found it, when Winny Dymond ran before him, in the slender, innocent +movement of her hips under her thin tunic, in the absurd flap-flapping +of the door-knocker plat on her shoulders, in the glances flicked at him +by the tail of her eye as she wheeled from him in the endless pursuit +and capture and approach and flight, as she was parted, was flung from +him and returned to him in the windings of the Maze. He found it to +perfection in the pressure of each other's arms as the Maze wed them and +whirled them running, locked together in the pattern of the wheel. It +was not love so much as some inspired sense of comradeship mingled +inextricably with that other sense of absurdity and tenderness. + +Not love, not passion, even when in the excitement of the running she +swerved to the wrong side and he had to turn her with his two hands upon +her waist. For it was the law of their running that, though it was one +with the movement of life itself, mysteriously, while the thing lasted, +it precluded passion. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Ransome left Winny Dymond at St. Ann's Terrace, and went home along the +High Street. He went very slowly, as if in thought. + +At the railings of the Parish Church he paused, recalling something. Low +and square-towered, couchant in the moonlight behind its railings, the +Parish Church guarded under its long flank its huddled graves. + +He smiled for very Youth. It was here that he had run Winny to earth and +caught her. The Parish Church had been his accomplice in that capture. + +Wandsworth High Street twists and winds with the waywardness of a river. +The first turn brought him to the old stone bridge over the Wandle. On +the bridge before him, in the crook of the street, were the booths and +stalls of the night market, lit by blazing naphtha, color heaped on +color in a leaping, waving flare as of torches. On either side was a +twisted and jagged line of houses--brown-brick, flat-fronted, +eighteenth-century houses, and houses with painted fronts. Here a tall, +red-brick modern Parade shot up the gables of its insolent facade. +There, oldest of all, a yellow house stooped forward on the posts that +propped it. Somewhere up in the sky a tall chimney and a cupola. All +beautiful under the night, all dark or dim, with sudden flashes and +pallors and gleams, lamplit and moonlit; and all impressed upon +Ransome's brain with an extraordinary vividness and importance, as if he +had suddenly discovered something new about Wandsworth High Street. + +What he had discovered was the blessedness of living as he did in +Wandsworth High Street within three minutes' walk of St. Ann's Terrace. + +To be sure, what with the shop and the storage for drugs, Ransome's +father's house, with Ransome and his father and his mother and Mercier +and the maid in it, was somewhat cramped. And neither Ransome nor his +father nor his mother knew how beautiful it was with its brown-brick +front, its steep-pitched roof, and the two dormer windows looking down +on the High Street like two sleepy eyes under drooping lids. A narrow +slip of a house, it stood a foot or two back between the wine merchant's +and John Randall the draper's shop, and had the air of being squeezed +out of existence by them. Yet the name of Fulleymore Ransome, in gold +letters on a black ground, and with Pharmaceutical Chemist under it in a +scroll, more than held its own beside John Randall. The chemist's +dignity was further proclaimed by the immense bottles, three in a row +(the Carboys, Mr. Ransome called them), holding the magic liquids, a +blue, a red, and a yellow, wide-bellied at the base, and with pyramids +for stoppers. Under them, dividing the window pane, a narrow gold band +with black lettering advertised three distinct mineral waters. + +A yellow-ochre blind now screened the lower half of that window. Drawn +down unevenly and tilted at the bottom corner, it suffered a vague +glimpse of objects that from his earliest years had never ceased to +offend Ranny's sense of the beautiful and fit. + +He had not as yet considered very deeply the problems of his life. +Otherwise, in returning every night to his father's house, it must have +struck him that he was not what you might call a free man. For his +father's house had no door except the shop door, and it was the +peculiarity of that shop door that it did not admit of any latch key. +Every night young Ransome had to ring, and it was usually Mercier, with +his abominable smile, who let him in. + +To-night the door was opened cautiously on the chain and somebody +whispered, "Is that you, Ranny?" + +The chain was slipped, and he entered. + +A small bead of gas burned on a bracket somewhere behind the counter. +The light slid, pale as water, over the glass and mahogany of the +show-cases, wherein white objects appeared as confused and disconnected +patches. The darkness effaced every object in the shop that was not +white, with the queer effect that rows upon rows of white jars showed as +if hanging on it unsupported by their shelves. Very close, turned up to +him out of the darkness, was Ranny's mother's face. He kissed it. + +"Where's that Mercier?" said Ranny's mother. + +"What? Isn't he back yet?" + +"No," said Ranny's mother. "And your father's got the Headache." + +By a tender and most pardonable confusion between the symptoms and its +cause Ranny's mother had hit upon a phrase that made it possible for +them to discuss his father's affliction without the smallest, most +shadowy reference to its essential nature. For Ranny's mother, such +reference would have been the last profanity, a sacrilege committed +against the divinities of the hearth and of the marriage bed. But for +that phrase Mr. Ransome's weakness must have been passed in silence as +the unspeakable, incredible, unthinkable thing it was. + +At the phrase, more frequent in his mother's mouth than ever, Ranny drew +in his lips for a whistle; but instead of whistling he said, "Poor old +Humming-bird." + +"It's one of His bad ones," said Ranny's mother. + +He raised the flap of the counter, and they went through. He turned up +the gas so that the outlines of things asserted themselves and the +labels on the white jars gave out their secret gold. On one of these +labels, Hydrarg. Amm., which had no meaning for him, Ranny fixed a +fascinated gaze, thus avoiding the revelations of his mother's face. + +For Ranny's mother's face showed that she had been crying. + +Plump, and yet not large, her figure and her face were formed for gaiety +and charm. Her little nose was uptilted like Ranny's; but something that +was not gaiety, but pathos, had dragged down and made tremulous the +corners of a mouth that had once been tilted too--a flowerlike mouth, of +the same tender texture as her face, a face that was once one wide-open, +innocent pink flower. Now it was washed out and burnt with the courses +of her tears. Worry had fretted her soft forehead into lines and twisted +her eyebrows in an expression as of permanent surprise at life's +handiwork. And under them her dim-blue eyes, red-lidded, looked out with +the same sorrow and dismay. There was nothing left of her beauty but +her exuberant light-brown hair, which she dressed high on her head with +a twist and a topknot piteously reminiscent of gaiety and charm. + +She laid her hand on the knob of the left-hand inner door. + +"He's in the dispensin'-room," she said. + +Ranny turned round. His features tilted slightly, compelled by something +preposterous in the vision she had evoked. + +"Whatever game is he playin' there?" + +A faint flicker passed over his mother's face, as if it pleased her that +he could talk in that way. + +"Prescription," she said, and paused between her words to let it sink +into him. "Makin' it up, he is. Old Mr. Beesley's heart mixture." + +"My Hat!" said Ranny. He was impressed by the gravity of the situation. + +There were all sorts of things, such as toothbrushes, patent medicines, +babies' comforters, that Ranny's father with a Headache, or Ranny +himself or his mother could be trusted to dispense at a moment's notice. +But the drug strophanthus, prescribed for old Mr. Beesley, was not one +of them. It was tricky stuff. He knew all about it; Mercier had told +him. Whether it was to do Mr. Beesley good or not would depend on the +precise degree and kind of Ranny's father's Headache. + +"I've never known your father's Headache so bad as it is to-night," said +Ranny's mother. "As for makin' up prescriptions, sufferin' as He is, +He's not fit for it. He's not fit for it, Ranny." + +That was as near as she could go. + +"Of course he isn't." + +(They had to keep it up together.) + +But Ranny's mother felt that she had gone too far. + +"He ought to be in His bed--" + +"Of course he ought," said Ranny, tenderly. + +"And He would be if it wasn't for that Mercier." + +Thus subtly did she intimate that it was not his father but Mercier +whose behavior was reprehensible. + +"P'r'aps you'll go to him, Ranny?" + +"Hadn't we better wait for Mercier?" + +(Old Mr. Beesley's mixture was a case for Mercier.) + +"Him? Goodness knows when he'll be in. And it's not likely that y'r +father'll have him interferin' with him. They're sendin' at ten past +eleven, and it's five past now." + +Thus and thus only did she suggest the necessity for immediate action. +Also her fear lest Mercier should find Mr. Ransome out. As if Mercier +had not found him out long ago; as if he hadn't warned Ranny, time and +again, of what might happen. + +"All right, I'll go." + + * * * * * + +He went by the right-hand door at the back of the shop, and down a short +and exceedingly narrow passage, lined with shallow shelves for the +storage of drugs. + +Another door at the end of the passage led straight into the +dispensing-room outside, a long shed of corrugated iron run up against +the garden wall and lined with honey-colored pine. Under a wide stretch +of window was a work table. At one end of this table was a slab of +white marble; at the other a porcelain sink fitted with taps and sprays +for hot and cold water. From the far end of the room where the stove was +came a smothered roar of gas flames. On the broken inner wall were +shelves fitted with drawers of all sizes, each with its label, and above +them other shelves with row after row of jars. Near the stove, more +shelves with more and more jars, with phials, kettles, pannikins, and +pipkins. Everywhere else shelves of medicine bottles, innumerable +medicine bottles of all sorts and sizes, giving to the honey-colored +walls a decorative glimmer of sea-blue and sea-green. + +All this was brilliantly illuminated with gas that burned on every +bracket. + +To Ransome's senses it was as if the faint, the delicate colors of the +place gave a more frightful grossness and pungency to its smell. Dying +asafetida struggled still with gas fumes, and was pierced by another +odor, a sharp and bitter odor that he knew. + +At the long table, under the hanging gaselier, in shirt sleeves and +apron, Mr. Ransome stood. The light fell full on his sallow baldness and +its ring of iron-gray hair; on his sallow, sickly face; on his little +long, peaked nose with its peevish nostrils; even on his thin and +irritable mouth, unhidden by the scanty, close-trimmed iron-gray +mustache and beard. He was weedy to the last degree. + +Ranny came near and gazed inscrutably at this miracle of physical +unfitness. Under his gaze the pitiful and insignificant figure bore +itself as with a majesty of rectitude. + +Mr. Ransome had before him a prescription, a medicine bottle, a large +bottle of distilled water, two measuring-glasses, and a smaller bottle +half full of a pale-amber liquid. He had been standing motionless, +staring at these objects with a peculiar and intent solemnity. Now, as +if challenged and challenging, he drew the smaller measuring-glass +toward him with one hand. He held it to the light and moved his finger +nail slowly along the middle measuring line. Then with two hands that +trembled he poured into it a part of the infusion. The liquid went +tink-tinkling in a succession of little jerks. He held it to the light; +it rose a good inch above the line he had marked. He shook his head at +it slowly, with an air of admonition and reproof, and poured it back +into the bottle. + +This process he repeated seven times, always with the same solemn +intentness, the same reproving and admonitory air. + +At his seventh failure he turned with the dignity of a man overmastered +by outrageous circumstance. + +"Mercier not in?" he asked, sternly. (You would have said it was his son +Randall that he admonished and reproved.) + +"Not yet," said Ranny. And as he said it he possessed himself very +gently of the measuring-glass and bottle. (Mr. Ransome affected not to +notice this man[oe]uver.) + +"What is it?" + +"Tincture of strophanthus, sodae bicarb., and spirits of chloroform. Just +you mind how you handle it." + +"Right-O!" said Ranny. + +The chemist's small, iron-gray eyes were fixed on him with severity and +resentment. + +"How much?" said Ranny. + +"Up to three." Mr. Ransome's head was steadier than his hand. + +Ranny poured the dose. + +"Ac-acqua distillata--to eight ounces," said Mr. Ransome, disjointedly, +but with an extreme incision. + +Ranny poured again, and decanted the medicine into its bottle through a +funnel, corked it, tied on the capsule, labeled, addressed, wrapped, and +sealed it. The long-drawn, subtle corners of Ranny's eyes and mouth were +lifted in that irrepressible smile of his, while Mr. Ransome asserted +his pharmaceutical dignity by acrimonious comment. "_Now_ then! You +might have club feet instead of hands. Tha's right--mess the +sealin'-wax, waste the string, spoil anything you haven't got to pay +for. That'll do." + +Mr. Ransome took the parcel from his son's hand, turned it round and +round under the gaslight, laid it down, and dismissed it with a flick as +of contempt for his incompetence. At that Ranny gave way and giggled. + +Ten minutes later he and his mother stood in the doorway of the back +parlor and watched the master's superb and solitary ascent to his +bedroom on the first floor back. It was then that Ranny; still smiling, +delivered his innermost opinion. + +"Queer old Humming-bird. Ain't he, Mar?" + +His mother shook her head at him. "Oh, Ranny," she said, "you shouldn't +speak so disrespectful of your father." + +But she kissed him for it, all the same. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +That was how they kept it up together. + +Not that Mrs. Ransome was conscious of keeping it up, of ministering to +an illusion as monstrous as it was absurd. She had married Mr. Ransome, +believing with a final and absolute conviction in his wisdom and his +goodness. What she was keeping up had kept up for twenty-two years, and +would keep up forever, was the attitude of her undying youth. It was its +triumph over life itself. + +In her youth the draper's daughter had been dazzled by Mr. Ransome, by +his attainments, his position, his distinction. Fulleymore Ransome had +about him the small refinement of the suburban shopkeeper, made finer by +the intellectual processes that had turned him out a Pharmaceutical +Chemist. + +In her world of Wandsworth High Street his grave, fastidious figure had +stood for everything that was superior. He was superior still. He had +never offered his Headache as a spectacle to the public eye. Born in +secrecy and solitude, it remained unseen outside the sacred circle of +his home. Even there he had contrived to create around it an atmosphere +of mystery. So that it was open to Mrs. Ransome to regard each Headache +as an accident, a thing apart, solitary and miraculous in its +occurrence. Faced with the incredible fact, she found a certain +gratification in the thought that Mr. Ransome's position enabled him to +order the best spirit wholesale, and with a professional impunity. So +inviolate was his privacy that not even the wine and spirit merchant +next door could gage the amount of his expenditure in this item. + +Thus, in Mrs. Ransome's eyes, the worst Headache he had ever had could +not impair his innermost integrity. Her vision of him was inspired by an +innocence and sincerity that were of the substance of her soul. And in +this optimism she had brought up her son. + +Ranny, with his venturesomeness, had carried it a step further. For +Ranny, not only did Mr. Ransome's inebriety conceal itself under the +name of Headache, but in those hours when the Headache cast its +intolerable gloom over the household Ranny persisted--from his childhood +he had persisted--in regarding his father, perversely, as the source and +fount of joy. + +It was in this happy light he saw him on Sunday morning, when Mrs. +Ransome came into the back parlor, where he was hiding his paper, _The +Pink 'Un_, behind him under the sofa cushions. She was wearing her new +slaty-gray gown with the lace collar, and a head-dress that combined the +decorum of the bonnet with the levity and fascination of the hat. Black +it was, with a spray of damask roses and their leaves, that spring +upward from Mrs. Ransome's left ear. + +"Your father's goin' to church," she said. + +Ranny sat up among his cushions and said: "Oh, Lord! That Humming-bird's +a fair treat." + +He took it as a supreme instance of his father's humor. + +But that was not the way Mrs. Ransome meant that he should take it. +Ranny's admiration implied that the Humming-bird was carrying it off, +successfully, if you like, but still carrying it. Whereas what she +desired him to see was that there was nothing to be carried off. +Obviously there could not be, when Mr. Ransome was prepared to go to +church. + +For the going to church of Mr. Ransome was itself a ritual, a high +religious ceremony. Hitherto he had kept himself pure for it, abstaining +from all Headache overnight. It was this habitual consecration of Mr. +Ransome that made his last lapse so remarkable and so important, while +it revealed it as fortuitous. Ranny had missed the deep logic of his +mother's statement. Mr. Ransome was sidesman at the Parish Church, and +at no time was the Headache compatible with being sidesman. + +Nothing had ever interfered with the slow pageant of Mr. Ransome's +progress toward church. Outside in the passage he was lingering over his +preparations: the adjustment of his tie, the brushing of his tall hat, +the drawing on of the dogskin gloves he wore in his office. It was not +easy for Mr. Ransome to exceed the professional dignity of his frock +coat and gray trousers, and yet every Sunday, by some miracle, he did +exceed it. Each minute irreproachable detail of his dress accentuated, +reiterated, the suggestion of his perpetual sobriety. + +Still, there remained the memory of last night. Mrs. Ransome did not +evade it; on the contrary, she used it to demonstrate the indomitable +power of Mr. Ransome's will. + +"_I_ say he ought to be layin' down," she said. "But there--He won't. +You know what He is since He's been sidesman. It's my belief He'd rise +up off his deathbed to hand that plate. It's his duty to go, and go He +will if He drops. That's your father all over." + +"That's Him," Ranny assented. + +His mother looked him in the face. It was the look, familiar to Ranny on +a Sunday morning, that, while it reinstated Ranny's father in his +rectitude, contrived subtly, insidiously, to put Ranny in the wrong. + +"You're going, too," his mother said. + +Well, no, he wasn't exactly going. Not, that was to say, to any church +in Wandsworth. (He had, in fact, a pressing engagement to meet young +Tyser at the first easterly signpost on Putney Common, and cycle with +him to Richmond.) + +"It's only a spin," said Ranny, though the look on his mother's face was +enough to tell him that a spin, on a Sunday, was dissipation, and he, +recklessly, iniquitously spinning, a prodigal most unsuitably descended +from an upright father. + +And then (this happened nearly every Sunday) Ranny set himself to charm +away that look from his mother's face. First of all he said she was a +tip-topper, a howling swell, and asked her where _she_ expected to go to +in that hat, nippin' in and cuttin' all the girls out, and she a married +woman and a mother; and whether it wouldn't be fairer all around, and +much more proper, if she was to wear something in the nature of a veil? +Then he buttoned up her gloves over her little fat wrists and kissed her +in several places where the veil ought to have been; and when he had +informed her that "the Humming-bird was a regular toff," and had +dismissed them both with his blessing, standing on the doorstep of the +shop, he wheeled his bicycle out into the street, mounted it, and +followed at the pace of a walking funeral until his parents had +disappeared into the Parish Church. + +Then Ranny, in his joy, set up a prolonged ringing of his bicycle bell, +as it were the cry of his young soul, a shrill song of triumph and +liberation and delight. And in his own vivid phrase, he "let her rip." + +Of course he was a prodigal, a wastrel, a spendthrift. Going the pace, +he was, with a vengeance, like a razzling-dazzling, devil-may-care young +dog. + +A prodigal driven by the lust of speed, dissipating his divine energies +in this fierce whirling of the wheels; scattering his youth to the sun +and his strength to the wind in the fury of riotous "biking." A +drunkard, mad-drunk, blind-drunk with the draught of his onrush. + +That was Ranny on a Sunday morning. + + * * * * * + +He returned, at one o'clock, to a dinner of roast mutton and apple tart. +Conversation was sustained, for Mercier's benefit, at the extreme pitch +of politeness and precision. It seemed to Ranny that at Sunday dinner +his father reached, socially, a very high level. It seemed so to Mrs. +Ransome as she bloomed and flushed in a brief return of her beauty above +the mutton and the tart. She bloomed and flushed every time that Mr. +Ransome did anything that proved his goodness and his wisdom. Sunday was +the day in which she most believed in him, the day set apart for her +worship of him. + +By what blindfolded pieties, what subterfuges, what evasions she had +achieved her own private superstition was unknown, even to herself. It +was by courage and the magic of personality--some evocation of her lost +gaiety and charm--but above all by courage that she had contrived to +impose it upon other people. + +The cult of Mr. Ransome reached its height at four o'clock on this +Sunday afternoon, when Ranny's Uncle John Randall (Junior) and Aunt +Randall dropped in to tea. Both Mr. and Mrs. Randall believed in Mr. +Ransome with the fervent, immovable faith of innocence that has once for +all taken an idea into its head. Long ago they had taken it into their +heads that Mr. Ransome was a wise and good man. They had taken it on +hearsay, on conjecture, on perpetual suggestion conveyed by Mrs. +Ransome, and on the grounds--absolutely incontrovertible--that they had +never heard a word to the contrary. Never, until the other day, when +that young Mercier came to Wandsworth. And, as Mrs. Randall said, +everybody knew what he was. Whatever it was that Mr. Randall had heard +from young Mercier and told to Mrs. Randall, the two had agreed to hold +their tongues about it, for Emmy's sake, and not to pass it on. Wild +horses, Mrs. Randall said, wouldn't drag it out of her. + +Not that they believed or could believe such a thing of Mr. Ransome, who +had been known in Wandsworth for five-and-twenty years before that young +Mercier was so much as born. And by holding their tongues about it and +not passing it on they had succeeded in dismissing from their minds, for +long intervals at a time, the story they had heard about Mr. Ransome. +"For, mind you," said Mr. Randall, "if it got about it would ruin him. +Ruin him it would. As much as if it was true." + +Long afterward when she thought of that Sunday, and how beautifully +they'd spoken of Mr. Ransome; that Sunday when they had had tea upstairs +in the best parlor on the front; that Sunday that had been half pleasure +and half pain; that strange and ominous Sunday when poor Ranny had +broken out and been so wild; long afterward, when she thought of it, +Mrs. Ransome found that tears were in her eyes. + +She had no idea then that they had heard anything. Family affection was +what you looked for from the Randalls, and on Sundays they showed it by +a frequent dropping in to tea. + +John Randall, the draper, was a fine man. A tall, erect, full-fronted +man, a superb figure in a frock coat. A man with a florid, handsome +face, clean-shaved for the greater salience of his big mustache (dark, +grizzled like his hair). A man with handsome eyes--prominent, slightly +bloodshot, generous eyes. He might have passed for a soldier but for +something that detracted, something that Ranny noticed. But even Ranny +hesitated to call it flabbiness in so fine a man. + +Mr. Randall had married a woman who had been even finer than himself. +And she was still fine, with her black hair dressed in a prominent +pompadour, and her figure curbed by the tightness of her Sunday gown. +Under her polished hair Mrs. Randall's face shone with a blond pallor. +It had grown up gradually round her features, and they, becoming more +and more insignificant, were now merged in its general expression of +good will. Ranny noted with wonder this increasing simplification of +his Aunt Randall's face. + +She entered as if under stress, towing her large husband through the +doorway, and in and out among the furniture. + +The room that received them was full of furniture, walnut wood, +mid-Victorian in design, upholstered in rep, which had faded from +crimson to an agreeable old rose. Rep curtains over Nottingham lace hung +from the two windows. There was a davenport between them, and, opposite, +a cabinet with a looking-glass back in three arches. It was Mr. +Ransome's social distinction that he had inherited this walnut-wood +furniture. Modernity was represented by a brand-new overmantle in +stained wood and beveled glass, with little shelves displaying Japanese +vases. The wall paper turned this front parlor into a bower of gilt +roses (slightly tarnished on a grayish ground). + +And as Mrs. Ransome sat at the head of the oval table in the center you +would never have known that she was the woman with red eyes, the +furtive, whispering woman who had opened the door to her son Randall +last night. She sat in a most correct and upright attitude, she looked +at John Randall and his wife, and smiled and flushed with gladness and +with pride. It took so little to make her glad and proud. She was glad +that Bessie was wearing the black and white which was so becoming to +her. She was glad that there was honey as well as jam for tea, and that +she had not cut the cake before they came. She was proud of her teapot, +and of the appearance of her room. She was proud of Mr. Ransome's +appearance at the table (where he sat austerely), and of her brother, +John Randall, who looked so like a military man. + +And John Randall talked; he talked; it was what he had come for. He had +a right to talk. He was a member of the Borough Council, an important +man, a man (it was said of him) with "ideas." He was a Liberal; and so, +for that matter, was Mr. Ransome. Both were of the good, safe middle +class, and took the good, safe, middle line. + +They sat there; the Nottingham lace curtains veiled them from the gazes +of the street, but their voices, raised in discussion, could be most +distinctly heard; for the window was a little open, letting in the +golden afternoon. They sat and drank tea and abused the Tory Government. +Not any one Tory Government, but all Tory Governments. Mr. Ransome said +that all Tory Governments were bad. Mr. Randall, aiming at precision, +said he wouldn't say they were bad so much as stupid, cowardly, and +dishonest. Stupid, because they were incapable of the ideas the Liberals +had. Cowardly, because they let the Liberals do all the fighting for +ideas. Dishonest, because they stole the ideas, purloined 'em, carried +them out, and sneaked the credit. + +And when Ranny asked if it mattered who got the credit provided they +_were_ carried out, Mr. Randall replied solemnly that it did matter, my +boy. It mattered a great deal. Credit was everything, the nation's +confidence was everything. A Government lived on credit and on nothing +else. And his father told him that he hadn't understood what his uncle +had been saying. + +"If anybody asks _me_--" said Mr. Ransome. He interrupted himself to +stare terribly at Mrs. Ransome, who was sending a signal to her son and +a whisper, "Have a little slice of gingercake, Ran dear." + +"If anybody asks me _my_ objection to a Tory Government, I'll put it for +'em," said Mr. Ransome, "in a nutshell." + +"Let's have it, Fulleymore," said Mr. Randall. + +And Mr. Ransome let him have it--in a nutshell. + +"With a Tory Government you always, sooner or later, have a war. And +who," said Mr. Ransome, "_wants_ war?" + +Mr. Randall bowed and made a motion of his hand toward his +brother-in-law, a complicated gesture which implied destruction of all +Tory Governments, homage to Mr. Ransome, and dismissal of the subject as +definitively settled by him. + +Mrs. Ransome seized the moment to raise her eyebrows and the teapot +toward Mrs. Randall, and to whisper again, surreptitiously, "Jest +another little drain of tea?" + +Then Ranny, who had tilted his chair most dangerously backward, was +heard saying something. A bit of scrap, now and then, with other nations +was, in Ranny's opinion, a jolly good thing. Kept you from gettin' +Flabby. Kept you Fit. + +Mr. Randall, in a large, forbearing manner, dealt with Ranny. He wanted +to know whether he, Ranny, thought that the world was one almighty Poly. +Gym.? + +And Mr. Ransome answered: "That's precisely what he does think. Made for +his amusement, the world is." + +Ranny was young, and so they all treated him as if he were neither good +nor wise. + +And Ranny, desperately tilted backward, looked at them all with a smile +that almost confirmed his father's view of his philosophy. He was +working up for his great outbreak. He could feel the laughter struggling +in his throat. + +"I don't say," said Mr. Ransome, ignoring his son's folly, "that I'm +complaining of this Boer War in especial. If anything"--he weighed it, +determined, in his rectitude, to be just even to the war--"if anything +we sold more of some things." + +"Now what," said Mrs. Randall, "do you sell most of in time of war?" + +"Sleepin' draughts, heart mixture, nerve tonic, stomach mixture, and so +forth." + +"And he can tell you," said Mr. Randall, "to a month's bookin' what +meddycine he'll sell." + +"What's more," said the chemist, with a sinister intonation, "I can tell +who'll want 'em." + +"Can you reelly now?" said Mrs. Randall. "Why, Fulleymore, you should +have been a doctor. Shouldn't he, Emmy?" + +Mrs. Ransome laughed softly in her pride. "He couldn't be much more than +He is. Why, He doctors half the poor people in Wandsworth. They all come +to Him, whether it's toothache or bronchitis or the influenza, or a +housemaid with a whitlow on her finger, and He prescribes for all. If +all the doctors in Wandsworth died to-morrow some of us would be no +worse off." + +"Many's the doctor's bill he's saved me," said Mr. Randall. + +"Yes, but it's a tryin' life for Him, sufferin' as He is in 'is own +'ealth. Never knowin' when the night bell won't ring, and He have to get +up out of his warm bed. He doesn't spare Himself, I can tell you." + +And on they went for another quarter of an hour, boldly asserting, +delicately hinting, subtly suggesting that Mr. Ransome was a good man; +as if, Ranny reflected, anybody had ever said he wasn't. Mr. Ransome +withdrew himself to his armchair by the fireplace, and the hymn of +praise went on; it flowed round him where he sat morose and remote; and +Ranny, in the window seat, was silent, listening with an inscrutable +intentness to the three voices that ran on. He marveled at the way they +kept it up. When his mother's light soprano broke, breathless for a +moment, on a top note, Mrs. Randall's rich, guttural contralto came to +its support, Mr. Randall supplying a running accompaniment of bass. And +now they burst, all three of them, into anecdote and reminiscence, +illustrating what they were all agreed about, that Mr. Ransome was a +good man. + +Nobody asked Ranny to join in; nobody knew, nobody cared what he was +thinking, least of all Mr. Ransome. + +He was thinking that he had asked Fred Booty in to tea, and that he had +forgotten to say anything about it to his mother, and that Fred was +late, and that his father wouldn't like it. + + * * * * * + +He didn't. He didn't like it at all. He didn't like Fred Booty to begin +with, and when the impudent young monkey arrived after the others had +gone, and had to have fresh tea made for him, thus accentuating and +prolonging the unpleasantly, the intolerably festive hour, Mr. Ransome +felt that he had been tried to the utmost, and that courtesy and +forbearance had gone far enough for one Sunday. So he refused to speak +when he was spoken to. He turned his back on his family and on Booty. He +impressed them with his absolute and perfect disapproval. + +For, as the Headache worked in Mr. Ransome, all young and gay and +innocent things became abominable to him. Especially young things with +spirits and appetites like his son Randall and Fred Booty. This +afternoon they inspired him with a peculiar loathing and disgust. So did +the malignant cheerfulness maintained by his wife. Escape no doubt was +open to him. He might have left the room and sat by himself in the back +parlor. But he spared them this humiliation. Outraged as he was, he +would not go to the extreme length of forsaking them. He was a good man; +and, as a good man, he would not be separated from his family, though he +loathed it. So he hung about the room where they were; he brooded over +it; he filled it with the spirit of the Headache. Young Booty became so +infected, so poisoned with this presence that his nervous system +suffered, and he all but choked over his tea. Young Booty, with his +humor and his wit, the joy of Poly. Ramblers, sat in silence, miserably +blushing, crumbling with agitated fingers the cake he dared not eat, and +all the time trying not to look at Ranny. + +For if he looked at Ranny he would be done for; he would not be able to +contain himself, beholding how Ranny stuck it, and what he made of it, +that intolerable, that incredible Sunday afternoon; how he saw it +through; how he got back on it and found in it his own. For, as Mr. +Ransome went from gloom to gloom, Ranny's spirit soared, indomitable, +and his merriment rose in him, wave on wave. + +What he could make of it Booty saw in an instant when Mr. Ransome left +the room at the summons of the shop-bell. Ranny, with a smile of +positive affection, watched him as he went. + +"Queer old percher, ain't he?" Ranny said. + +Then he let himself go, addressing himself to Booty. + +"The old Porcupine may seem to you a trifle melancholy and morose. You +can't see what's goin' on in his mind. You've no ideer of the glee he +bottles up inside himself. Fair bubblin' and sparklin' in him, it is. +Some day he'll bust out with it. I shouldn't be surprised if, at any +moment now, he was to break out into song." + +Booty, very hot and uncomfortable under Mrs. Ransome's eyes, affected to +reprove him. "You dry up, you young rotter. Jolly lot of bottlin' up +there is about you." + +But there was that in Ranny which seemed as if it would never dry up. He +hopped a chair seven times running, out of pure light-heartedness. The +sound of the hopping brought Mr. Ransome in a fury from the shop below. +He stood in the doorway, absurd as to his stature, but tremendous in the +expression of the gloom that was his soul. + +"What's goin' on here?" he asked, in a voice that would have thundered +if it could. + +"It's me," said Ranny. "Practisin'." + +"I won't 'ave it then. I'll 'ave none of this leapin' and jumpin' over +the shop on a Sunday afternoon. Pandemonium it is. 'Aven't you got all +the week for your silly monkey tricks? I won't 'ave this room used, +Mother, if he can't behave himself in it of a Sunday." + +And he slammed the door on himself. + +"On Sunday evenin'," said his son, imperturbably, as if there had been +no interruption, "eight-thirty to eleven, at his residence, High Street, +Wandsworth, Mr. Fulleymore Ransome will give an Entertainment. Humorous +Impersonations: Mr. F. Ransome. Step Dancin': Mr. F. Ransome. Ladies are +requested to remove their hats. Song: _Put Me Among the Girls_, Mr. F. +Ransome--" + +"For shame, Ranny," said his mother, behind her pocket handkerchief. + +"--There will be a short interval for refreshment, when festivities will +conclude with a performance on the French Horn: Mr. F. Ransome." + +His mother laughed as she always did (relieved that he could take it +that way); but this time, through all her laughter, he could see that +there was something wrong. + +And in the evening, when he had returned from seeing Booty home, she +told him what it was. They were alone together in the front parlor. + +"Ranny," she said, suddenly; "if I were you I wouldn't bring strangers +in for a bit while your father's sufferin' as he is." + +"Oh, I say, Mother--" + +Ranny was disconcerted, for he had been going to ask her if he might +bring Winny Dymond in some day. + +"Well," she said, "it isn't as if He was one that could get away by +Himself, like. He's always in and out." + +"Yes. The old Hedgehog scuttles about pretty ubiquitous, don't he?" + +That was all he said. + +But though he took it like that, he knew his mother's heart; he knew +what it had cost her to give him that pitiful hint. He was balancing +himself on the arm of her chair now, and hanging over her like a lover. + +He had always been more like a lover to her than a son. Mr. Ransome's +transports (if he could be said to have transports) of affection were +violent, with long intermissions and most brief. Ranny had ways, soft +words, cajoleries, caresses that charmed her in her secret desolation. +Balancing himself on the arm of her chair, he had his face hidden in the +nape of her neck, where he affected ecstasy and the sniffing in of +fragrance, as if his mother were a flower. + +"What do you _do_?" said Ranny. "Do you bury yourself in violets all +night, or what?" + +"Violets indeed! Get along with you!" + +"Violets aren't in it with your neck, Mother--nor roses neither. What +did God Almighty think he was making when he made you?" + +"Don't you dare to speak so," said his mother, smiling secretly. + +"Lord bless you! _He_ don't mind," said Ranny. "He's not like Par." + +And he plunged into her neck again and burrowed there. + +"Ranny, if you knew how you worried me, you wouldn't do it. You reelly +wouldn't. I don't know what'll come to you, goin' on so reckless." + +"It's because I love you," said Ranny, half stifled with his burrowing. +"You fair drive me mad. I could eat you, Mother, and thrive on it." + +"Get along with you! There! You're spoiling all my Sunday lace." + +Ranny emerged, and his mother looked at him. + +"Such a sight as you are. If you could see yourself," she said. + +She raised her hand and stroked, not without tenderness, his rumpled +hair. + +"P'r'aps--If you had a sweetheart, Ran, you'd leave off makin' a fool of +your old mother." + +"I wouldn't leave off kissin' her," said he. + +And then, suddenly, it struck him that he had never kissed Winny. He +hadn't even thought of it. He saw her fugitive, swift-darting, +rebellious rather than reluctant under his embrace; and at the thought +he blushed, suddenly, all over. + +His mother was unaware that his kisses had become dreamy, tentative, +foreboding. She said to herself: "When his time comes there'll be no +holding him. But he isn't one that'll be in a hurry, Ranny isn't." + +She took comfort from that thought. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Ranny had received his first intimation that he was not a free man. And +it had come upon him with something of a shock. He had made his burst +for freedom five years ago, when he refused to be a Pharmaceutical +Chemist in his father's shop, because he could not stand his father's +ubiquity. And yet he was not free to leave his father's house; for he +did not see how, as things were going, he could leave his mother. He was +not free to ask his friends there either; not, that was to say, friends +who were strangers to his father and the Headache. Above all, he was not +free to ask Winny Dymond. He had thought he was, but his mother had made +him see that he wasn't, because of his father's Headache; that he really +ought not to expose the poor old Humming-bird to the rude criticism of +people who did not know how good he was. That was what his mother, bless +her! had been trying to make him see. And if it came to exposing, if +this was to be a fair sample of their Sundays, if the Humming-bird was +going to take the cake for queerness, what right had he to expose little +Winny? + +And would she stand it if he did? She might come once, perhaps, but not +again. The Humming-bird would be a bit too much for her. + +Then how on earth, Ranny asked himself, was he going to get any further +with a girl like Winny? His acquaintance with her was bound to be a +furtive and a secret thing. He loathed anything furtive, and he hated +secrecy. And Winny would loathe and hate them, too. And she might turn +on him and ask him why she was to be made love to in the streets when +his mother had a house and he lived in it? + +It was the first time that this idea of making love had come to him. Of +course he had always supposed that he would marry some day; but as for +making love, it was his mother who had put into his head that +exquisitely agitating idea. + +To make love to little Winny and to marry her, if (and that was not by +any means so certain) she would have him--no idea could well have +agitated Ranny more. It blunted the fine razorlike edge of his appetite +for Sunday supper. It obscured his interest in _The Pink 'Un_, which he +had unearthed from under the sofa cushion in the back parlor, whither he +had withdrawn himself to think of it. And thinking of it took away the +best part of his Sunday night's sleep. + +For, after all, it was impossible; and the more you thought of it the +more impossible it was. He couldn't marry. He simply couldn't afford it +on a salary of eight pounds a month, which was a little under a hundred +a year. He couldn't even afford it on his rise. Fellows did. But he +considered it was a beastly shame of them; yes, a beastly shame it was +to go and tie a girl to you when you couldn't keep her properly, to say +nothing of letting her in for having kids you couldn't keep at all. +Ranny had very fixed and firm opinions about marrying; for he had seen +fellows doing it, rushing bald-headed into this tremendous business, +for no reason but that they had got so gone on some girl they couldn't +stick it without her. Ranny, in his decency, considered that that wasn't +a reason; that they ought to stick it; that they ought to think of the +girl, and that of all the beastly things you could do to her, this was +the beastliest, because it tied her. + +He had more than ever decided that it was so, as he lay in his attic +sleepless on his narrow iron bedstead, staring up at the steep slope of +the white-washed ceiling that leaned over him, pressed on him, and +threatened him; watching it glimmer and darken and glimmer again to the +dawn. He had put away from him the almost tangible vision of Winny lying +there, pretty as she would be, in her little white nightgown, and her +hair tossed over his pillow, perhaps, and he vowed that for Winny's sake +he would never do that thing. + +As for the feeling he had unmistakably begun to have for Winny, he would +have to put that away, too, until he could afford to produce it. + +It might also be wiser, for his own sake, to give up seeing her until he +could afford it; but to this pitch of abnegation Ranny, for all his +decency, couldn't rise. + +Besides, he had to see her. He had to see her home. + + * * * * * + +And so he took his feeling and put it away, together with a certain +sachet, scented with violets, and having a pattern of violets on a +white-satin ground, and the word Violet going slantwise across it in +embroidery. He had bought it (from his mother) in the shop, to keep (he +said) in his drawer among his handkerchiefs. And in his drawer, among +his handkerchiefs, he kept it, wrapped tenderly in tissue paper. He +tried hard to forget that he had really bought it to give to Winny on +her birthday. He tried hard to forget his feeling, wrapped up and put +away with it. But he couldn't forget it; because every day his +handkerchiefs, impregnated with the scent of violets, gave out a whiff +that reminded him, and his feeling was inextricably entangled with that +whiff. + +It was with him as he worked in his mahogany pen at Woolridge's. All day +a faint odor of violets clung to him and spread itself subtly about the +counting-house, and the fellows noticed it and sniffed. And, oh, how +they chaffed him. "Um-m-m. You been rolling in a bed of violets, Ranny?" +And "Oo-ooh, what price violets?" And "You might tell us her name, old +chappie, if you _won't_ give the address." Till his life was a burden to +him. + +So to end the nuisance he took that sachet wrapped in tissue paper, and +put it in the round, japanned tin box where he kept his collars, and let +his collars run loose about the drawer. He shut the lid down tight on +the smell and took the box and hid it in the cupboard where his boots +were, where the smell couldn't possibly get out, and where the very next +day his mother found it and received some enlightenment as to Ranny's +state of mind. But, like a wise woman, she kept it to herself. + +And the smell departed gradually from the region of Ranny's breast +pocket, and he had peace in his pen. His fellow-clerks suspected him of +a casual encounter and no more. A matter too trivial for remark. + +The counting-house at Woolridge's was an immense long room under the +roof, lit by a row of windows on each side and a skylight in the middle. +The door gave on a passage that ran the whole length of the room, +dividing it in two. Right and left the space was partitioned off into +pens more or less open. On Ransome's right, as he entered, was the pen +for the women typists. On his left the petty cashier's pen, overlooking +the women. Next came the ledger clerks, then the statement clerks; and +facing these the long desk of the checking staff. At the back of the +room, right and left, were the pens of the very youngest clerks, who +made invoices. From their high desks they could see the bald spot on the +assistant secretary's head. He, the highest power in that hierarchy, had +a special pen provided for him behind the ledger and the statement +clerks; a little innermost sanctuary approached by a short passage. +Surrounded entirely by glass, he could overlook the whole of his +dominion, from the boys at the bottom to the gray-headed cashier and the +women typists at the top. + +And in between, scattered and in rows, the tops of men's heads: heads +dark and fair and grizzled, all bowed over the long desks, all +diminished and obscured in their effect by the heavy mahogany of their +pens, by the shining brass trellis-work that screened them, by the +emerald green of the hanging lampshades, by the blond lights and clear +shadows of the walls, and by the everlasting streaming, drifting, and +shifting of the white paper that they handled. + +The whole place was full of sounds: the hard clicking of the +typewriters, and under it the eternal rustling of the white papers, the +scratching of pens, the thud of ledgers on desks, the hiss of their +turning leaves, and the sharp smacking and slamming as they closed. + +And, in the middle of that stir and motion made by hands, all those tops +of heads were still, as if they took no part in it; through the +intensity of their absorption they were detached. Every now and then one +of them would lift and hold up a face among those tops of heads, and it +was like the sudden uncanny insurgence of an alien life. + +That stillness was abhorrent to young Ransome. So was the bowing of his +head, the cramping of his limbs, and his sense of imprisonment in his +pen. + +And all his life he would go on sitting there in that intolerable +constraint. He had no hope beyond exchanging a larger pen at the bottom +of the room for a smaller one at the top. He had begun at the very +bottom as an invoice clerk at a pound a week. He was now a statement +clerk at eight pounds a month. Working up through all his grades, he +would become a ledger clerk at twelve pounds a month. He might stick at +that forever, but if he had luck he might become a petty cashier at +sixteen pounds. That couldn't happen before he was thirty, if then. He +was bound to get his rise in the autumn. But that was no good. It +wouldn't be safe, not really safe, to marry until he had become a petty +cashier. To end in the petty cashier's narrow pen by the door, that was +the goal and summit of his ambition. + + * * * * * + +Day in day out he worked now with desperate assiduity. He bowed his +young head; he cramped his glorious limbs; he steeped his very soul in +statements of account for furniture. Furniture bought with hideous +continuity by lucky devils, opulent beasts, beasts that wallowed +inconsiderately; worst of all by beasts, abominable beasts, who couldn't +afford it and were yet about to marry and to set up house. Woolridge's +offered a shameless encouragement to these. It lured them on; it laid +out its nets for them and caught and tangled them and flung them to +their ruin. All over London and the provinces Woolridge's posters were +displayed; flaunting yet insidious posters where a young man and a young +woman with innocent, idiotic faces were seen gazing, fascinated, into +Woolridge's windows. Woolridge's artist had a wild humor that gave the +show away by exaggerating the innocence and idiocy of Woolridge's +victims. It appealed to Ransome by the audacity with which it had defied +Woolridge's to see its point. Woolridge's itself was a perpetual +tempting and solicitation. Ranny wondered how in those days he ever +resisted its appeal to him to be a man and risk it and make a home for +Winny. + + * * * * * + +And as the months went on he kept himself fitter than ever. He did +dumb-bell practice in his bedroom. He sprinted like mad. He rowed hard +on the river. He was so fit that in June (just before stock-taking) he +entered for the Wandsworth Athletic Sports, and won the silver cup +against Fred Booty in the Hurdle Race. He was more than ever punctual at +the Poly. Gym. + +And sometimes, on a Sunday afternoon, he would take Winny for a bicycle +ride into the country. He liked pushing her machine up all the hills; +still more he liked to help her in her first fierce charging of them, +with a strong hand at the back of her waist. That was nothing to the joy +of scorching on the level with linked hands. And it was best of all when +they rested, sitting side by side under a birch tree on the Common, or +lying in the long grass of the fields. + +Thus on a Sunday afternoon in June they found themselves alone in a +corner of a meadow in Southfields. All day Ransome had been overcome by +a certain melancholy which Winny for some reason affected to ignore. + +They had been silent for a perceptible time, Ransome lying on his back +while Winny, seated beside him, gathered what daisies and buttercups +were within her reach. And as he watched her sidelong, it struck him all +at once that Winny's life was worse even than his own. Winny was clever, +and she had a berth as book-keeper in Starker's, one of the smaller +drapers' shops in Oxford Street, near Woolridge's. Her position was as +good as his, yet she only earned five pounds a month to his eight. And +he hated to think of Winny working, anyway. + +"Winny," he said, suddenly, "do you like book-keeping?" + +"Of course I do," said Winny. She didn't, but she was not going to say +so lest he should think that she was discontented. + +"They--are they decent to you at Starker's?" + +"Of course they are. I would like," said Winny, in her grandest manner, +"to see anybody trying it on with _me_." + +"Oh, well, I suppose it's all right if you like it. But I +thought--perhaps--you didn't." + +"You'd no business to think." + +"Can't help it. Born thinkin'." + +"Well--it shows how much you know. I mean to enjoy life," said Winny. +"And I do enjoy it." + +Ranny, lying on his back with his face turned up to the sky, said that +that was a jolly sight more than he did; that for his part he thought it +a pretty rotten show. + +Winny stared, for this utterance was most unlike him. + +"My goodness! What ever in the world's wrong with you?" + +Everything, he answered, gloomily, was wrong. + +"What an idea!" said Winny. + +It _was_ an idea, he said, if it was nothing else. At any rate, it was +his idea. And Winny wanted to know what made him have it. + +"Oh, I dunno. There are things a fellow wants he hasn't got." + +"What sort of things?" + +"All sorts." + +"Well--don't think about them. Think," said Winny, "of the things you +_have_ got." + +"What things?" + +"Why," said Winny, counting them off on her fingers, "you've got a +father--and a mother--and new tires to your bike. Good boots" (she had +stuck buttercups in their laces) "and a most beautiful purple tie." (She +held another buttercup under his chin.) + +"It _is_ a tidy tie," Ranny admitted, smiling because of the buttercups. +"But me hat's a bit rocky." + +"Quite a good hat," said Winny, looking at it with her little head on +one side. "And you've won the silver cup for the Wandsworth Hurdle Race. +What more do you want?" + +"It's what a fellow hasn't got he wants." + +"Well, what haven't you got, then?" + +"Prospects," said Ranny. "I've no prospects. Not for years and years." + +"No," said Winny, with decision. "And didn't ought to have. Not at your +age." + +She had no sympathy for him and no understanding of his case. + +Ranny sat up, stared about him, and sighed profoundly. + +And because he could think of nothing else to say he suggested that it +was time to go. + +Winny sprang to her feet with a swiftness that implied that if it was to +go he wanted, she was more than ready to oblige him. As she mounted her +bicycle, the shut firmness of her mouth, the straightness of her back, +and the grip of her little hands on the handle bars were eloquent of her +determination to be gone. And her face, he noticed, was pinker than he +ever remembered having seen it. + +And he wondered what it was he had said. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +It was after that evening that he observed a change in her, a change +that he could neither account for nor define. It seemed to him that she +was trying to avoid him, and that he was no longer agreeably affected by +her behavior, as he had been in the beginning by her fugitive, evasive +ways. Then she had, indeed, led him a dance, but he had thoroughly +enjoyed the fun of it. Now the dancing and the fun were all over. At +least, so he was left to gather from her manner; for the strangeness of +it was that she said nothing now. There was about her a terrible +stillness and reserve, and in her little face, once so tender, the +suggestion of a possible hardness. + +He was not aware that the stillness and reserve were in himself, nor +that the hardness was in his own face as it set in his indomitable +determination to stick it, and not to do the beastly thing, nor yet that +there were moments when that stillness and that set look terrified +Winny. Neither was he aware that Winny, under all her terror, had an +instinct that divined him and understood. + +And as the months went on he saw less and less of her. Though he was +punctual at their corner in Oxford Street, he was always too late to +find Winny there. He gave that up, and began to haunt the door in +Starker's iron shutter at closing-time. He had found out that girl +clerks, what with chattering and putting on their hats and things, were +always a good ten minutes later than the men. He had seen fellows +(fellows from Woolridge's, some of them) hanging round the shutters of +the big draperies to meet the girls. By making a dash for it from +Woolridge's he could reach Starker's just in time to catch Winny as she +came out, delicately stepping through the little door in the great iron +shutter. + +Evening after evening he was there and never caught her. She was off +before he could get through the door in his own shutter. + +Then (it was one evening in August) he saw her. He was not making a dash +for it; he was strolling casually and without hope in the direction of +Starker's, and he saw her walking away, arm in arm with another girl, a +girl he had never seen before. He would have overtaken them but that the +presence of the girl deterred him. + +He followed, losing them in the crowd, recovering, losing them again; +then they turned northward up a side street and were gone. He noticed +that the strange girl was taller than Winny by the head and shoulders, +and that she went lazily, deliberately, with sudden lingerings, and +always with a curious swinging movement of her hips. He had been close +upon Winny at the corner as they turned, so close that he could have +touched her. He thought she had seen him, but he could not be sure. He +was also aware of a large eye slued round toward him in a pretty profile +that lifted itself, deep-chinned, above Winny's head. Their behavior +agitated him, but he forbore to track them further. Decency told him +that that would be dishonorable. + +The next evening and the next he watched the door in the iron shutter, +and was too late for Winny. But the third evening he saw her standing by +the door and talking to the same strange girl. The girl had her back to +him, but Winny faced him. She was not aware of him at first; but, at the +signal that he gave, she turned sharply and went from him, drawing the +girl with her, arm in arm. + +They disappeared northward up the same side street as before. + +That was on a Friday. On Sunday he called at St. Ann's Terrace and saw +Maudie Hollis, who told him that Winny had gone up Hampstead way. No, +not for good, but with a friend. She had been very much taken up lately +with a friend. + +"You know what she is when she's taken up," said Maudie. + +He sighed unaware, and Maudie answered his sigh. + +"It isn't a gentleman friend." + +"No?" It was wonderful the indifference Ranny packed into that little +word. + +"Catch _her_!" said Maudie. + +She smiled at him as he turned away, and in the middle of his own misery +it struck him that poor Maudie would have to wait many years before +Booty could afford to marry her, and that already her proud beauty was a +little sharpened and a little dimmed by waiting. + +On Monday he refrained from hanging round the door in Starker's iron +shutter. But on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday he was at his post, and +remained there till the door was shut almost in his face. + +On Friday he was late, and he could see even in the distance the shut +door. + +But somebody was there, somebody was standing close up against the +shutter; somebody who moved forward a step as he came, somebody who had +been waiting for him. It was not Winny. It was the tall girl. + +He raised his hat in answer to the movement that was her signal, and +would have passed on, but she stopped him. She stood almost in front of +him, so that he should not pass. And the biggest and darkest blue eyes +he had ever seen arrested him with a strange bending on him of black +brows. + +The strange girl was saying something to him, in a voice full and yet +low, a voice with a sort of thick throb in it, and in its thickness a +sweet and poignant quality. + +"Please," it was saying, "excuse me, you're Mr. Ransome, aren't +you--Winny Dymond's friend?" + +With a "Yes" that strangled itself and became inarticulate, he admitted +that he was Mr. Ransome. + +The girl lowered her eyelids (deep white eyelids they were, and hung +with black fringes, marvelously thick and long); she lowered them as if +her own behavior and his had made her shy. + +"I'm Winny's friend, too," she said. "That's why I'm here." + +And with that she looked him in the face with eyes that shot at him a +clear blue out of their darkness. Her eyes, as he expressed it +afterward, were "stunners," and they were "queer"; they were the +"queerest" thing about her. That was his word for their +half-fascinating, half-stupefying quality. + +"Are you waiting for her?" he asked. + +"No. It's no good waiting for her. She's gone." + +"Gone?" + +"Gone home." + +He rallied. "Then what are you waiting for?" + +"I was waiting for you," she said, "to tell you that it's no good." + +He had moved a little way out of the stream of people, so that he was +now placed with his back against the shutter, and she with her shoulder +to the stream. As she stood thus a man jostled her, more to attract her +attention than to move her from his path. She gave a little gasp and +shrank back with a movement that brought her nearer to Ransome and to +his side. And as she moved there came from her, from her clothes, and +from her hair, a faint odor of violets, familiar yet wonderful. + +"You don't mind my speaking to you?" she said. + +"No," said he, "but let's get out of this first." + +He put his hand lightly on her arm to steer her through the stream. +There was something about her--it may have been in her voice, or in the +way she looked at him--something helpless that implored and entreated +and appealed to his young manhood for protection. Her arm yielded to his +touch, yet with a slight pressure that made him aware that its tissue +was of an incredible softness. Somehow, for the moment while this touch +and pressure lasted, he found it impossible to look at her. Some +instinct held his eyes from her, as if he had been afraid. + +They moved on slowly, aimlessly it seemed to Ransome; yet steering he +was steered, northward, up the side street where he had seen her +disappear with Winny. It was quiet there. He no longer touched her. He +could look at her now. + +He looked. And what he saw was a girl well grown and of incomparable +softness. She could not have been much more than twenty, but her body +was already rounded to the full flower of its youth. This body was +neither tall nor slender nor particularly graceful. Yet it carried +itself with an effect of tallness and slenderness and grace. + +In the same way she impressed him as being well dressed. Yet she only +wore a little plain black gown cut rather low, with a broad lace collar. +There was a black velvet band round her waist and another on her wide +black hat. And yet another and a narrower band of black velvet round her +full white neck. + +The face above that neck was not beautiful, for her little straight nose +was a shade too blunt, her upper lip a shade too long and too flat; her +large mouth, red and sullen-sweet, a shade too unfinished at the edges. +There was, moreover, a hint of fullness about the jaw and chin. But the +color and the texture of this face made almost imperceptible its flaws +of structure. It was as if it had erred only through an excess of +softness that made the flesh of it plastic to its blood, to the subtle +flame that transfused the white of it, flushing and burning to rose-red. +A flame that even in soaring knew its place; for it sank before it could +diminish the amazing blueness of her eyes; and it had left her forehead +and her eyelids to the whiteness that gave accent to eyebrows and +eyelashes black as her black hair. + +That was how this girl's face, that was not beautiful, contrived to give +an impression of strange beauty, fascinating and stupefying as her +voice. + +Her voice had begun again. + +"It really isn't any good," it said. + +"What isn't?" + +"Your hanging about like this. It won't help you. It won't, really. You +don't know Winny." + +"I say, did she ask you to tell me that?" + +"Not she! 'Tisn't likely. And if she did, you don't suppose I'd let on. +I'm giving you the straight tip. I'm telling you what I know about her. +I'm her friend, else I couldn't do it." + +"But--why?" + +"Don't ask me--how do I know? I suppose I couldn't stand seeing you +waiting outside there, night after night, all for nothing." + +She drew herself up, so that she seemed to be looking down at him; she +seemed, with all her youth, to be older than he, to be no longer +childlike and innocent and helpless. And her voice, her incomparable +voice, had an edge to it; it was the voice of maturity, of experience, +of the wisdom of the world. + +"You can take it from me," said this voice, "that it doesn't do a man a +bit of good to go on hanging about a girl and worrying her when she +doesn't want him." + +"You mean--she doesn't like me?" + +"Like you? As far as I know she likes you well enough." + +"Then--for the life of me I can't see why--" + +"Liking a man isn't wanting him. And you're not going the way to make +Winny want you." + +"Oh--" + +He had drawn up in the middle of the pavement just to consider whether, +after all, there wasn't something in it. + +"You're--you're not offended?" Her voice implored now and pleaded. + +"That's all right." + +"Well--if you're sure you're not--would you mind seeing me home?" + +"Certainly. With pleasure." + + * * * * * + +She was all helpless again and childlike, and he liked her that way +best. + +"I don't like the streets," she explained. "I'm afraid of them. I mean +I'm afraid of the people in them. They stare at me something awful. So +horribly rude, isn't it, to stare?" + +"Rude?" said Ransome. "It's disgustin'." + +"As if there was something peculiar about me. Do _you_ see anything +peculiar about me? Anything, I mean, to make them stare?" + +He was silent. + +"_Do_ you?" she insisted, poignantly. + +They were advancing headlong toward intimacy and its embarrassments. + +"Well, no," he said, "if you ask me--no, I don't. Except that, don't you +know, you're--" + +"I'm what?" + +"Well--" + +"Oh!" (She became more poignant than ever.) "You _do_, then--" + +"No, I don't--on my honor I--I only meant that--well, you _are_ a bit +out of the way, you know." + +Her large gaze interrogated him. + +"Out of the way all round, I should fancy. Something rather wonderful." + +"Something--rather--wonderful--" she repeated, drowsily. + +"Strikes me so--that's all." + +"Strange?" + +"Sort of--" + +"It _is_ strange that we should be talking this way--when you think-- +Why, you don't even know my name." + +"No more I do," said Ransome. + +"My name is Violet. Violet Usher. Do you like it?" + +"Very much," said Ransome. + +He did not know if this was "cock-a-tree"; but if it was he found +himself enjoying it. + +"And yours is Randall. Mr. Randall Ransome, aren't you?" + +"I say, you know; how did you get hold of that?" + +"Why--Winny told me." + +In the strangeness of it all he had forgotten Winny. + +"Then she told you wrong. Now I think of it, Winny doesn't know my real +name. My real name would take your breath away." + +"Tell it me." + +"Well--if you will have it--stand well back and hold your hat on. Don't +let it catch you full in the face. John--Randall--Fulleymore--Ransome. +Now you know me." + +She smiled enchantingly. "Not quite. But I know something about you +Winny doesn't know. That's strange, isn't it?" + +It was, if you came to think of it. + +They had crossed the Euston Road now, and Miss Usher turned presently up +another side street going north. She stopped at a door in a long row of +dingy houses. + +"This is me," she said, "I've got a room here. It was awfully good of +you to bring me." + +"Not at all," he murmured. + +"And you're sure you didn't mind my speaking to you like that? I +wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been Winny's friend." + +"Of course not." + +She was not sure whether he were answering her question or assenting to +her statement. + +"And now," she said, "you're going home?" + +"I suppose so." But he remained rooted to the doorstep, digging into a +crevice in it with his stick. + +From the upper step she watched him intently. + +"And we sha'n't see each other again." + +_He_ was not sure whether it was a statement or a question. + +"Sha'n't we?" He said it submissively, as if she really knew. + +She was opening the door now and letting herself in. Miss Usher had a +latch key. + +"Where?" said Miss Usher, softly, but with incision. She had turned now +and was standing on her threshold. + +"Oh--anywhere--" + +"Anywhere's nowhere." Miss Usher was smiling at him, but as she smiled +she stepped back and shut the door in his excited face. + +He turned away, more stupefied than ever. + +For the first time in his life he had encountered mystery. And he had no +name for it. + +But he had made a note of her street, and of the number of her door. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +That night Ransome was more than ever the prey of thought, if you could +call it thought, that mad racing and careering of his brain which +followed his encounter with Miss Usher. The stupefaction which had been +her first effect had given way to a peculiar excitement and activity of +mind. When he said to himself that Miss Usher had behaved queerly, he +meant that she had acted with a fine defiance of convention. And she had +carried it off. She had compelled him to accept her with her mystery as +a thing long known. She had pushed the barriers aside, and in a moment +she had established intimacy. + +For only intimacy could have excused her interference with his innermost +affairs. She had given him an amount of warning and advice that he would +not have tolerated from his own mother. And she had used some charm that +made it impossible for him to resent it. What could well be queerer than +that he should be told by a girl he did not know that his case was +hopeless, that he must give up running after Winny Dymond, that he was +only persecuting a girl who didn't care for him. Ransome had no doubt +that she had spoken out of some secret and mystic knowledge of her +friend. + +He supposed that women understood each other. + +And after all what had she done that was so extraordinary? She had only +put into words--sensible words--his own misgivings, his own profound +distrust of the event. + +What _was_ extraordinary, if he could have analyzed it, was the calmness +that mingled with his disturbance. Calmness with regard to Winny and to +the issue taken out of his hands and decided for him; calmness, and yet +a pain, a distinct pain that he was not subtle enough to recognize as +remorse for a disloyalty. And, under it all, that nameless, inexplicable +excitement, as if for the first time in the affairs of sex, he had a +sense of mystery and of adventure. + +He did not ask himself how it was that Winny had not stirred that sense +in him. He did not refer it definitely to Violet Usher. It had moved in +the air about her; but it remained when she was gone. + + * * * * * + +So far was he from referring it to Miss Usher that when it died down he +made no attempt to revive it by following the adventure. He was +restrained by some obscure instinct of self-preservation, also by the +absurd persistence with which in thought he returned again and again to +Winny Dymond. That recurrent tenderness for Winny, a girl who had no +sort of tenderness for him, was a thing he did not mean to encourage +more than he could help. Still, it kept him from running after any other +girl. He was not in love with Violet Usher, and so, gradually, her magic +lost its hold upon his memory. + + * * * * * + +Autumn came, and with it another Grand Display at the Polytechnic +Gymnasium, the grandest he had yet known. As if it had been some great +civic function, it was attended by the Mayor of Marylebone in his robes. +To be sure, the Mayor, who was "going on" that night, left some time +before the performance of Mr. J. R. F. Ransome on the Horizontal Bar. + +But Ranny was not aware of the disappearance of the Mayor. He was not +perfectly aware of his own amazing evolutions on the horizontal bar. He +was not perfectly aware of anything but the face and eyes of Violet +Usher fixed on him from the side gallery above. The gallery was crowded +with other faces and with other eyes, all fixed on him; but he was not +aware of them. The gallery was for him a solitude pervaded by the +presence of Violet Usher. + +She was seated in the front row directly opposite him; her arms were +laid along the balustrade, and she leaned out over them, bending her +dark brows toward him, immovable and intent. He did not know whether she +was alone there. To all appearance she was alone, for her face remained +fixed above her arms, and it was as if her eyes never once looked away +from him. + +And under their gaze an exultation seized him and a fierce desire, not +only to exceed and to excel all other performers on the horizontal bar, +but to go beyond himself; beyond his ordinary punctual precision; beyond +the mere easy swing and temperate rhythm. Instead of the old +good-natured rivalry, it was as if he struggled and did battle in some +supreme and terrible fight. Each movement that he made fired his blood; +from the first flinging of his lithe body upward, and the sliding of its +taut muscles on the bar, to the frenzy of his revolving, triumphal, +glorious to behold. Each muscle and each nerve had its own peculiar +ecstasy. + +And when he dropped from the high bar to the floor he stood tingling and +trembling and breathless from the queer violence with which his heart +threw itself about. So utterly had he gone beyond himself. And he knew +that his demonstration had not been quite so triumphal, so glorious as +he had thought it. There had been far too much hurry and excitement +about it. And Booty told him he was all right, but perhaps not quite up +to his usual form. + +It was with the air of a conqueror that Ranny pushed his way through the +packed line of spectators in the gallery. It was with a crushed and +nervous air, as of some great artist, conscious of his aim and of his +failure, that he presented himself to Violet Usher, sliding slantwise +into the place she made for him. + +It was as if she had known that he would come to her. They shook hands +awkwardly. And with the stirring of her body there came from her that +faint warm odor of violets. + +"I didn't expect to see you here," he said, at last. + +"Winny brought me; else I shouldn't have come." + +She was very precise in making Winny responsible for her appearance. He +gathered that that was her idea of propriety. + +"Well--anyhow--it's a bit of all right," he said. Then they sat silent +for a while. + +And the girl's face turned to Ranny with a flying look; and it was as if +she had touched him with her eyes, lightly and shyly, and was gone. Then +her eyes began slowly to look him up and down, up and down, from his +bare neck and arms, white against the thin crimson binding of his +"zephyr," from his shoulders and from his chest where the lines and +bosses of the muscles showed under the light gauze, and from his crimson +belt, down the firm long slopes to his knees; and it was as if her eyes +brushed him, palpably, with soft feather strokes. They rested on his +face; and it was as if they held him between two ardent hands. And over +her own face as she looked at him there went a little wave of change. +Her rich color stirred and deepened; her lips parted for the quick +passage of her breath; and her blue eyes looked gray as if veiled in a +light vapor. + +Ranny was seized with an overpowering, a terrible consciousness of +himself and of his evolutions on the horizontal bar. + +"Well," he said, as if in apology, "you've seen me figuring queerly." + +"Oh, it's all right for men," she said. "Besides, I've seen _you_ +before." + +"Why, you weren't here last time?" + +"No. Not here." + +"Where, then? Where on earth can you have seen me?" + +She bent her brows at him in that way she had, under the brim of her +wide hat. "I saw you at Wandsworth--at the Sports--running in that race. +When you won the cup." + +"Oh, Lord," said Ranny, expressing his innermost confusion. + +"Well, I'm sure you ran beautifully." + +"Oh, yes, I _ran_ all right." + +"And you jumped!" + +"Anybody can jump," said Ranny. + +"Can they?" + +"Oh, Lord, yes. You should see Fred Booty." + +"I did see him. You won the cup off him." + +She drew herself up, in that other way she had, as if challenged. + +"And he'll win it off me next year. You bet. Look--here they are." + +Some instinct, risen he knew not whence, compelled him to divert her +gaze. + +From below in the great hall came the sound of the rhythmic padding and +tramping of feet. The Young Ladies of the Polytechnic were marching in. +Right and left they wheeled, and right and left ranged themselves in two +long lines under the galleries. Now they were marking time with the +stiff rise and fall of black stockings under the short tunics. Facing +them, at the head of her rank, was Winny Dymond, very upright and +earnest. And with each movement of her hips the crimson sash of +leadership swung in rhythm at her side. + +Miss Usher turned to him. "Is Winny with them?" + +"Rather. There she is. Right opposite. Jolly she looks, doesn't she?" + +Miss Usher looked at Winny. The bent black brows bent lower, and a large +blue eye slued round into her profile, darting a sudden light at him. + +"Don't ask _me_," she said, "I'm sure _I_ don't know." And she turned +her shoulder on him and sat thus averted, gazing at her own hands folded +in her lap. + +Ransome leaned out over the balustrade and watched Winny. And for a +moment, as he watched her, he felt again the old sense of tenderness and +absurdity, mingled, this time, with that mysterious pain. + +A barbell struck on the floor. A feminine voice gave the sharp word of +command, and the Young Ladies formed up for their performance on the +parallel bars. + +Miss Usher still sat averted. + +"Look," he said, at last, "it's Winny's turn." + +She turned slowly, reluctantly almost, and looked. + +Winny Dymond, shy, but grave and earnest, was going through her little +preliminary byplay at the bars. Then, with her startling suddenness, she +rushed at them, and swung herself, it seemed to Ransome, with an +increased abandonment, a wilder rhythm and motion; and when she raised +her body like an arch, far-stretching and wide-planted, it seemed to him +that it rose higher and stretched farther and wider than before, that +there was, in fact, something preposterous in her attitude. For as Miss +Usher looked at Winny she drew herself up and her red mouth stiffened. + +Ranny's tension relaxed when Winny flung herself from side to side again +and over, and lighted on her feet in the little curtseying posture, +perfunctory and pathetic. + +He clapped his hands. "'Jove! That's good!" He was smiling tenderly. + +He turned to Miss Usher, eager and delighted. "Well--what'd you think of +it?" + +The eyes he gazed into were remote and cold. Miss Usher did not answer +him. And he gathered from her silence that she disapproved profoundly of +the performance. He wondered why. + +"Oh, come," he said. "She's the best we've got. There's not one of those +girls that can touch her on the bars. Look at them." + +"I don't want to look at them. I didn't think it would be like that. I'm +not used to it. I've never been to a Gymnasium in my life before." + +"You ought to come. You should join us, Miss Usher. Why don't you?" + +"Thank you, Mr. Ransome, I'd rather not. I don't see myself!" + +He didn't see her either. Some of his innocence had gone. She had taken +it away from him. He was beginning to understand how Winny's performance +had struck her. It was magnificent, but it was not a thing that could be +done by a nice woman, by a woman who respected herself and her own +womanhood and her own beauty; not a thing that could be done by Violet +Usher. He was not sure that in her view it was consistent with +propriety, with reticence, with a perfect purity. And he began to wonder +whether his own view of it had not been a little shameless. + +He rushed, for sheer decency, into a stuttering defense. + +"Well, but--well, but--but it's all right, don't you know?" + +"It's all right for men. They're different. But--" + +"Not right for women?" + +"If you reelly want to know--no. I don't think it is. It isn't pretty, +for one thing." + +"Oh, I say--how about Winny?" + +"Winny's different. It doesn't seem to matter so much for her." + +"Why not--for her?" + +"Well--she's a queer creature anyhow." + +"How d'you mean--queer?" + +"Well--more like a boy, somehow, than a girl. She doesn't care. She'll +do anything. And she's plucky. If she's taken a thing into her head +she'll go through with it whatever you say." + +"Yes, she's got pluck," he assented. "_And_ cheek." + +"Mind you, she's as good as gold, with all her queerness. But it _is_ +queer, Mr. Ransome, if you're a woman, not to care what you do, or what +you look like doing it. And she's so innocent, she doesn't reelly know. +She couldn't do it if she did. All the same, I wish she wouldn't." + +She seemed to brood over it in beautiful distress. + +"It's a pity that the boys encourage them. Boys don't mind, of course. +But _men_ don't like it." + +And with every word of her strange, magical voice there went from him +some shred of innocence and illusion. It was, of course, his innocence, +his ignorance that had made him tolerant of a Grand Display, that had +filled him with admiration for the Young Ladies of the Polytechnic +Gymnasium, and that had attracted him to Winny Dymond. Everything he had +thought and felt about Winny was illusion. It was illusion, that sense +she gave him of tenderness and of absurdity. Gymnastics were all very +well in their way. But nice women, the women that men cared about, women +like Violet Usher, did not make of their bodies a spectacle in Grand +Displays. Little Winny, whatever she did, was all right, of course; but +now he came to think of it, he began to wish, like Violet Usher, that +she wouldn't do it. It was as a boy and her comrade that he had admired +her. It was as a man that he criticized her now, looking at her through +Violet Usher's eyes. And it was as a boy that he had cared, and as a man +that he had ceased to care. + +In one night Ranny had suddenly grown up. + +Of course, it might have been different if she had cared for _him_. + +"What does it mean, the Combined Maze? What is it?" + +Miss Usher was studying her programme. + +The Combined Maze? That wasn't so easy to explain. But Ranny explained +it. It was, he said, a maze, because you ran it winding in and out like, +and combined, because men and women ran in it all mixed up together. +They made patterns accordin' as they ran, and the patterns were the plan +of the maze. You didn't see the plan. You didn't know it, unless you +were leader. You just followed. + +"I see. Men and women together." + +"Men and women together." + +"Are you running in it?" + +"Yes." + +"Does Winny run in it?" + +"Rather. We run together. You'll see how it's done." + +Miss Usher thought she saw. + + * * * * * + +And they ran in it together, Ransome with Winny before him, turning from +him, parting from him, flying from him, and returning to him again. +Always with the same soft pad of her feet, the same swaying of her +sturdy, slender body, the same rising and falling on her shoulders of +her childish door-knocker plat. + +Winny was a child; that was all that could be said of her; and he, he +was a man, grown up suddenly in a single night. + +He ran, perfunctorily, through all the foolish turnings and windings of +the maze. He put his hands on Winny's waist to guide her when, in her +excitement, she went wrong. He linked his arm with hers when they ran +locked, shoulder to shoulder, in the Great Wheel; but it was as if he +held and caught, and was locked together with a child. Winny's charm was +gone; and with it gone the sense of tenderness and absurdity; gone the +magic and the madness of the running. For in Ranny's heart there was +another magic and another madness. And it was as if Life itself had +caught him and locked him with a woman in the whirling of its Great +Wheel. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +He haunted that door in the shutter more than ever in the hope of seeing +Violet Usher. Not that he wanted to haunt it. It was as if, set his feet +southward as he would, they were turned back irresistibly and drawn +eastward in the direction of the door. + +There was nothing furtive and secret in his haunting. He had a right to +hang about Starker's, for he knew Miss Usher now. He had been formally +introduced to her by Winny as they left the Polytechnic together, on the +night of the Grand Display. Winny, preoccupied with her own performance +on the parallel bars, had remained unaware of their communion in the +gallery, and Violet Usher had evidently judged it best to say nothing +about their previous interviews. + +The introducing, of course, made all the difference in the world; for +Ransome, reckless as he was, respected the conventions where women were +concerned. He had seen too much of the secret and furtive ways of other +fellows, and he knew what their hanging about meant. It meant in nine +cases out of ten that they wanted kicking badly. And Ranny would have +told you gravely that, in his experience, it was the "swells" who wanted +kicking most of all. The "fellows," the shop assistants, and the young +clerks, like himself, were fairly decent, but sometimes they wanted +kicking, too, and in any case the "flabby" way they fooled about with +girls, and their "silly goats' talk" outraged Ranny. It made a girl +cheap, and kept other fellows off her. It didn't give her her chance. It +wasn't cricket. + +He was prepared to kick, personally, any fellow he found making Winny +Dymond or Violet Usher cheap. + +Not that Winny lent herself to cheapness, but about Violet he was not +quite sure. And if you had asked why not, he would have told you it was +because she was so different. By which he meant so dangerously, so +disastrously feminine and innocent and pretty. He knew now (she had +"jolly well shown him") that Winny could take care of herself; but +Violet, no; she was too impulsive, too helpless, too confiding. To think +of her waiting for him like that--for a fellow she'd never met +before--in Oxford Street at closing-time! How did she know that he +wasn't a blackguard? Supposing it had been some other fellow? Ranny's +muscles quivered as he thought of Violet's innocence and Violet's +danger. + +All this was luminously clear to Ranny. + +But when he asked himself why, and to what end he himself desired to +cultivate her acquaintance, it was there that obscurity set in. One +thing he was sure about. He did not intend to marry her. If he couldn't +afford to marry Winny he most certainly could not afford to marry +Violet, not for years and years, so many years that you might just as +well say never, and have done with it. Violet was not the sort of girl +you could ask to wait for you years and years. His youth was not too +sanguine to divine in her the makings of a more expensive woman than +even a petty cashier could afford. + +To be sure, Ranny did not enter into any sordid calculations, neither +did he think the thing out in so many words; for in this matter of +Violet Usher he was incapable of any sustained and connected thought. It +came to him--the utter hopelessness of it--in glimpses and by flashes, +as he sat at his high desk in the counting-house. + +But no flashes came to him with the question, Why, then, did he keep on +running after Violet Usher? He ran because he couldn't help it; because +of the sheer excitement of the running; because he was venturesome, and +because of the very mystery and danger of the adventure. + +But, though he hung round Starker's evening after evening, from the +middle to the very end of October, he never once caught sight of Violet +Usher. Winny he caught, as often as not, now that he had given up trying +to catch her; sometimes he caught her at Starker's, sometimes at their +old corner by the Gymnasium; and whenever he caught her he walked home +with her. If Winny did not positively seek capture, she no longer +positively evaded it. She was no longer afraid of him, recognizing, no +doubt, that he wanted nothing of her, that he would never worry her +again. It was as if she had given him his lesson, and was content now +that he had learned it. + +One night, early in November, as they were going over Wandsworth Bridge, +the question that had been burning in him suddenly flared up. + +"What has become of your friend Miss Usher?" + +"Nothing," said Winny, "has become of her. She's gone home. Her father +sent for her." + +"What ever for?" + +"To look after her. She never should have left home." + +Then she told him what she knew of Violet, bit by bit, as he drew it out +of her. She was very fond of Violet. Violet had pretty ways that made +you fond of her. Everybody was fond of Violet. Only her people--they'd +been a bit too harsh and strict with her, Winny fancied. Not that she +knew anything but what Violet had told her. + +Where was her home? + +In the country. Down in Hertfordshire. Her father was a farmer, a small +farmer. The trouble was that Violet couldn't bear the country. She +wouldn't stay a day in it if she could help it. She was all for life. +She'd been about a year in town. No, Winny hadn't known her for a year. +Only for a few months really, since she came to Starker's. She'd been in +several situations before that. She was assistant at the ribbon counter +at Starker's. The clerks didn't have anything to do with the shop girls +as a rule: but Winny thought the custom silly and stuck up. Anyhow, +she'd taken a fancy to Violet, seeing her go in and out. And Violet +needed a deal of looking after. She was like a child. A spoiled child +with little ways. Winny had tried her best to take care of her, but she +couldn't be taking care of her all the time. She was glad she had gone +home, though she was so fond of her. But she was afraid she wouldn't +stay long. + +"You think," said Ransome, "she'll come back?" + +"I shouldn't be surprised if she turned up any day." + +"And you'll take care of her?" + +"Yes, I shall take care of her." + +He looked at her, and for a moment it revived, it stirred in his heart, +that odd mingled sense of absurdity and tenderness. + + * * * * * + +She would come back, he told himself; she would come back. Meanwhile he +could call his soul his own, to say nothing of his body. Under all the +shock of it Ransome felt a certain relief in realizing that Violet Usher +had gone. It was as if some danger, half discerned, had been hanging +over him and had gone with her. + +But winter and spring passed, and she did not come back. They passed +monotonously, like all the springs and winters he had known. He had got +his rise at Michaelmas; but he was free from the obsession of the +matrimonial idea and all that he now looked forward to was an indefinite +extension of the Athletic Life. + +In June of nineteen-four he entered for the Wandsworth Athletic Sports. +He hoped to win the silver cup for the Hurdle Race, against Fred Booty, +as he had done last year. + +Wandsworth was sure of its J. R. F. Ransome. Putney and Wimbledon, +competing, were not sending any better men than they had sent last year. +And this year, as Booty owned, Ransome was "a fair masterpiece," a young +miracle of fitness. His admirable form, hitherto equal to young Booty's, +was improved by strenuous training, and at his worst he had what Booty +hadn't, a fire and a spirit, a power, utterly incalculable, of sudden +uprush and outburst, like the loosening of a secret energy. When he +flagged it would rise in him and sting him to the spurt. But, while it +made him the darling of the crowd, it was apt to upset the betting of +experts at the last minute. + +There is a level field not far from Wandsworth which is let for football +matches and athletic sports. Railings and broken hedges and a few elm +trees belt the field. All round the space marked out for the contest, a +ring of ropes held back the straining crowd; and all round, within the +ring, went the course for the mile-flat race. Down one side of the +field, facing the Grand Stand, was the course for the jumping, for the +hundred yards' flat race, and for the hurdle race, which was the last +event. On this side, where the crowd was thickest, the rope was +supplemented by a wooden barrier. + +The starting-post was on the right near the entrance to the field; the +winning-post on the left directly opposite the Grand Stand. Those who +could not buy tickets for the Grand Stand had to secure front places at +the barrier if they wished to see anything. + +Here, then, there was a tight-packed line of men and women, youths and +girls, with an excited child here and there squeezed in among them, or +squatting at their feet under the barrier. Here were young Tyser and +Buist and Wauchope of the Polytechnic, who had come to cheer. And here, +by the winning-post, well in the front, having been there since the +gates were open, were Maudie Hollis and Winny Dymond, in flower-wreathed +hats and clean white frocks. Behind, conspicuous in their seats on the +Grand Stand as became them, were Mr. and Mrs. Randall, and with them was +Ranny's mother. + +For all these persons there was but one event--the Hurdle Race. For all +of them, expectant, concentrated on the imminence of the Final Heat, +there was but one distraction, and that was the remarkable behavior of a +young woman who had arrived too late for a satisfactory place among the +crowd. + +She had wriggled and struggled through the rear, with such success that +her way to the front row was obstructed only by the bodies of two small +children. They were firmly wedged, yet not so firmly but that a +determined young woman could detach them by exerting adequate pressure. +This she did; and having loosened the little creatures from their +foot-hold, she partly lifted, partly shoved them behind her and slipped +into their places at the barrier. This high-handed act roused the +resentment of a young man, the parent or guardian of the children. He +wanted to know what she thought she was doing, shoving there, and told +her that the kids had as much right to see the blooming show as she had, +and he'd trouble her to give 'em back the place she'd taken. And it was +then that the young woman revealed herself as remarkable. For she turned +and bent upon that young man a pair of black brows with blue eyes +smiling under them, and said to him in a vivid voice that penetrated to +the Grand Stand, "Excuse me, but I _do_ so want to see." And the young +man, instead of making the obvious retort, took off his hat and begged +her pardon and gave her more room than she had taken. + +"Well," said Mr. Randall (for he had been observing her for some time +with sidelong appreciation), "some people have a way with them." + +"Some people have impudence," said Mrs. Randall. + +"And if it was you or me, Bessie," Mrs. Ransome said, "it wouldn't have +been made so easy for us." + +"I see you wanting to shove anybody, Emmy," said her brother. + +"If I did, I shouldn't begin with little innocent children. I should +shove some one of my own size." + +Then they were silent and paid no more attention to the young woman and +her ways. + +For far down at the end of the course the racers, the winners of the +first four heats, were being ranged for the start, four abreast; the two +young men from Putney and Wimbledon on the inside of the course, Fred +Booty in the middle, and Ransome outside. Booty knew that, starting even +with his rival, he hadn't much of a chance. As for the young men from +Putney and Wimbledon, they would be nowhere. + +Of those four young bodies, Ransome's was by far the finest. Even Booty, +with his wild slenderness and faunlike grace, could not be compared with +Ransome, so well knit, so perfect in every limb was he. Beside him the +two young men from Putney and Wimbledon were distinctly weedy. He stood +poised, with head uplifted, his keen mouth tight shut, his nostrils +dilated, his eyes gazing forward, intent on the signal for the start. +His brown hair, soaked in the sweat of the first heat and then +sun-dried, was crisped and curled about his head. Under his white gauze +"zephyr" and black running-drawers the charged muscles quivered. His +whole body was a quivering vehicle for the leashed soul of speed. + +The pistol-shot was fired. They let themselves go. From far up the +course by the winning-post, where Winny leaned out over the barrier, it +was as if at the first row of hurdles four bodies leaped into the air +like one and wriggled there. At the sixth row, well in sight, two +bodies, Booty and Ransome, soared clean and dropped together. Putney and +Wimbledon rose wriggling close behind their drop. At the seventh row +Ransome was in front, divided from Booty by an almost imperceptible +interval. Putney and Wimbledon were several yards behind. At the eighth +and the ninth hurdles he rose gloriously and alone; Booty dropped with a +dull thud a yard behind him. Putney and Wimbledon were nowhere. Nobody +looked at them as they went lolloping, unevenly, dejectedly, over their +seventh hurdle. + +And now Booty was catching up, but the race was Ransome's. He knew it. +Booty knew it. The field knew it. + +Ranny's mother knew it. Little shivers went up and down her back; there +was a painful constriction in her throat, and tears of excitement in her +eyes; her hand was clenched convulsively over her pocket handkerchief +which had rolled itself into a ball. She had been holding herself in; +for she knew that these symptoms would increase when she saw Ranny, her +boy, come running. + +Below, at the barrier, there were hoarse cries, shrill cries, deep +shouting. "Go it, Ransome! Go it, old Wandsworth! Wandsworth wins!" +Tyser and Buist and Wauchope were yelling "Stick it, Ranny! Stick it!" +"Stick it!" "Stick--it!" The last voice, which was Wauchope's, died away +in a groan. + +Somebody was leaning over the barrier, on a line with the last hurdles. +Somebody stretched out an arm and shook a little white handkerchief at +him as he came on. Somebody caught his eyes and struck him with a blue +flash under black brows. She struck and fixed him as he ran to his last +leap. + +He looked at her and started and stood staggering with checked speed. +And as he staggered Booty rose slenderly and dropped and rushed on to +the tape-line at the winning-posts. The white tape fluttered across him +as he breasted it. Booty had won the race. + +They cheered him; they were bound to cheer the winner. But at the +barrier and from the Grand Stand there burst forth a more frantic uproar +of applause as Ransome recovered himself and took his last hurdle at a +stand. + +It was all very well to cheer him; but he was beaten, beaten in the race +that was his. + + * * * * * + +He staggered out of the course. Hanging his head, and heedless of his +friends, and of Booty's hand on his bent shoulder, he went and hid +himself in the dressing-tent. + +And there in the dressing-tent, his faunlike face more sanguine than +ever in his passion, Booty burst out like a young lunatic. He swore most +horribly. He swore at the umpire. He swore at Ransome. He swore at +everybody all round. The more Ranny congratulated him, the more he swore +at him. He called Ranny a blanky young fool, and asked him what the +blank he did it for. He said it was a blanky shame, and that if anybody +tried to give _him_ a blanky cup, he'd throw it at 'em. Even when they'd +calmed him down a bit, he still swore that he'd give Ranny the cup, for +Ranny'd given him the race. He explained to them in his hoarsest tones +that it stood to reason he could never have got in with the pace Ranny'd +got on him. It wasn't fair, he said. It was a fluke, a blanky fluke. + +And round him Tyser and Buist and Wauchope clamored in the tent and +agreed with him, declaring that it wasn't fair. Of course it was a +fluke, a blanky fluke. + +And Ranny, though he told Booty to dry up and stow it; though he put it +to Tyser and Buist and Wauchope that it wasn't any blanky fluke, that it +couldn't well be fairer, seeing how he'd funked it at the finish, Ranny +knew in his heart that somewhere there was something queer about it. He +couldn't think why on earth he'd funked it. + + * * * * * + +That night, in her little room in St. Ann's Terrace, Winny lay awake and +cried. + +Violet Usher had come back. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +It was from the next day, Sunday, that he dated it--what happened. It +followed as a sequel to the events of Sunday. + +For Ransome was convinced that it never could have happened if he had +not gone with Wauchope on Sunday evening to that Service for Men. He +used to say that if you traced it back far enough, poor old Wauchope was +at the bottom of it. It was poor old Wauchope who had "rushed" him for +the Service (in calling him poor old Wauchope, he recognized him as the +unknowing and unwilling thing of Destiny). Thus it had its root and rise +in the extraordinary state of Wauchope's soul. + +Wauchope had realized that he _had_ a soul, and was beginning to take an +interest in it. That, of course, was not the way he put it when he +approached Ransome on Saturday night after the Sports Dinner at the +"Golden Eagle." All he said was that he was "in for it." Been let in by +a curate johnnie who'd rushed him for a Service for Men to-morrow night +at Clapham. Wauchope wasn't going because he wanted to, but because the +curate was such a decent chap he didn't like to disappoint him. He ran a +Young Men's Club in St. Matthias's, Clapham, and Wauchope helped him by +looking in now and then for a knock-up with the gloves. The curate was +handy with the gloves himself. A bit cumbrous, but fancied himself as a +featherweight, in a skipping, dodging, dance-all-round-you, +land-you-one-presently sort of style. Well, the curate johnnie had been +handing round printed invitations for this Service. "All Welcome," don't +you know? "Come, and bring a Friend." Wauchope had promised, Honor +Bright, he'd come and bring a friend. And Ransome, in a weak moment, had +consented to be brought. + +The Service would be at eight, and would last, say, till nine. Half past +nine was the very earliest hour he could fix for his appointment with +Miss Usher. + +For he had seen her. She had risen up before him, to his amazement, on +that Sunday evening, as he turned out of his own door on his way to +supper with Wauchope at Clapham. He had walked with her for five +minutes, wheeling his bicycle in the gutter, while they settled how and +where they were to meet. + +She was living in Wandsworth, lodging in St. Ann's Terrace, near to +Winny Dymond, so that Winny could take care of her. She had got another +situation at Starker's, in the millinery department. + +He proposed that he should meet her at closing-time to-morrow, and she +smiled at him and said she didn't mind; but Winny would be there (he had +forgotten Winny). Then he suggested next Saturday afternoon or Sunday +about three; and she said she really couldn't say. Saturday and Sunday +were such a long way off, and things might be different now that she was +in the millinery. And she smiled again, and in such a manner that he had +a vision, a horrible vision, of other fellows crowding round her on +Saturdays and Sundays. He more than suspected that this was +"cock-a-tree"; but it made him desperate, so that he said, "Well--how +about to-night?" + +Well--_to-night_ she'd promised Winny she'd be good and go to church. + +If he had been madder, if he'd been more set on it, he would have gone +off with her that minute; he would have persuaded her to give up church; +he himself would have broken his promise to old Wauchope. But he did +none of these things, and his abstention was the sign and measure of his +coolness, of his sanity. He only said, as any cool and sane young man +might say: How about after church? And if he called when he got back +from Clapham? He wouldn't be a minute later than half past nine. + +And Violet had said: Oh, well--she didn't know about calling. You see, +she only had one room. And he had reckoned with that difficulty; for +Winny Dymond only had one room which she shared with Maudie. By calling, +he'd meant, of course, on the doorstep, to take her for a walk. + +But Violet, for some reason, didn't care about the doorstep. She'd +rather, if he didn't mind, that he met her somewhere out of doors. + +And so they had been drawn into an assignation at the old elm tree by +the Causeway on Wandsworth Plain. + +Thus, if it had done nothing else to him, the Service for Men could be +held responsible for throwing that meeting with Violet much too late. + +Still, he had no misgivings. It was June; and in June nine o'clock was +still daytime. And when he went to the Service he hadn't any idea what +it would do to him. + +No more, of course, had poor old Wauchope. Wauchope was grateful and +apologetic; before they got there he said he didn't know what he might +be letting Ransome in for. The curate johnnie was bossing the Service, +but he understood they'd engaged another joker for the Address. What he, +Wauchope, funked, personally, more than anything was the Address. And +Ransome, generously, declared that whatever it was like, he'd stick it. +He'd stand by Wauchope to the finish, like a man. + + * * * * * + +They left their bicycles in Wauchope's rooms, and walked the few hundred +yards to St. Matthias's Mission Church. + +St. Matthias's Mission Church was a brand-new yellow-brick building in +the latest Gothic, with a red-tiled roof, where a shrill little bell +swung tinkling under the arch in the high west gable. + +Inside, cream distempered walls with brown stencilings; in the roof, +bare beams of pitch pine, stained and varnished; north and south, clear +glass windows shedding a greenish light; one brilliant stained-glass +window above the altar at the east end. + +Up and down the aisles between the open pews of pitch pine went the +workers of the Mission, marshaling the men into their seats. By the west +door, Wauchope's friend, the cumbrous curate, who fancied himself as a +featherweight, stood smiling and shaking hands with each man as he came, +and thanking him for coming, thus carrying out the idea that it was an +entertainment. He had his largest smile, his closest grip for Wauchope +and for Ransome, for they were men after his own heart. Ransome observed +the curate critically, and without committing himself irretrievably to +an opinion, he owned that he looked fit enough. There was not about him +any sign that you could see of flabbiness or weediness. He was evidently +a decent johnnie, and for all that happened afterward Ransome forbore to +hold him personally responsible. + +The service, conducted by the curate, was extremely brief. Everything +was left out that could be left, to make room for hymns wherever it was +possible to place a hymn. The Psalms were chanted, and the curate +intoned the Prayers in a voice that was not his natural voice, but +something far more poignant and impressive. + +There were no boys in the choir, and the singing, that lacked their +purifying and clarifying treble, had a strange effect, somber yet +disturbing. It acted on Ranny like an incantation. + +Of course, if he had known what it was going to do to him, he would have +kept away. + +For though there was nothing in his flesh and blood and muscle that +suggested an inebriate father, yet in his profounder and obscurer being +he was Fulleymore Ransome's son. The secret instability that made +Fulleymore Ransome drink had had its effect on Ranny's nervous system. +His nerves, though he was not aware of it, were finely woven and highly +strung. He had a tendency to be carried away and to be excited, exalted, +and upset. Since Saturday afternoon Ranny had remained more or less in a +state of tension induced by the hurdle race, by the shock of seeing +Violet Usher, and by the dinner at the "Golden Eagle." And, coming +straight from Violet, he had entered St. Matthias's Mission Church keyed +up to his highest pitch. So that the Service for Men which subdued +Wauchope and made him humble and ashamed and sent him away trying to be +a better man, that very same Service worked Ranny up to a point when +anything became possible to him. + +First of all, then, the intoning and the chanting acted on him exactly +like an incantation. Ranny's will, the spiritual part of him, was lulled +to sleep by the rhythmic voices, and as his sense of decency had no +reason whatever to expect an outrage, it was also off its guard, +quiescent, passive to the charm. The rest of Ranny was exposed, +piteously, to the rhythm that swelled, that accentuated, accelerated the +vibration of his inner tumult. + +Then the obvious safety-valve was closed to him. A sense of strangeness +and of sudden shyness prevented him from joining as he should have +joined in the Service. Ranny could not take it out all at once in +singing. That silence and passivity of his left him open at every pore +to the invasion of the powers of sound. These young, intensely vibrant +bass and tenor voices sang all round him, they sang at him and into him +and through him. There was a young man close behind him with a tenor +voice that pierced him like a pain. There was Wauchope at his right ear +thundering in a tremendous barytone. + +First of all it was a trumpet call that shook him. + +/P + "Sold-ier-ers o-of Christ! a-arise, + And put your armor on," +P/ + +sang Wauchope. The sound of that singing made Ransome feel noble; and +there is nothing more insidiously destructive than feeling noble. + +And then, later on, it was a strange and a more poignant cry that melted +him, so that his very soul dissolved in tenderness and yearning. + +/P + "Jesu, Lover o-of my soul," +P/ + +sang the young man with the tenor. + +/P + "Let me to Thy bosom fly, + While the gathering wa-ters roll. + While the tempest sti-ill is high." +P/ + +(Ranny felt them about him, the waters and the tempest.) + +/P + "Other refuge ha-ave I none, + Hangs my helpless soul on Thee; + Leave--ah! leave me no-ot alone, + Still support and co-omfort me." +P/ + +And as the infinite pathos and pleading of the tenor voice played on +him, Ranny sank, lost and shelterless and alone, till at the word "Life" +he rose again and exulted, he rose above himself, even to the point of +singing. + +/P + "Thou of Life the fountain art, + Freely let me take of Thee; + Spring Thou up with-in my heart;" +P/ + +sang Ranny. + +/P + "Rise to all eternity." +P/ + +There was something about that hymn, and his own sudden crying out in +it, that made him peculiarly susceptible to the influences of the +Address. When the preacher rose in the pulpit, when he looked about him +with ardent and earnest eyes in a face ravaged by emotion, when his wide +and somewhat loose and mobile lips gave out the text, Ranny had an +obscure foreknowledge of what would happen to him. + +For he was not altogether virgin to the experience he was undergoing. It +belonged to certain moods of his childhood and his adolescence when more +than once, in Wandsworth Parish Church, he had been stirred mysteriously +by the tender music of the Evening Service, and by the singing of +certain hymns. There were layers upon layers of emotion sunk beyond +memory in Ranny's soul. So that what happened to him now had the +profound and vehement, though secret, force of a revival. The submerged +feelings rose in him; they were swollen, intensified, dominated beyond +recognition by the virile and unspiritual passion that leaped up and ran +together with them and made them one. It gave them an obscure but superb +sanction and significance. + +For that incantation not only called up the past; with a still greater +magic and mystery it evoked the future. It was a prophecy, a premonition +of the things to be. It cried upon the secret, unseen powers of life. It +brought down destiny. + +"'Know ye not that your bodies,'" said the preacher--and he leaned out +and looked to the young men on the right--"'your bodies'"--and he looked +to the young men on the left--"'are the temples, of the Holy +Ghost'"--and he looked straightforward and paused as if he saw invisible +things. + +He may have drawn a bow at a venture, but he seemed to have singled out +Ranny from among all those young men. He leaned over his pulpit, and +fixed his kindled and penetrating eyes on Ranny. He adjured Ranny to +remember that Sin which he had never committed; he implored him to +recall the shame which he had never felt, and at the same time to purge +himself of that unholy memory, and put away from him the sensual +thoughts that had never occurred to him and the abominable intentions +that he had never had. + +Then, with a subtle and plastic inflection of his voice, like the poise +of wings descending, he dropped from that almost inspired height of +emotion, and became shrewd and practical, thoroughly informed and +competent, a physician with a flair for the secret of disease, a surgeon +of the Soul, relentless in his handling of the knife, a man of the world +who spoke to them of what he knew, in all sincerity, as man to man. And +then he soared again, flapping his great wings that fanned emotion to a +flame. + +And through it all the young curate who had brought them there sat +folded more and more within his surplice, and became more and more red +as to his face, more and more dubious as to his eyes. He was like some +young captain, wise though intrepid, who sees his brave battalions +routed through the false move of his general. + +The magic worked. A man behind Ransome was heard breathing heavily. The +gentle drowsiness habitually expressed by Wauchope's broad and somewhat +flattened features was intensified to stupefaction. His head had sunk +slightly forward, but he looked up, lowering at the preacher with his +little innocent eyes, half sullen, half afraid. + +Wauchope was merely uncomfortable. He suffered on the surface. But Ranny +was disturbed profoundly, shaken, excited, and most curiously uplifted. + +He and Wauchope compared notes afterward on the preacher, whom they +called "that imported josser." They thought he rather fancied himself at +that particular job, and supposed that he was some sort of a "pro" who +had spoiled his "form" by overdoing it, and had lost the confidence of +his backers. They agreed that if Wauchope's friend the curate had given +them a straight talk it would have been much straighter. As it was, +nothing could have been more devious, more mysterious and serpentine +than the discourse that turned and wound and wormed its way into the +last obscurities and secrecies of Ranny's being. + +In the Mission Church of St. Matthias's Ranny underwent illumination. It +was as if all that was dark and passionate in him had been interpreted +for him by the preacher. Interpreted, it became in some perverse way +justified. Over and above that innermost sanction and recognition it had +the seal outside it of men's acknowledgment, it took its place among the +existent, the normal, the expected. Ranny was not alone in his passion +and confusion. He was companioned, here and now, in the great +enlightenment. + +But even Ranny could not have foretold the full extent of his reaction +to that sinuous and evocative Address. + +Meanwhile, so carried away was Ranny that he joined Wauchope in a +furious singing of the final hymn, "Onward, Christian so-o-oldier-ers!" + +He had felt noble; he had felt tender; now he was triumphant. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Wauchope, who hadn't a nerve in his composition, recovered soon after he +got into the open air. But in Ransome, without intermission, the magic +of that incantation worked. + +The symptoms of its working were a frightful haste, anxiety, and fear. +He left Wauchope without any explanation, and rode off to his +appointment at a dangerous speed and with a furious ringing of his bell. +He was afraid that if he were late by five seconds Violet Usher would be +gone. It was incredible to him that she should be there. It was +incredible that it should have come to this, that he should be flying in +haste and anxiety and fear unspeakable to meet her at the elm tree by +the Causeway on Wandsworth Plain. The whole adventure was incredible. + +Yet there could not be a better place for it than Wandsworth Plain, a +three-cornered patch of bare ground, bounded on one side by the river +Wandle, and on the other by a row of brown cottages and two little old +inns, with steep tiled roofs and naked walls, "The Bell" and "The +Crane." They were pure eighteenth century, and they give to Wandsworth +Plain its lonely and deserted air as of a little riverside hamlet +overlooked by time and the Borough Council. On a Sunday evening in +summer they stand as if in perpetual peace, without rivalry, without +regret, very bright and clean and simple, one washed yellow and the +other chalk-white. The river runs under brown walls, shaded on one side +by espalier limes, on the other over-hung with elder bushes in flower. +Lower down, on the banks, are willows and alders, and the wild hemlock +grows there, lifting up its great white whorls. Beyond the farther wall +and the limes there is a vast yard, stacked with timber; beyond the +banks a dock; and beyond all, on the great River, unseen, a distance of +crowded warehouses and gray wharves. + +The elm tree, muffled in green, leans out over the stream as the +lightning bowed it long ago, propped by wooden stays, mutilated to the +merest torso of a tree. A sacred thing, the elm tree is inclosed and +guarded by a wooden railing as in a shrine. + +Ransome was ten minutes too early, and it was impossible that she should +be there. Yet there she was, in her white dress, leaning up against the +wooden railing, as if swept and then left there in her detachment, so +inaccessible, so isolated was she, so unaware or so disdainful of the +couples, the young devotees of passion, who had made the elm tree their +meeting-place. She was there too soon, yet about her there was no air of +haste, but rather of brooding and delay. You would have said of her in +her stillness that she could afford to wait, she was so certain of her +end. + +She scarcely stirred from her place to greet Ransome as he came. He +leaned up against the railing close beside her. + +"I'm sorry," he said. "I tore like mad. Did you think I was never +coming?" + +She smiled with a curious smile. + +"No," she said. "I knew that you would come." + +And they stayed there. (Some instinct had impelled him to call at the +shop, and leave his bicycle with Mercier. A bicycle was an encumbrance, +a thing inappropriate to the adventure.) They stayed while the couples, +the young devotees of passion, stood locked in each other's arms, or +moved away, slowly, like creatures in an enchantment, linked together, +and passed into the dusk. And in the end his hand sought and found hers, +secretly, behind the shelter of her gown, and they too passed, hand in +hand and slowly, like creatures in an enchantment; they were drawn into +the dusk, beyond the barrier at the Causeway, to the footpath by the +river. + +When they returned to the elm tree it was all dark and secret there. +They stood as those others had stood, creatures of the enchantment, +locked, with hands on shoulders and faces looking close and seeing each +other's eyes large and strange in the darkness. + +Over Wandsworth Plain came the sound of the Parish Church clock striking +ten. + +When they reached St. Ann's Terrace the little brown house where Violet +lodged was shut up, asleep behind drawn blinds. + +Violet could let herself in. She had a key. At least, she thought she +had. She could have been almost sure she had brought it. But no, it was +not in her purse, nor yet in her pocket. She turned the pocket inside +out and shook it, and there was no key. Oh, dear, she was afraid she had +lost it, or else--perhaps--she hadn't brought it after all. She was that +careless. She thought she must have left it in her room on the +dressing-table. + +They knocked three times, and nobody answered. Nobody was there. They +had all gone out early in the evening, and evidently they had not come +back. Sometimes, Violet said, they weren't back till eleven or past it. + +Well, she didn't want to stand out there much longer. She wondered how +she was ever going to get in. + +They looked at each other and laughed at their helplessness. There is +always something funny about being locked out. Ranny said, "What a +lark!" + +Then he thought of the window. + +It was low. He stepped on to the ledge, and stood there. He slipped the +latch with the blade of his pocket knife. He raised the sash and dropped +into the room. He groped about in it till he found his way into the +passage and opened the door and let Violet in. + +She said she was all right now. Her candle would be left there for her, +on the shelf. But it wasn't, and Violet didn't like the dark. She was +afraid of it. So Ranny lit a match. He lit several matches and lighted +her all the way up the narrow staircase to the door of her little +bedroom at the back. She took the matches from him and went in to look +for the candle, leaving the door ajar and Ranny standing outside it on +the mat. + +He heard her soft feet moving about the room; he heard the spurt of the +matches, and her little smothered cry of impatience as they went out one +by one. It seemed ages to Ranny as he waited. + +At last she found the candle and lit it and set it down somewhere where +it was hidden behind the door. + +And then she came to him with her eyes all shining in the dusk. + +She filled the half-opened doorway; and round and about her and in the +room beyond there hung, indescribable but perceptible, palpable almost +as a touch, the thick scent of her hair. And they stood together on the +threshold as they had stood by the elm tree in the dark. + +She closed her eyes, and his hold tightened. She called his name +thickly, "Ranny!" and suddenly it was as if his very nerves and the +strength of his knees dissolved and flowed like water, and drawing he +was drawn over the threshold. + + * * * * * + +"Don't worry about it, Ranny. It had got to be." + +She said it, clinging to him with soft hands, as he parted from her. For +a moment she was moved beyond herself by his compunction, his passion of +tenderness for the helpless thing she seemed. + +What would have surprised him if he could have thought about it was +that, above it all, above the tenderness and the compunction, he still +felt that triumphant sense of sanction and completion, of acquiescence +in an end foreappointed and foreseen. + +But before he could think about it he was overtaken by an astounding, an +incredible drowsiness. + +He dragged himself home to his attic and his bed, where, astoundingly, +incredibly, he slept. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +It was about nine o'clock of another Sunday evening a week later. + +Winny Dymond was sitting on the edge of Violet's bed in the little back +room in St. Ann's Terrace. Violet, in a white petticoat and camisole, +overcome by the heat, lay stretched at length, like a drowsy animal, in +the hollow of the bed where she had flung herself. Her head, tilted +back, lay in the clasp of her hands. Her breasts, drawn upward by the +raised arms, left her all slender to the waist. The soft-folded, finely +indented crook of her elbows made a white frame for her flushed face. +She was looking at Winny with eyes narrowed to the slits of the sleepy, +half-shut lids. + +In a thick, sweet voice, a voice too drowsy for anything beyond the bare +statement of the fact, she had been telling Winny that she was engaged +to be married to Mr. Ransome. + +Now she was looking at Winny (all her intelligence narrowed to that +thread-fine glint of half-shut eyes), looking to see how Winny would +take it. + +Winny took it with that blankness that leaves the brain naked to all +irrelevant impressions, and with a silence that made all her pulses +loud. She heard the rattle and roar of a distant tram and the clock +striking the hour in the room below. She saw the soiled lining and the +ugly warp of Violet's shoes kicked off and overturned beside the bed. +Beyond the shoes, a stain that had faded rose and became vivid on the +carpet. Then a film came over Winny's eyes, and on the far border of the +field of vision, somewhere toward the top of her head, a yellow chest of +drawers with white handles grew dim and quivered and danced like the +yellow and white specter of a chest of drawers. + +"I suppose you're surprised," said Violet. + +"No, I'm not. Not at all." + +And she wasn't. But she was amazed at her own calmness. + +"I knew it," she said. + +"Knew it?" + +"Yes." + +Of course she had known it. If she hadn't, how could she have endured it +now? + +"When did you know?" + +"Last week. When you came back." + +That was not true. She had known it before last week. She had known it +as long as she had known Violet. And she had known that because of it +Violet would come back. + +She hadn't blamed Violet for coming back. Even now, as she sat on +Violet's bed and was tortured by those lights under Violet's eyelids, +even now she didn't blame her. And if she turned her shoulder it was not +because she minded Violet looking at her (she was past minding that), +but because she was afraid to look at Violet. She didn't want to see her +lying there. It was almost as if she were afraid of hating her. + +Behind her Violet was stirring. She had drawn up her outstretched limbs +and raised herself on the pillows. Winny felt her behind her, restless +and alert. + +Then she spoke again. + +"You needn't mind, Winny. It's got to be." + +"Mind? What makes you think I'm minding?" + +"The way you sit there with your mouth shut, saying nothing." + +"There's nothing to say. I'm not surprised. You've not told me anything +I didn't know." + +"Well, any one would think you didn't approve of it. Why can't you get +up and say you hope we'll be happy, or something?" + +"Of course, I hope you'll be happy. I want you to be happy." + +(Of course she did.) + +"Look here"--Violet was sitting up now--"_was_ there anything between +you and him?" + +Winny rose straight and turned and looked at her. + +"You've no business to ask that," she said. + +"Yes I have." She rose slowly, twisted herself, slid her foot to the +floor, and stood up facing Winny. "If I'm going to marry him I've a +right to know. Not that it'll make a scrap of difference." + +"Who told you there was anything between us?" + +"Nobody told me. I mean--_was_ there--before I came?" + +"There was never anything--never. Any one who tells you anything +different's telling you a lie. I'm not saying we weren't friends--" + +Violet smiled. + +"I'm not saying you were anything else. You can go on being friends. _I_ +sha'n't care. Only don't you go saying I came between you--that's all." + +At that Winny fired. + +"As if I'd do any such a thing! I don't know what can have put it into +your head." + +Violet laughed. + +"You should see _your face_," she said. "Why--any one could tell you +were gone on him. They've only got to look at you." + +There are some insults, some insolences that cannot be answered. + +"You can believe that," said Winny, "if you like--if it makes you any +happier. But your believing it won't make it true." + +She walked slowly, in her small dignity, to the chair where she had +thrown down her hat. She took up the hat and put it on, deliberately, +with a high bravery, before the glass. + +Then she turned to her friend and smiled at her. + +"It's all right," she said, "though you mightn't think it. Good-by." + +Whereupon Violet rushed at her and kissed her. + +"It isn't your fault, and it isn't mine, Winky," she whispered. "It's +got to be, I tell you." + +She drew herself from the embrace, erect and rosy, in a sudden passion +that had in it both triumph and despair. + +"Wild horses couldn't have torn him and me apart." + + * * * * * + +And Winny didn't blame her; even in the pain of the night that followed, +when she lay awake in the bed she shared with Maudie Hollis, stifling +her sobs lest she should waken Maudie, clutching the edge of the +mattress where she had writhed out of Maudie's reach. For at the first +sound of crying the proud beauty had turned to her friend and put her +arms about her, and held her in a desolate and desolating embrace. + +"Don't cry, Winny; don't cry, dear. It isn't worth it," had been +Maudie's consolation. For, though Winny hadn't said a word to her, she +knew. And she had followed it up by declaring that she hated that Violet +Usher; and she hated Ransome; she hated everybody who made little Winky, +little darling Winky, cry. + +But Winky didn't hate them. It had to be. Nothing could be more +beautiful in its simplicity than her acceptance of the event. + +And she didn't blame them. She didn't blame anybody. She had brought it +on herself. The thing was as good as done last summer, when she had +stopped Ranny making love to her. She had stopped it on purpose. She +knew he couldn't afford to marry her, not for years and years; she knew +he had been trying to tell her so; and it didn't seem fair, somehow, to +let him get worked up all for nothing. That was how girls drove men mad. +She considered that she was there to take care of Ranny, and she had +seen, in her wisdom, that to keep Ranny well in hand would be less hard +on him than to let him lose his head. + +Violet hadn't seen it, that was all. + +Besides, Violet was different. She had ways with her which made it no +wonder if Ranny lost his head. In Winny's opinion the man didn't live +who could resist Violet and her ways. She got round you somehow. She had +got round Winny last year when she had come imploring her to take her to +the Grand Display at the Polytechnic Gymnasium, teasing her and +threatening that if she didn't take her she'd go off to the Empire by +herself. She had spoken as if going to the Empire was a preposterous and +unheard-of thing. Winny didn't know that Violet had gone there more than +once, not by herself, but with the foreman of her department. + +And she had had to take her, and that, of course, had done it. Though +she had been afraid of this thing and had foreknown it from the +beginning, she had taken her; though she had been afraid ever since she +had seen Violet's face and watched her ways. So afraid was she that she +had tried to keep Ranny from ever seeing Violet. Time and again she had +hurried her away when she had seen Ranny coming, while the fear in her +heart told her that those two were bound to meet. She had lived from +hand to mouth on her precarious happiness, contented if she could stave +off the evil day. + +And it was all worse than useless. Violet had been aware that she was +being hurried away when Ranny came in sight, and it had made her the +more set. As for Winny's hope that Violet would forget all about Ranny +when some other man appeared, it was futile as long as she took care of +Violet. Taking care of Violet meant keeping her as far as possible out +of the way of other men--so that there again! It seemed as if she had +arranged it so that Ranny should be the only one. For Winny had divined +her friend's disastrous temperament even while she maintained hotly that +there was no harm in her. And she had almost quarreled with Maudie +because the proud beauty had said, "Well, you'll see." + +Winny knew nothing about Violet and the foreman. + +And with the same innocence she never doubted that when Violet and +Ransome met that night at the Polytechnic it was for the first time. + + * * * * * + +And so she stitched with a good will at a white muslin blouse for +Violet's wedding present, and folded it herself and put it away in the +yellow chest of drawers with the rest of Violet's wedding things. It lay +there, all snowy white, with a violet-scented sachet on the top of it, a +sachet (Winny had found it in the drawer) with a pattern of violets on a +white satin ground and the name "Violet" sprawling all across it in +embroidery. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Ransome had barely risen from that sleep of exhaustion when he realized +the disastrous character of the night's adventure. He was no longer +uplifted by any sense of sanction and of satisfaction. Of the pride of +life there remained in him only sufficient to prevent him from regarding +his behavior as in any sense a shame and a disaster to his own youth. +Otherwise his mood was entirely penitential. He could not look at the +thing as it affected himself. However it might be for him, he had +wronged Violet, and that was calamity enough for any man to face. +According to all his instincts and traditions, he had wronged her. + +Of course, he was going to marry her. He was going to marry her at once; +as soon as ever they could get their banns put up. It never occurred to +him that delay could, in such a case, be possible. + +For, from the very moment of that morning after, in Ranny's heart there +was an awful and a sacred fear, a fear of fatherhood. It was the first +thing he thought of as soon as he could think at all. + +He wanted to put Violet right at once, before a suspicion of that +possibility should have crossed her mind. It would have seemed to him +abominable to risk it, to wait on, as fellows did, on the off-chance of +a reprieve, till she came to him, poor child, with her whispered tale. +That, to Ranny's mind, was where the shame came in; not in the fact, +but in the compulsion of the fact. It was intolerable that any man +should have the right to say of his own wife that he had been forced to +marry her. Hence his desperate haste. + +Violet couldn't understand it. She didn't want to be married all at +once. She said there was no hurry; that he couldn't afford it; that +there was no rime nor reason in it; let them go on as they were a bit; +let them wait and see. + +In all this Ranny saw only a tenderness and a desire to spare him. But +he stood firm. He was not concerned with reasons and with rimes; he +wouldn't wait, he wouldn't see; and (this astonished Violet and secretly +enraged her) he absolutely refused to go on as they were. + +For his fear was always before him. + +It was no doubt to that refusal of his that he owed Violet's consent. + +His family were appalled at the news of Ranny's engagement. It was so +unexpected, so unlike him; and how it had happened Ranny's mother +couldn't think. She knew all his comings and goings for the last year. +His temperance and discretion had given her a sense of imperishable +security. She had made up her mind that Ranny wasn't one to be in a +hurry; and now she had been right only in her prophecy that when his +time came there would be no holding him. + +And there _was_ no holding him. + +They had all tried it. They had all been at him; his Uncle Randall and +his Aunt Randall, and his mother and his father. For the first time in +his life Mr. Ransome was roused to take an interest in his son, to +acknowledge him as an adult, capable of formidably adult things. And +though they all told him that he was too young to know his own mind, +that he was doing foolish, and behaving silly, under the show of +disapproval and disparagement it was clear that they respected him, that +they realized his manhood, and that he was somehow important to them as +he had never been important in his life before. + +What was more, rage as they would at it, they were impressed by Ranny's +firmness, his unalterable and imperturbable determination to marry, and +to marry the unknown Violet Usher. + +And on the main issue they gave way. They owned that it was natural that +the boy should want to marry; they saw that he would have to marry some +day; and his mother went so far as to say she wanted him to marry and to +settle down. What they did not understand, and most certainly did not +approve of, what they did their best to talk him out of, was the awful +hurry he was in. There wasn't any hurry, they said, there shouldn't be, +when he was so young. He couldn't afford to marry now, but he could +afford it very well in two years' time. Why, he was only twenty-three, +and in two years' time he'd have got his next rise, and he'd have saved +more money. + +"If you'd wait, Ranny," said his mother, "but the two years." And his +father and his uncle said he _must_ wait. + +But Ranny wouldn't. He wouldn't wait six months. No, and he wouldn't +wait three months and look about him. He wouldn't have waited three +weeks if it hadn't been for the banns. It was no use their talking. + +They knew it. It had been no use their talking seven years ago, when +Ranny had refused to become a Pharmaceutical Chemist, and had given no +reasons, because the only reason he could give was that life would be +intolerable if spent in the perpetual presence of his father. And he +didn't give them any reasons now. + +Before the Ransomes and the Randalls knew where they were the banns had +been put up in Wandsworth Parish Church and in the Parish Church of +Elstree, in Hertfordshire, and Violet had been twice to tea. + +He had looked for opposition down at Elstree, in Hertfordshire, fierce +and insurmountable opposition from Mr. Usher, that father who had been +so harsh to Violet. It was incredible that Violet's father would allow +him to marry her; it was incredible that her mother would allow it. He +would just have to marry her in spite of them. + +But, as it happened, the attitude of Mr. and Mrs. Usher surpassed +probability. Not only were they willing that he should marry Violet, +they desired that he should marry her at once. The sooner the better, +Mr. Usher said. If young Ransome could marry her to-morrow he'd be best +pleased. It was almost as if Mr. Usher knew. But, of course, he didn't, +he couldn't possibly know. He would have scouted the proposition +altogether if he hadn't had three other younger girls at home. It +wasn't, Ranny reflected, as if Violet was the only one. So far from +putting obstacles in Ranny's way, Mr. Usher positively smoothed it. +Understanding that the young man was not, as you might call it, rolling, +he said there wasn't much that they could do, but if at any time a +hamper of butter and eggs and fruit and vegetables should come in +handy, they'd send it along and welcome; he shouldn't even wonder if, in +case of necessity, they could rise to a flitch of bacon or a joint of +pork. Ranny was exquisitely grateful; though, as for the necessity, he +didn't see himself depending on his father-in-law for his food supplies. +He had no foreboding of the importance that hamper from Hertfordshire +was to assume in the drama of his after life. For the actual hour it +stood simply as the measure of Mr. Usher's approval and good will. + +He was much moved when at parting Mrs. Usher pressed him by the hand and +asked him to be gentle with her girl. There was no harm, Mrs. Usher +said, in poor Vi. She was a bit wilful and wildlike; all for life was +Violet--but there, she'd be as good as gold when she had a home and a +kind husband and children of her own. "Mark my words," said Mrs. Usher, +"once the babies come she'll settle down." + +And Ranny marked her words. + +This unqualified backing that he got from Violet's parents went far to +sustain Ransome in the conflict with his own. He could, indeed, have +embraced Mr. and Mrs. Usher when, in consequence of one Sunday +afternoon's communion with these excellent people, his mother declared +herself more reconciled than she had been to the idea of Ranny's +marrying. Between Ranny's mother and Mrs. Usher there was established in +one Sunday afternoon the peculiar sympathy and intimacy of parents who +live supremely in their children. With her rosy, full-blown, robust +benevolence, Mrs. Usher was a powerful pleader. She put it to Mrs. +Ransome that nothing mattered so long as the young people were happy. +If in the pursuit of happiness the young people failed in the first year +or two to make ends meet, surely among them all they could be given a +helping hand. She was sure that Mr. Usher would do anything he could, in +reason. The comfortable woman declared that she had taken a fancy such +as never was to Ranny, so had Mr. Usher, and he wasn't, she could assure +you, one to take a fancy every day. She had never had a boy (and it +wasn't for not wanting), but if she _had_ had one she'd have wished him +to be just such another as Ranny. Ranny, she was certain, was that +clever he'd be sure to get along. To which argument Mrs. Ransome had to +yield. For she was confronted with a dilemma, having either to agree +with Mrs. Usher or to maintain that her Ranny was not clever enough to +get along. So that before Sunday evening she found herself partaking in +the large-hearted tolerance and optimism of Violet's parents, and +forcing her view upon Uncle and Aunt Randall. + +Only Mr. Ransome held out. He refused to be worked upon by argument. To +Ranny's amazement, the old Humming-bird bore himself in those days of +stress, not with that peculiar savage obduracy that distinguished his +more insignificant hostilities, but with a certain sad and fine +insistence. It was as if for the first time in his life he was aware +that he cared for his son Randall and was afraid of losing him. The +Humming-bird could hardly have suffered more if the issue had been +Randall's death and not his marriage. But when the thing was settled, +all he said was, "I don't like it, Mother, I don't like it." + +How profoundly it had disturbed him was shown in this, that for the +three weeks before Ranny's wedding-day he remained completely sober. + + * * * * * + +So precipitate, so venturesome was Ranny, that in a month from that +memorable Sunday he found himself married and established in a house. A +house that in twenty years' time would become his own. + +That was incredible, if you like. Cowardly caution and niggardly +prudence had suggested rooms; two low-rented, unfurnished rooms such as +could be found almost anywhere in Wandsworth; whereas a house in +Wandsworth was impossible even if you sank as low as Jew's Row or Warple +Way. For the first two days of his engagement Ranny had devoted every +moment of his leisure to the drawing up and balancing of imaginary +household accounts; with the result that he wondered how he ever could +have regarded marriage as a formidable affair. Why, in the seven years +since he had begun to earn money he had been steadily putting money by. +Five pounds a year in the first three years, then ten, then twenty, and +a whole fifty in the year and a half since he had got his rise. With the +interest on his savings and his salary, his present income was not less +than a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year. + +In the night watches he grappled like a man with the financial problem. +Scheme after scheme did Ranny throw on the paper from his seething +brain. In the fifth--no, the thoroughly revised and definitive seventh, +he made out that, by a trifling reduction in his personal expenditure, +housekeeping on the two-room system would leave him with a considerable +margin. (In the first rough draft--even in the second--he had allowed +absurdly too much for food and clothing.) But, mind you, that margin +existed solely and strictly on the two-room system. + +And here Ranny's difficulties began; for neither Violet nor her parents +would hear of their living in two rooms. Violet, who had lived in one +room, said that living in two rooms was horrible, and Mrs. Usher said +that Violet was right. It was better for all parties to begin as you +meant to go on. Begin in hugger-mugger and you may end in it. But if he +gave Violet a home of her own that _was_ a home at the very start, she'd +soon settle down in it. He needn't worry about the hard work it meant. +The only thing that would keep Violet steadylike was downright hard +work. No; she didn't mean anything cruel. They could have a char once a +fortnight for a scrub-down and the heavy washing. + +And Ranny began all over again and made out another set of accounts on +the house basis and allowing for the char. + +Impossible; even in Jew's Row or Warple Way. Skimp as he would in +personal expenditure, on the house basis the two ends of Ranny's income +simply _wouldn't_ meet. + +All the same, he began looking for the house. The idea of the house, the +desire for the house worked in his brain like a passion; the more +impossible it was, the more ungovernable, the more irresistible he found +it. + +And, as he wandered forth on that adventure, seeking for a house, one +Saturday afternoon, accompanied by Violet, Ranny fell into the hands of +the Speculative Builder. + +Not very far from Wandsworth, in the green pasturelands of Southfields, +that great magician was already casting into bricks and mortar his +tremendous dream--the city of dreams, the Paradise of Little Clerks. + +As yet he had called into being only a few streets of his city, +stretching eastward and southward into the green plain. About it, +southward and eastward, there lay acres of naked earth upturned, torn +and tamed to his hand. Beyond were the fields with their tall elms, +unbroken, virgin, mournful in their last beauty, as they waited for the +ax and pick. + +He had done terrible things to the green earth, that speculative +builder, but you could not say of him that he had shut out the sky. The +city ran very low upon the ground in street after street of diminutive +two-storied houses. Each house was joined on to the next, porch to porch +and bow window to bow window, alternating in an endless series, a +machine-made pattern that repeated; a pattern monotonous and yet +fantastic in its mingling of purple, white, and red. Each had the same +little mat of grass laid before each bow window, the same little +red-tiled path from gate to front door, the same front door decorated +with elaborate paneling and panes of colored glass, the same little +machine-made iron gate, the same low red wall and iron railing and +privet hedge; so indistinguishably, so maddeningly alike were all these +diminutive houses. Each roof had the same purple slates, each roof tree +the same red earthwork edging it like a lace; the same red tiles roofed +each porch and faced each gable and the space between the stories. Only +when your eyes became accustomed to the endless running pattern could +you trace it clearly, grasp the detail, note that every two bow windows +were separated by one rain pipe, every two porches sustained by one +pillar, one diminutive magnificent purple pillar, simulating porphyry +and crowned with a rich Corinthian capital in freestone, the outline of +each porch being picked out and made clear and decisive with woodwork +painted white. Then, and not till then, did you see that the +all-important detail was the porphyry pillar, for it was as if every two +houses sprang from it as two flowers from one stem. + +Inside, each little house had the same narrow passage and steep stairs; +each had the same small room at the front and one still smaller at the +back; the same little scullery behind the same back door at the end of +the passage that led off into the garden; and upstairs the same bathroom +over the scullery, the same bedrooms back and front, and the same tiny +dressing-room with its little window looking out over the porch. + +"Quite enough, if we can run to it," Violet said. + +Violet, hitherto somewhat indifferent to the adventure, was caught by +the redness and whiteness, the brandnewness and compactness of the +little houses; she was seduced beyond prudence by the sham porphyry +pillar. + +"Quite enough. More than we want, really," said Ranny. + +But that was before they had seen the Agent and the Prospectus. + +They went to the Agent, not because they could afford to take a house, +but just for curiosity, just to say they'd been, just to supply Ranny +with that information that he craved for, now that the passion of the +house hunt was upon him. + +"No good going," said Violet. "The rent will be something awful--why, +that pillar alone--" + +And Ranny, too, said he was afraid the rent wouldn't be any joke. + +But that was precisely what the rent was--a joke. A joke so good that +Ranny took for granted it couldn't possibly be true. Ranny chaffed the +Agent; he told him he was trying to get at him; he said you didn't find +houses with bathrooms and gardens back and front, going for thirteen +shillings a week, not in this country. + +And the Agent, who was very busy and preoccupied with making notes in a +large notebook at his table, mumbled all among his notes that that was +right. Of course you didn't find 'em unless you knew where to look for +'em. And that was not because a good 'ouse couldn't be made to pay for +thirteen shillings a week, if there was capital and enterprise at the +back of the Company that built 'em. This here Estate was the only estate +in England--or anywhere--where you could pick up a house, a house built +in an up-to-date style with all the modern improvements, for thirteen +shillings a week. + +And Ranny with a fine shrewdness posed him. "Yes, but what about rates +and taxes?" + +They were included. + +And as the Agent said it calmly, casually almost, making notes in his +notebook all the time, Ranny conceived a ridiculous suspicion. He fixed +him with a stare that brought him up out of his notebook. + +"Included? _What's_ included?" + +"District rate," said the Agent, "poor rate, water rate, the whole bag +of tricks for thirteen shillings." + +That took Ranny's breath away. As for Violet, she said instantly that +they must have the house. + +"Of course you must 'ave it," said the Agent. He might have been an +indulgent father. "Why not? Only thirteen shillings. And I can make you +better terms than that." + +It was then that he produced the Prospectus. + +By this time, as if stirred by Violet's beauty, he had thrown off the +mask of indifference; he was eager and alert. + +They spent twenty minutes over that Prospectus, from which it appeared +that the profit of the Estate Company, otherwise obscure, came from what +the Agent called the "ramifications" of the scheme, from the miles and +miles of houses they could afford to build. Whereas Ranny's profit was +patent, it came in on the spot, and it would come in sooner, of course, +if he could afford to purchase outright. + +"For how much?" + +"Two hundred and fifty." + +But there Ranny put his foot down. He said with decision that it +couldn't be done, an answer for which the Agent seemed prepared. + +Well, then--he could give him better terms again. Could he rise to +twenty-five? + +Ranny deliberated and thought he could. + +Well, then--only twenty-five down, and the balance weekly. + +The balance? It sounded formidable, but it worked out at exactly +tenpence a week less than the rent asked for (twelve and twopence +instead of thirteen shillings), and in twenty years' time--and he'd be a +young man still then--the house would be his, Ranny's, as surely as if +he had purchased it outright for two hundred and fifty pounds. + +It was astounding. Such a scheme could only have been dreamed of in the +Paradise of Little Clerks. + +And yet--and yet--it was impossible. + +Ranny said he didn't want to be saddled with a house. How did he know +whether he'd want that particular house in twenty years' time? + +Then he could let or sell, the Agent said. It was an investment for his +money. It was property. Property that was going up and up. Even +supposing--what was laughable--that he failed to sell--he would be +paying for his property--paying for house and land--less weekly than if +he rented it. Ordinarily you paid your rent out of income or +investments. He would be investing every time he paid his rent. People +made these difficulties because they hadn't grasped our system--or for +other reasons. Maybe (the Agent fired at him a glance of divination) he +was calculating the expense of furnishing? + +He was. + +Nothing simpler. Why--you furnished on the hire-purchase system. + +"Not much," said Ranny. He knew all about the hire-purchase system. + +So he backed out of it. He backed out of his Paradise, out of his dream. +But to save his face he said he would think it over and let the Agent +know on Monday. + +And the Agent smiled. He said he could take his time. There was no +hurry. The house wouldn't run away. And he gave Ranny a copy of the +Prospectus with a beautiful picture of the house on it. + +All the way home Violet reproached him. It was a shame, she said, that +he couldn't afford the furniture. There was nothing in the world she +wanted so much as that beautiful little house. She hung on his arm and +pleaded. Would he ever be able to afford the furniture? And Ranny said +he thought he could afford it in two years. Meanwhile the house wouldn't +run away. It would wait two years. + +And as if it had been waiting for him, motionless, from all eternity, +the house, with its allurements and solicitations, caught him before six +o'clock on the evening of that very day. + +Ranny's mother, as if she had known what the house was after, played +into its hands. Attracted by the Prospectus and the picture, she walked +over to Southfields directly after tea. She looked at the house and fell +in love with it at first sight. It had taken her no time to grasp the +system. You couldn't get a house like that in Wandsworth, not for fifty +or fifty-five, not counting rates and taxes. It was a sin, she said, to +throw away the chance. As for furnishing, she had seen to that. In fact, +Ranny without knowing it had seen to it himself. For the last five years +he had kept his father's books, conceiving that herein he was fulfilling +an essentially unproductive filial duty. And all the time his mother, +with a fine sense of justice, had been putting by for him the +remuneration that he should have had. Out of his seven years' weekly +payments for board and lodging she had saved no less than a hundred +pounds. Thus she had removed the one insurmountable obstacle from +Ranny's path. + +It might have been better for Ranny if she hadn't. Because, on any +scheme, on the lowest scale of expenditure, with the most dexterous +manipulation of accounts, the house left him without a margin. But who +would think of margins when he knew that he would grow steadily year by +year into a landlord, the owner of house property, and _that_, if you +would believe it, for less rent than if he didn't own it? So miraculous +was the power of twenty-five pounds down. + +As if he thought the house could, after all, run away from him, he +bicycled to Southfields with a letter for the Agent, closing with his +offer that very night. + +And by a special appointment with the Agent, made as a concession to his +peculiar circumstances, he and Violet went over before ten o'clock on +Sunday morning to choose the house. + +For after all they hadn't chosen it yet. + +It was difficult to choose among the houses where all were exactly +alike; but you could choose among the streets, for some were planted +with young limes and some with plane trees, and one, Acacia Avenue, with +acacias. Ransome liked the strange tufted acacias. "Puts me in mind of +palm trees," he said. And finally his fancy and Violet's was taken by +one house, Number Forty-seven Acacia Avenue, for it stood just opposite +a young tree with a particularly luxuriant tuft. It was really as if the +tree belonged to Number Forty-seven. + +Then they discovered that, outwardly uniform, these little houses had a +subtle variety within. All, or nearly all, had different wall papers. In +Number Forty-seven there were pink roses in the front sitting-room and +blue roses in the back, and, upstairs, quiet, graceful patterns of love +knots or trellis work. The love knots, blue with little pink rosebuds, +in the front room (_their_ room) caught them. They were agreed in favor +of Number Forty-seven. + +Then--it was on the following Saturday--they quarreled. The Agent had +written inquiring whether Mr. Ransome wished to give his residence a +distinctive name. He didn't wish it. But Violet did. She wished to give +his residence the distinctive and distinguished name of Granville. She +said she couldn't abide a number, while Ranny said he couldn't stand a +name. Especially a silly name like Granville. He said that if he lived +in a house called Granville it would make him feel a silly ass. And +Violet said he was a silly ass already to feel like that about it. + +Then Violet cried. It was the first time he had seen her cry, and it +distressed him horribly. He held out against his pity all Saturday +evening. But on Sunday morning, when he thought of Violet, he relented. +He said he'd changed his mind about that old family seat. Violet could +call it what she liked. + +She called it Granville. + +The name, in large white letters, appeared presently in the fanlight +above the door. + + * * * * * + +At Woolridge's, on Monday morning in his dinner-hour, Mr. Ransome of the +counting-house strolled with great dignity and honor through seven +distinct departments as a customer. He ear-marked, for a beginning, and +subject always to the approval of a Lady, three distinct suites of +furniture which he proposed, most certainly, to purchase outright. None +of your hire-purchase systems for Mr. Ransome. + +On Tuesday, accompanied by two ladies, he again appeared. Between two +violent blushes, and with an air which would have been light and offhand +if it could, Mr. Ransome presented to his friend, the foreman, his +mother--and Miss Usher. And as if the foreman had not sufficiently +divined her, Miss Usher's averted shoulders, burning cheeks, and lowered +eyelids made it impossible for him to forget that she was the Lady whose +approval was the ultimate condition of the deal. + +After an immensity of time, in which Mr. Ransome's dinner hour was +swallowed up and lost, Miss Usher decided finally on the suite in +stained walnut, upholstered handsomely in plush, with a pattern which +Ransome imagined to be Oriental, a pattern of indefinite design in a +yellowish drab and heavy blue upon a ground of crimson. A splendid +suite. The overmantle alone was worth the nineteen pounds nineteen +shillings he paid for it. + +The furnishing of the chamber of the love knots was arranged for, +decorously, between Mrs. Ransome and the foreman. Over every item, from +the wardrobe in honey-colored maple picked out with black, to the china +"set" with crimson reeds and warblers on it, Ranny's friend, the +foreman, communed with Ranny's mother in an intimate aside; and Ranny's +mother, in another aside of even more accentuated propriety, appealed to +flaming cheeks and lowered eyelids and a mouth that gave an almost +inarticulate assent. The eyelids refused to open on Ranny where he +stood, turning his back on the women, while he shook dubiously the +footrail of the iron double bedstead to test the joints; and the mouth +refused to speak when Ranny was heard complaining that the bedstead was +about three sizes too large for the room. Eyes and mouth recovered only +downstairs among the carpets, where they again asserted themselves by +insisting on a Kidderminster with a slender pattern of blue on a drab +ground; though Ranny's mother had advised the black and crimson. Ranny's +mother contended almost with passion that drab showed every stain. But +Violet would have that carpet and no other. + +And when by struggles and by prodigies of strength on Ranny's part, and +on the part of Woolridge's men, by every kind of physical persuasion, +and by coaxing, by strategy and guile, all that furniture from seven +distinct departments was at last squeezed into Granville--well, there +was hardly room to turn round. Granville, that would have held its own +under any treatment less severe, was overpowered by Woolridge's. + + * * * * * + +"What's wrong with it?" said poor Ranny, as they stood together one +Saturday evening and surveyed their front sitting-room. He couldn't see +anything wrong with it himself. + +They had been married that morning. Ranny had had to bring his bride +straight from her father's house to Granville. There could be no going +away for the honeymoon. Woolridge's wouldn't let Ranny go till the sales +were over. + +It was only a minute ago that he had had his arm round Violet's waist, +and that her face had pressed his. It seemed ages. And suddenly Violet +had shown sulkiness and irritation. He couldn't understand it. He +couldn't understand how she could have chosen their first hour of +solitude for finding fault with the arrangement of the room. He himself +had been distinctly pleased; proud, too, of having furnished throughout +from Woolridge's, in a style that would last, and at a double discount +which he owed to his payment in ready money, and to his connection with +the firm. + +Now he faced a young woman who had no understanding of his pride and no +pity. + +"It's _all_ wrong," said she. "And I'll tell you for why. It's too +heavy. You should have furnished in bamboo." + +"Bamboo? Sham-poo! It wouldn't last," said Ranny. + +"Who wants the silly things to last?" said Violet. + +"Come to that, you never let on it was bamboo you wanted." + +"How could _I_ know what I wanted? You rushed me so, you never gave me +time to think." + +"Oh, I say," said Ranny, "what a tiresome kiddy!" + +With that he kissed her, and between the kisses he asked her, with +delirious rapidity: "Who gave you a drawing-room suite? Who gave you a +nice house? Who let you call it Granville?" But he knew. Nobody, indeed, +knew better than Ranny how tight a squeeze it was; and what a horrible +misfit for Granville. + +Then suddenly something in the idea of Granville tickled him. + +"Whether is it," he inquired, "that the drawing-room suite is too large +for Granville? Or that Granville is too small for the drawing-room +suite?" + +"It's too small for anything. And I think you might have waited." + +"Waited?" + +"Yes. Why shouldn't we have gone on as we were?" + +He couldn't criticize her in a moment that was still so blessed; +otherwise it might have struck him that Granville was certainly too +small for Violet's voice. + +But it struck Ranny's mother as she heard it from the bedroom overhead, +where she labored, spreading with her own hands the sheets for her son's +marriage bed. + +"Why shouldn't we?" Violet's voice insisted. + +"Because we couldn't." + +He drew her to him. Her eyes closed and their faces met, flame to flame. + +"Poor little thing," he said. "Is its head hot? And is it tired?" + +"Ranny," she said, "is your mother still upstairs?" + +"She'll be gone in a minute," he whispered, thickly. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Violet's connection with Starker's ceased on the day of her marriage. +Violet herself would have continued it; she had meant to continue it; +she had fought the point passionately with Ranny; but Ranny had put his +foot down with a firmness that subdued her. She had said, "Oh, +well--just as you like. If you think you can get along without my pound +a week." And Ranny, with considerable warmth, had answered back that he +hoped to Heaven he could. And then, again and again, with infinite +patience and gentleness, he explained that the privileges of acquiring +Granville entailed duties and responsibilities incompatible with her +attendance in Starker's Millinery Saloons. He pointed out that if they +were dependent upon Granville, Granville was also dependent upon them. +Granville, she could see for herself, was helpless--pathetic he was. + +And Violet would laugh. In those first days he could always make her +laugh by playing with the personality they had created. She would come +out into the roadway on an August morning, as Ranny was going off to +Woolridge's, and they would look at the absurd little house where it +stood winking and blinking in the sun; and morning after morning Ranny +kept it up. + +"Look at him," he would say, "sittin' there behind his little railin's, +sayin' nothing, just waitin' for you to look after him." + +And Violet would own that Granville was pathetic. But she triumphed. +"You wouldn't feel about him that way," she said, "if he was only Number +Forty-seven." + +Just at first there was no doubt that Violet was fond of Granville. Just +at first it was as if she couldn't do too much for him, to keep him +spick and span, clean from top to toe, and always with a happy polish. +Just at first he was, as Ranny said, "such a pretty little chap with his +funny purple pillar, and his little peepers winkin' at you kind of +playful, half the time." For the sun shone on him all that August +honeymoon. It streamed down the Avenue between the rows of young acacias +whose green tufts with that light on them put Ranny more and more in +mind of palm trees. He was more and more in love with the brand-new +Paradise. He expressed all the charm of Southfields, of Acacia Avenue, +when he said it was "so open, and so up-to-date." It made Wandsworth +High Street look old and tortuous and grimy by comparison. + +But Ranny was more and more in love with Violet; so much in love that he +could never have expressed her charm. And yet he couldn't hide the +effect it had on him. The neighbors knew it was their honeymoon. They +smiled when they saw Ranny and Violet come out of Granville every +morning wheeling the bicycle between them; they smiled when Violet ran +beside him as he mounted; most of all they smiled when Ranny, riding +slowly, turned right round in his saddle and the two young lunatics +waved and signaled to each other as if they would never have done. + +No doubt that in those first days Violet was in love with Ranny. No +doubt that she looked after him as much as Violet could look after +anything; every bit as much as she looked after Granville. + +But the hard fact was that Granville and all his furniture required a +great deal of looking after. + +Ranny too. To begin with, he had what Violet called an awful appetite. +Which meant that a joint and a loaf went twice as fast as Violet had +calculated; so that she found herself driven to pan bread and tinned +meat in self-defense. She had found that for some reason Ranny didn't +eat so much of these. What with his walking and his "biking," and his +sitting, Ranny's activities wore through his ordinary every-day clothes +at a frightful rate. And then his zephyrs and his flannels! Ranny's +mother had always seen to them herself. She had washed them with her own +hands. Ranny's wife sent them to the laundress, not too often. So that +Ranny, the splendid, immaculate Ranny she had fallen in love with, +appeared after his marriage a shade less immaculate, less splendid than +he had been before. + +It was not, of course, that Violet couldn't wash things. For, as Ranny's +mother said to Mrs. Randall, You should see her own white blouses. There +was washing for you! Mrs. Ransome owned quite handsomely that the girl +"paid for it." By which she meant that Violet's appearance justified the +extravagant amount of time she spent on it. And it was not that +Granville demanded from her the downright hard work Mrs. Usher had +considered salutary in her case. Ransome had seen to that. He had not +agreed with Mrs. Usher. If he couldn't keep a servant, he could, and +did, engage a charwoman for all the heavy work. It was not that the +light work Violet did was unbecoming to her. On the contrary, Violet +bloomed in Granville. She had had to own that the unaccustomed exercise +was a good thing, giving a fineness and a firmness to outlines that had +been a shade too lax. It was that you can have too much of a good thing +when you have it every day; too much of light washing and light cooking, +of the lightest of light sweeping, of dusting, and the making of even +one double bed. + +Ransome did his best to spare her. He thought that she was tired of +looking after Granville, when in reality she was only bored. As for her +fits of sullenness and irritation, he had been initiated into their +mystery on his wedding-day. The sullenness, the irritation had ceased so +unmysteriously that Ranny in his matrimonial wisdom was left in no doubt +as to its cause. There was even sweetness in it, for it proved that, +however tired Violet might be of things in general, she was by no means +tired of him. + +Ransome himself was never tired in those days, and never, never bored. +Granville as Number Forty-seven might have palled upon him; Granville as +a personality assumed for him an everlasting charm. It was astonishing +how right Violet had been there. Granville, after all, hadn't made him +feel a silly ass. It kept him in a state of being tickled. It tickled +Wauchope and Fred Booty. They met him with "What price Granville?" They +called him by turns Baron Granville of Granville, and the Marquis or the +Duke of Granville. They "ragged" while Ranny lunged at them and said, +"Cheese it"; until one day Booty, suddenly serious, asked, why on earth, +old chappie, he had called it Granville? When Ranny replied +significantly, "I didn't." Then they stopped. + +But Granville tickled him only, as it were, on one side. The other side +of Ransome was insensitive. His undeveloped taste was not aware of the +architectural absurdity of Granville, with its perky gable and its sham +porphyry pillar. He could look at it, and yet think of it quite gravely +and with a secret tenderness as his home, and more than all as the home +he had given Violet, the blessed roof and walls that sheltered her. + +And all the time, in secret, it was taking hold of him, the delicious +thought of property, of possession, of Granville as a thing that in +twenty years' time would be his own. Brooding over Granville, Ranny's +brain became fertile in ideas. He was always calling out to Violet: +"Vikes! I've got _another_ idea! When he gets all dirty next year I'll +paint him green. That'll give him a distinctive character, if you like." +Or, "How would it be if I was to cover him up all over with creepers, +back and front?" Or, "Some day I'll whip off those tiles and clap him on +a balcony. He'd look O.K. if he only had a balcony over his porch." + +His porch was the one thing wrong with Granville, because it wasn't +absolutely and entirely his. The porphyry pillar for instance; he had +only half a share in it; the other half belonged to Number Forty-five; +and you couldn't rightly tell where Number Forty-five's share ended and +his began. Still it wasn't as if anybody ever wanted to swarm up the +pillar. But there was a party wall, and that was a serious thing. It +was so low that a child could clear it at a stride. And when the postman +and errand boys and tradespeople went their rounds, instead of going +down Forty-five's front walk and up Granville's, they all straddled +insolently over the party wall. Ransome said it was "like their bally +cheek," by which he meant that it was an insult to the privacy and +dignity of Granville. And he stopped it by setting a high box, planted +with a perfect little hedge of euonymus, on Granville's half of the top +of the party wall. And he and Violet hid behind the window curtains all +one Saturday afternoon, and watched "the poor johnnies being sold." + +There was no end to the fun he was getting out of Granville. Every +evening he hurried home from Woolridge's that he might put in an hour's +work in his garden before supper. He was never tired of digging and +planting and watering the long strip at the back, or of clipping the +privet hedge that screened his green mat at the front. Only Violet got +tired of seeing him doing it. More than once, when Ranny's innocent back +was turned she watched it, scowling. She was so far "gone on him" that +she couldn't bear to see him taken up with Granville. She hated the very +flowers as his hands caressed them. She hated the little tree he had +planted at the bottom of the back garden. For the little tree had kept +him out one night till nearly ten o'clock, after Violet had expressly +told him that she was going to bed at nine. + + * * * * * + +Violet was not tired; but she was tired of Granville. + +After six weeks of it she began to long secretly for Starker's +Millinery Saloons. In the saloon you walked looking beautiful through a +flowery and a feathery grove of hats. You had nothing to do but to try +hats on and to sell them, and each sale was a personal triumph for the +seller. Violet knew she could sell more hats than any other of the girls +at Starker's; she knew she had a pretty way of putting on a hat, of +turning slowly round and round in it to show the side and crown, of +standing motionless before a customer while her blue eyes made play that +advertised the irresistible fascinations of the brim. At Starker's she +went from one triumph to another. + +For gentlemen came to the Millinery Saloons, gentlemen whose looks said +plainly that they found her prettier than the ladies that they brought; +gentlemen who sometimes came again alone, who for two words would buy a +hat and give it you. At Starker's there was always a chance of something +happening. + +At Granville nothing happened, nothing ever could happen. Granville, +when it didn't keep you doing things, gave you nothing to look at, +nothing to think about, nothing to take an interest in, and nobody to +take an interest in you. It left you sitting in a lonely window looking +out into a lonely Avenue, an Avenue where nobody (nobody to speak of) +ever came. And not only did Violet long for Starker's Millinery Saloons, +she longed for Oxford Street, she longed for the adventurous setting +forth in bus or tram, with the feeling that anything might happen before +the day was over; she longed for the still more adventurous stepping out +of the little door in Starker's shutter into the amorously hovering +crowd, for the furtive looking round with eyes all bright for the +encounter; above all she longed for somebody, no matter who, to come, +somebody to meet her somewhere and take her to the Empire. + +And nobody but Ranny ever came. + +Sometimes, of course, he took her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum; but +going there with Ranny wasn't any fun. Ranny's idea of fun was not +Earl's Court or the Coliseum; it was to mount a bicycle and ride from +that lonely place, Acacia Avenue, into places that were more lonely +still. Sometimes they would have tea at a confectioner's, but what Ranny +loved best was to put bits of cake or chocolate in his pocket, and to +eat them in utter loneliness sitting in a field. In short, Ranny loved +to take her into places where there was nothing for them to do, nothing +for them to look at, and nobody to look at them. If Violet hadn't been +gone on Ranny she couldn't have endured it for a day. + + * * * * * + +Then in the late autumn the bicycle rides ceased. Violet was overtaken, +first, with a dreadful lassitude, then with a helplessness as great as +Granville's. And with it a sullenness that had no sweetness in it, for +Violet defied her fate. And now when she raised her old cry again, "I +can't see _why_ I shouldn't have gone on at Starker's like I did," +instead of saying "Somebody's got to look after Granville" Ranny +answered, "_This_ is why." + +All through the winter the charwoman came every day. And one midnight, +in the first week of March, nineteen-five, Violet's child was born. It +was a daughter. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +On that night Ransome acquired a dreadful knowledge. Granville was not a +place where you could be born with any decency. It seemed to participate +horribly in Violet's agony, to throb with her tortures and recoils, to +fill itself shuddering with her cries, such cries as Ransome had never +heard or conceived, that he would have believed impossible. They were +savage, inhuman; the cries and groans of some outraged animal; there was +menace in them and rebellion, terror, and an implacable resentment. + +And as Ransome heard them his heart was torn with pity and with remorse +too, as though Violet's agony accused him. He could not get rid of the +idea that he had wronged her; an idea that he somehow felt he would +never have had if the baby had been born a month later. He swore that +she should never be put to this torture a second time; that if God would +only spare her he would never, never quarrel with her, never say an +unkind word to her again. He couldn't exactly recall any unkind words; +so he nourished his anguish on the thought of the words he had very +nearly said, also of the words he hadn't said, and of the things he +hadn't done for her. Casting about for these, he found that he hadn't +taken her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum half as often as he might. He +had been wrapped up in himself, that's what he had been; a selfish, low +brute. He felt that there was nothing he wouldn't do for Vi, if only +God would spare her. + +But God wouldn't. He wasn't sparing her now. God had proved that he was +capable of anything. It was incredible to Ransome that Violet should +live through that night. He wouldn't believe his mother and the doctor +and the nurse when they told him that everything was as it should be. He +knew that they were lying; they must be; it wasn't possible that any +woman would go through that and live. + +All this Ransome thought as he sat in the front parlor under the little +creaking room. He _would_ sit there where he could hear every sound, +where it was almost as if he was by her bed and looking on. + +And he wouldn't believe it was all over when at midnight they came and +told him, and when he saw Violet lying in her mortal apathy, and when he +kissed her poor drawn face. He couldn't believe that Violet's face +wouldn't look like that forever, that it wouldn't keep forever its +dreadful memory, the resentment that smoldered still under its white +apathy. + + * * * * * + +For there could be no doubt that that was Violet's attitude--resentment, +as of some wrong that had been done her. He didn't wonder at it. He +resented the whole business himself. + +It was a pity, though, that she didn't take more kindly to the baby, +seeing that, after all, the poor little thing was innocent, it didn't +know what it had done. + +Ranny would not have permitted himself this reflection but that a whole +fortnight had passed and Violet had not died. Ranny's fatherhood was +perturbed by Violet's indifference to the baby. He spoke of it to the +doctor, and suggested weakness as a possible explanation. + +"Weakness?" The doctor stared at him and smiled faintly. "What +weakness?" + +"I mean," said Ranny, "after all she's gone through." + +The doctor put his hand on Ranny's shoulder. "My dear boy, if half the +women went through as little and came out of it as well--" + +Ranny flared up. + +"I like that--your trying to make out she didn't suffer. Tortures +weren't _in_ it. How'd you like--" + +But the doctor shook his head. + +"We can't alter Nature, my dear boy. But I'll tell you for your +comfort--in all my experience I've never known a woman have an easier +time." + +"D'you mean--d'you mean--she'll get over it?" + +"Get over it? She's got over it already. She's as strong as a horse." + +He turned from Ranny with a swing of his coat tails that but feebly +expressed his decision and his impatience. He paused before the closed +doorway for a final word. + +"There's no earthly reason why she shouldn't nurse that baby." + +"What's that, sir?" said Ranny, arrested. + +"She _must_ nurse it. It's better for her. It's better for the child. If +I were her husband I'd insist on it--_insist_. If she tells you she +can't do it, don't believe her." + +"I say, I didn't know there'd been any trouble of that sort." + +"That's all the trouble there's been," the doctor said. And he entered +on a brief and popular exposition of the subject, from which Ranny +gathered that Violet was flying in the face of that Providence that +Nature was. Superbly and exceptionally endowed and fitted for her end, +Violet had refused the task of nursing-mother. + +"Why?" + +The doctor shrugged his shoulders, implying that anything so abstruse as +young Mrs. Ransome's reasons was beyond him. + +He left Ranny struggling with the question: If it isn't weakness--_what_ +is it? + + * * * * * + +For Violet persisted in her strange refusal, in spite of Ranny's +remonstrances, his entreaties, his appeals. + +"It's been trouble enough," she said, "without that." + +She was sitting up in her chair before the bedroom fire. They were +alone. The nurse was downstairs at her supper. The Baby lay between them +in its cradle, wrapped in a white shawl. Ranny was watching it. + +"I should have thought," he said, at last, "you couldn't have borne to +let the little thing--" + +But she cut that short. "Little thing! It's all very well for _you_. You +haven't been through what I have; if you had, p'raps you'd feel as I +do." + +The Baby stirred in its shawl. Its eyes were still shut, but its lips +began to curl open with a queer waving, writhing movement. + +"What does it mean," said Ranny, "when it makes that funny face?" + +"How should _I_ know?" said Violet. + +Little sounds, utterly helpless and inarticulate, came now from the +cradle. + +"What nice noises it makes," said Ranny. He was stooping by the cradle, +touching the Baby's soft cheek with his finger. + +"Look at it," he said. + +But Violet would not look. + +The Baby's face puckered and grew red. Its body writhed and stiffened. +It broke into a cry that frightened him. + +"Oh, Lord!" said Ranny, "do you think I've hurt it? Hadn't you better +take it up or something?" + +But Violet did not take it up. He looked at her in astonishment. She +looked at him, and her face was sullen. + +The Baby screamed high. + +Ranny put his arm under the small warm thing and lifted it up out of its +cradle. He had some idea of laying it on its mother's lap. + +The Baby stopped screaming. + +Ranny held it, with the nape of its absurdly loose and heavy head +supported on his left wrist, and its little soft hips pressed into the +hollow of his right hand. And as he held it he was troubled with a +compassion and a tenderness unlike anything he had ever known before. +For the Baby's helplessness was unlike anything he had ever known. + +And its innocence! Why, its hand, its incredibly tiny hand, had found +his breast and was moving there for all the world as if he had been its +mother. And to Ranny's amazement, with the touch, a queer little +pricking pang went through his breast, as if a thin blood vessel had +suddenly burst there. + +"D'you see that, Vi? Its little hand? What a rum thing a baby is!" + +But even that didn't move Violet, or turn her from her purpose, though +she smiled. + + * * * * * + +From that moment Ranny's paternal instinct raised its head again. It had +been crushed for the time being in his revolt against Violet's +sufferings. But now it was indescribable, the feeling he had for his +little daughter Dorothy. (Violet, since they _had_ to call the Baby +something, had called it Dorothy.) Meanwhile, he hid his feeling. He +maintained a perverse, a dubious, a critical silence while his mother +and his mother-in-law and his Aunt Randall and the nurse overflowed in +praise which, if the Baby had understood them, must have turned its +head. + +Ranny was reassured when the other women were about him; because then +Violet did show signs of caring for the Baby, if only to keep them in +their places and remind them that it was her property and not theirs. +She would take it out of their arms, and smooth its hair and its +clothes, and kiss it significantly, scowling sullen-sweet, as if their +embraces had rumpled it and done it harm. For as long as the nurse was +there to look after it, the Baby's adorable person was kept in a +daintiness and sweetness so exquisite that it was no wonder if Ranny's +mother, in her transports, called it "Little Rose," and "Honeypot," and +"Fairy Flower"; when all that Ranny said was, "It's a mercy it's got +hair." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Just at first the miracle of the Baby drew a crowd of pilgrims from +Wandsworth to Acacia Avenue. Granville had become a shrine. + +People Ransome hardly knew and didn't care for, friends of his mother +and of his Aunt Randall, came over of a Sunday afternoon to see the +Baby. And Wauchope and Buist and Tyser of the Polytechnic came; and old +Wauchope got excited and clapped Ranny on the back and said: "Go it, +Granville! Steady does it. Here's to you and many more of them." And +Booty brought Maudie Hollis, who was not too proud and too beautiful to +go down on her knees before the Baby, while young Fred stood aloof in +awe, and grew sanguine to the roots of the hair that rose, tipping his +forehead like a monumental flame. + +As for the Humming-bird, he was amazing. He insisted on the Baby being +christened in Wandsworth Parish Church (marvelous, he was, throughout +the ceremony); and he actually appeared at Granville afterward with the +christening party. + + * * * * * + +That Sunday afternoon Ransome saw Winny Dymond for the first time since +his marriage. He saw her, he could swear that he saw her, standing with +Maudie Hollis in a seat near the door. He was certainly aware of a +little figure in a long dark coat, and of a face startlingly like +Winny's, and of eyes that could only have been hers, profound and +serious eyes, fixed upon the Baby. But when he looked for her afterward +as the christening party passed out of the church, led by Mrs. Randall +carrying the Baby, Winny was nowhere to be seen. No doubt the +christening party scared her. + +He thought of Winny several times that week. He wondered what she had +been doing with herself all those months, and why it was she hadn't come +to see them. + +And the very next Saturday, as Ransome, on his return from Woolridge's, +was wheeling his bicycle with difficulty through the little gate, the +door of Granville opened, and Winny came out. + +Ransome was so surprised that he let the bicycle go, and it went down +with a horrid clatter, hitting him a malicious blow on the ankle as it +fell. He was so surprised that, instead of saying what a man naturally +would say in the circumstances, he said, "Winky!" + +It would have been like her either to have laughed at his clumsiness or +to have flown to help him, but Winky wasn't like herself. She stood in +an improbable silence and gravity and stared at him, while her lips +moved as if she drew back her breath, and her feet as if she would have +drawn herself back, but for the door she had closed behind her; so +inspired was she with the instinct of retreat. + +Her scare (for plainly she was scared) lasted only for a second; only +till he spoke again and came forward. + +"So it's little Winky, is it? Well, I never!" He laughed for pure +pleasure. + +She smiled faintly and came off her doorstep to take the hand he held +out to her. + +"I came," she said, "to see Violet and the Baby." + +At that he smiled also, half furtively. "And have you seen them?" + +"Oh yes. I've been sitting with Violet for the last hour. I must be +going now." + +"Going? Why, what's the hurry?" + +"Well--" + +"Well--" He tried to sound the little word as she did. He remembered it, +the funny little word that summed up her evasiveness, her reluctance, +her absurdity. + +She was still standing by the doorstep, stroking the sham porphyry +pillar with her childish hand, as if she wanted to see what it was made +of. + +"It isn't _reelly_ marble," Ransome said. + +She gazed at him, wondering. "_What_ isn't?" + +"That pillar." + +"Oh--I wasn't thinking--" She took her hand away suddenly as if the +pillar had been a snake and stung her. Then she looked at it. + +"How beautiful they make them!" She paused, absolutely grave. Then, "Oh, +Ranny, you _have_ got a nice house," she said. + +"Have you seen it?" + +"No. Not _all_ of it." She spoke as if it had been a palace. + +"Come in and have a look round," said Ranny. + +"Well--" + +There was distinct yielding in her voice this time. Winny was half +caught. + +"I _do_ love looking at houses." + +He lured her in. She came over the threshold as if on some delicious yet +perilous adventure, with eyes that shone and with two little teeth that +bit down her lower lip; a way she had when she attempted anything +difficult and at the same time exciting. He showed her everything except +the room she had seen already, the room with the love knots and the +rosebuds where Violet and the Baby were. Winny admired everything with +joy and yet with reverence, from the splendid overmantel in the front +sitting-room to the hot-water tap in the bathroom. + +"My word," Winny said, "what I'd give to have a bath like that!" + +"I say," said Ransome, suddenly moved, "you take a lot more interest in +it all than Virelet does." + +"She's used to it," said Winny. "Besides, I always take an interest in +other people's houses." + +She pondered. They were both leaning out of the back bedroom window now, +looking down into the garden. + +"Think of all those little empty houses, Ranny, and the people that'll +come and live in them. It seems somehow so beautiful their coming and +finding them and getting things for them; and at the same time it seems +somehow sad." She paused. + +"I don't mean that _you're_ sad, Ranny. You know what I mean." + +He did. He had felt it too, the beauty and the sadness, but he couldn't +have put it into words. It was the sadness and the beauty of life. + +It was queer, he thought, how Winny felt as he did about most things in +life. + +But Winny's joy over the house was nothing to her joy over the garden, +the garden that Ranny had made, and over the little tree that he had +planted. It was the most beautiful and wonderful tree in the whole +world. For in her eyes everything that Ranny did and that he made was +beautiful and wonderful. It could not be otherwise: because she loved +him. + +And oh! she had the most intense appreciation of Granville, of the name +and of the personality. She took it all in. Trust Winny. + +And as they stood in the gateway at parting, he told her of the system +by which in twenty, no, in not much more than nineteen years' time +Granville would be his own. + +"Why, Ranny, it sounds almost too good to be true!" + +"I know it does. That's why sometimes I think I'll be had over it yet. I +say to myself Granville looks jolly innocent, but he'll score off me, +you bet, before he's done." + +"He _does_ look innocent," said Winny. + +He did. (And how Winny took it in!) + +"_That's_ what tickles me," said Ranny. "Sometimes, when I come home of +a evening and find him still sittin' there, cockin' his little eyes as +if he was goin' to have a game with me, it comes over me that he's up to +something, and--what do you think I do?" + +"I don't know, Ranny." She almost whispered it. + +"I burst out laughin' in his face." + +"How _can_ you?" She was treating Granville as he did, exactly as if it +was alive. + +"Well--you see how comical he is." + +"Yes. I see it." (Of course she saw it.) "Still--there's something about +him all the same." + +There was something about everything that was Ranny's, something that +touched her, something that made her love it, because she loved him. +Winny couldn't have burst out laughing in its face. + +"I'm glad I came," she said. "Because now I can see you." + +He misunderstood. "I hope you will, Winky--very often." + +"I mean--see you when you're not there." + +He looked away. Something in her voice moved him unspeakably. For one +moment he saw into the heart of her--placid, profound, and pure. + +He was going down the Avenue with her now. For in that moment he had +felt the beauty of her and the sadness. He couldn't bear to think of her +"seeing herself home," going back alone to that little room in St. Ann's +Terrace, where some day, when Maudie married, she would be left alone. +The least he could do was to walk with her a little way. + +"I say, Win," he said, presently, "why ever haven't you come before?" He +really wondered. + +There was a long silence. Then, "I don't know, Ranny," she said, simply. + +They had come to the end of Acacia Avenue before either of them spoke +again. Then Ranny conceived something brilliant. + +"What did you think of the Baby?" he said. + +She fairly shone at him, and at the same time she was earnest and very +grave. + +"Oh, Ranny," she said, "it's the most beautiful baby that ever +was--Isn't it?" + +Ranny smiled superbly. + +"They tell me so; but I dunno. _Is_ it?" + +"Of course it is." + +She had turned, parting from him at last, and she flung that at him as +she walked backward, smiling in his face. + +"Well--I must be going back to Vi," he said. + +And he went back. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +In April Ransome looked confidently for Violet to "settle down." Mrs. +Usher had assured him again and again that the next month would bring +the blessed change. + +"She'll be all right," said Mrs. Usher, "when the nurse goes and she has +you and Baby to herself." + +And at first it seemed as though Violet's mother knew what she was +talking about. + +April put an end to their separation. April, like a second honeymoon, +made them again bride and bridegroom to each other. Nature, whom Ranny +had blasphemed and upbraided, triumphed and was justified in Violet's +beauty, that bloomed again and yet was changed to something almost fine, +almost clear; as if its coarse strain had been purged from it by +maternity. Something fine and clear in Ranny responded to the change. + +And, as in their first honeymoon, Violet's irritation ceased. She was +sullen-sweet, with a kind of brooding magic in her ways. She drew him +with eyes whose glamour was tenderness under lowering brows; she bound +him with arms that, for all their incredible softness, had a vehemence +that held him as if it would never let him go; and in the cleaving of +her mouth to his there was a savage will that pressed as if it would +have crushed between them all memory and premonition. This was somewhat +disastrous to fineness and clearness, and Ransome's no doubt would have +perished but for the persistence with which he held Violet sacred as the +mother of his child. + +Her attitude to the child was still incomprehensible to him, but he was +beginning to accept it, perceiving that it had some obscure foundation +in her temperament. There were moments when he fell back on his old +superstition (exploded by the doctor) and told himself that Violet was +one of those who suffer profoundly from the shock of childbirth. And in +that case she would get over it in time. + + * * * * * + +But time went on, and Violet showed no signs of getting over it, no +signs, at any rate, of settling down. On the contrary, before very long +she slipped into her old slack ways. With all her fierce vitality it was +as if she had no strength to turn her hand to anything. The charwoman +came every week. (That was no more than Ransome was prepared for.) + +The charwoman worked heavily against odds, doing all she knew. And yet, +in the searching light of summer, it was plain, as Ransome pointed out, +that Granville was undergoing a slow deterioration. + +First of all, the woodwork cracked and the paint came off in blisters, +and the dirt that got into the seams and holes and places stayed there. +Granville was visited with a plague of fine dust. It settled on +everything; it penetrated; it worked its way in everywhere. Violet, +going round languidly with a silly feather brush, made no headway +against the pest. + +"For Heaven's sake get it out," said Ransome, "or we shall all be +swallowed up in it and die." + +"Get it out yourself, if you can," said Violet. "You'll soon see how you +like my job." + +She was developing more and more a power of acrimonious and unanswerable +retort. + +"Can't you let it be, Ranny?" (He had found the feather brush.) + +"No. It's spoiling all my O.K. cuffs and collars." + +"I can't help your cuffs and collars. What do you suppose it's doing to +mine?" + +Ransome went on flourishing the feather brush. Presently he began to +cough and sneeze. + +"If you wouldn't rouse it," said Violet, "it would do less harm." + +He admitted that the dust was terrible when roused. + +So the dust got the better of them. Ransome was not the sort of man who +could go about poking his nose into cupboards and places, or flourish a +feather brush with a serious intention. He was even more incapable of +badgering a beautiful girl whom he had already wronged sufficiently, who +declared herself to be sufficiently handicapped by Baby. + +Since the Baby came he had abstained from comment on his wife's +shortcomings; though in the matter of meals, for instance, she had begun +to add unpunctuality to incompetence. Ransome would have considered +himself "pretty flabby" if he couldn't rough it. But he found himself +looking forward more and more to the days they spent at Wandsworth, +those rare but extensive Sundays that covered the hours of two square +meals, not counting tea-time. Then there was the hamper from +Hertfordshire. To be sure, in common decency, it could only be regarded +as a lucky windfall, but providentially the windfall was beginning to +occur at frequent intervals. The Ushers must have had an inkling. +Everybody who came to the house could perceive the awful deterioration +in the food. + +The next thing Ransome noticed was a faint, a very faint, but still +perceptible deterioration in himself. And by "himself" Ranny meant in +general his physique and in particular his muscles. They were not +flabby--Heaven forbid!--but they were not the superb muscles that they +had been. All last year he had attended the Gymnasium religiously once a +week, just to keep in form. This year his wife was having a bad time, +and it wasn't fair to leave her too much by herself. Instead of going to +the Polytechnic he practised with his dumb-bells in the back bedroom. +And now and then after Violet had gone to bed he sprinted. There was no +need to worry about himself. + +What Ranny worried about was the steady, slow deterioration in the Baby. + +It began in the third month of its existence. Up till then the Baby +hadn't suffered. It was naturally healthy, and even Violet owned that it +was good. By which she meant that it slept a great deal. And for a whole +month after she had it to herself she had made tremendous efforts to +keep it as the nurse had kept it. She saw (for she was not +unintelligent) that trouble taken now would save endless trouble in the +long run, in dealing with its inconceivably tender person. As for its +food, Violet had been firm about the main point, but it was no strain to +order once for all from the dairy an expensive kind of milk which Ranny +paid for. + +Only, whereas Nurse had made a Grand Toilette for Baby every other day, +insisting that the little frocks and vests and flannels should be put on +all clean together, Violet observed a longer and longer interval. On +Sundays, when Ranny's mother saw her, Baby was still a Little Rose, a +Honeypot, and a Fairy Flower. On other days, when tiresome people +dropped in unexpectedly, Violet hid everything under a clean overall +when she could lay her hands on one. + +But from Ranny she hid nothing; and presently it came upon him with a +shock that to caress and handle Baby was not the same perfect ecstasy +that it had been. It puzzled him at first; then it enraged him; and at +last he spoke to Violet. + +"Look here," he said, "if you want that child to be a Little Rose and a +Honeypot and a Fairy Flower, you'll have to keep it cleaner. That's got +to be done, d'you see, whatever's left." + +Violet sulked for twenty-four hours after that outburst, but for a whole +week afterward he noticed that Baby was distinctly cleaner. + +But whether it was clean or whether it was dirty, Ranny loved it, and +became more and more absorbed in it. + +And with Ranny's absorption Violet's irritability returned and +increased, and sullenness set in for days at a time without +intermission. + +"_This_," said Ranny, "is the _joie de veeve_." + + * * * * * + +Three more months passed. + +For Ransome every day brought a going forth and a returning, a mixing +with the world, with men and with affairs, the affairs of Woolridge's. +His married life had done one thing for him. It taught him to +appreciate his life at Woolridge's, and to discern variety where variety +had not been too apparent. There was the change from Granville to +Woolridge's, and from Woolridge's to Granville. There was the dinner +hour when he rose from his desk and went out to an A B C shop with Booty +or some other man. Sometimes the other man had ideas, views of life and +so forth, that interested Ransome; if he hadn't, at any rate he was a +man. That is to say, he didn't sulk or nag or snap at you; or nip the +words out of your mouth and twist them; he wasn't perverse; he didn't do +things that passed your comprehension, and he let you be. For Ransome +the world of men brought respite. Even at home, in that world of women, +of one woman, when things (he meant the one woman) were too much for +him, menacing his as yet invincible hilarity, he could turn his back on +them, and work in the garden or play with the Baby. Or he could leave +them for a while and mount his bicycle and ride out into the open +country. For Ransome life still had interests and surprises. + +For the Baby surprise and interest lurked in the feeblest of its +sensations; every day brought, for the Baby, excitement, discovery, and +adventure. And then, it had attached itself to Ransome. It behaved as if +it had some secret understanding with its father. Its sense of comedy, +like Ranny's, seemed imperishable. It would respond explosively to +devices so old, so stale, so worn by repetition, that the wonder was +they didn't alienate it, or disgust. The rapid approach and withdrawal +of Ranny's hand, his face suddenly hidden behind its pinafore and +exposed, still more suddenly, with a cry of "Peep-bo!" its own inspired +seizing of Ranny's hair, would move it to delirious laughter or silent +strangling frenzy. And when Ranny wasn't there, and nobody took any +notice of it, it had its own solitary and mysterious ecstasies of mirth. + +It was all very well for Ranny and the Baby. + +But for Violet it was one interminable, intolerable monotony. Always the +same tiresome things to be done for Granville and for the Baby and for +Ranny, when she did them; and when she didn't there was nothing to do +but to sit still, with no outlook, no interest, no surprise, no +possibility of variety and adventure. + +Now and then they would leave the Baby at Wandsworth with its +grandmother, and Ranny would take her to Earl's Court or the Coliseum. +But these bright hours were rare, and when they passed the gloom they +had made visible was gloomier. And brooding over it, she suffered a +sense of irremediable wrong. + +Nothing to look forward to but bedtime; the slow, soft-footed ascent to +the room with the walls of love knots and rosebuds, Ranny carrying the +Baby. Nothing to look forward to but the dark when the Baby slept and +Ranny (who _would_ hang over it till the last minute) couldn't see the +Baby any more, the dark when he would turn to her with the old passion +and the old caresses. + +And even into the darkness and into their passion there had come a +difference, subtle, estranging, and profound. Between them there +remained that sense of irremediable wrong. In Violet it roused +resentment and in Ransome a tender yet austere responsibility. For he +blamed himself for it. + +Violet blamed the Baby. + +And in those three months Winny Dymond came and went. By some fatality +she contrived to call either on a Sunday when they had all gone to +Wandsworth or on a Saturday when Ransome was not there. Once or twice in +summer, when he was kept at the counting-house during stock-taking or +the sales (for Woolridge's season of high pressure came months earlier +than Starker's), Winny had dropped in toward supper-time, when Violet +had asked her to keep her company. But she always left before Ranny +could get back, because Violet told her (as if she didn't know it) that +Ranny would be too tired to see her home. + +One Saturday evening in August he had come in about nine o'clock after a +turn on Wimbledon Common. Granville with its gate, its windows, and all +its doors flung open, had a scared, abandoned look. A strange sound came +from Granville, the sound of a low singing from upstairs, from--yes, it +was from the front bedroom. + +He went through the lower rooms and out into the garden. Nobody was +there. The Baby's cradle and pram were empty. And still from upstairs +the voice came singing. In all his knowledge of her he had never known +Violet to sing. + +He went upstairs. The door of the front bedroom was closed as if on a +mystery. He knocked and opened it tentatively, like a man who respected +mysteries. The voice had left off singing, and was saying something. It +was a voice he knew, but not Violet's voice. + +It was saying, with a lilt that was almost a song, "Upsy daisy, upsy +daisy, den!" + +There was a pause and then "Diddums!" and a sound of kissing. + +He found Winny Dymond sitting there, alone, with the Baby on her knee. +He caught her in the act of slipping a nightgown over its little naked +body, that was all rosy from its bath. The place was full of the +fragrance of soap and violet powder and clean linen. + +"Hello, Winky!" he said. "What a lark!" He stood fascinated. + +But Winky with a baby in her lap was not capable of levity. It struck +him that the Baby was serious, too. + +"Violet's just this minute gone out for a breath of air," she said. "I'm +putting Baby to bed for her. She's been very fretful all day." + +"Who? Virelet?" + +"No, Baby. (Did it then!)." + +"How's that?" (He sat perched on the footrail of the bedstead, for there +was not much room to spare, what with the wardrobe and Winny and the +bath.) + +"I don't know. But I fancy she isn't very well." + +The Baby confirmed her judgment by a cry of anguish. + +"I say, what's wrong?" + +"I think," said Winny, "it's the hot weather and the bottles." + +"The what?" + +"The bottles. They're nasty things, and you can't be too careful with +them." + +His face was inscrutable. + +"Do you think," she said, "you could find me a nice clean one somewhere? +I've got _two_ in soak." + +He smiled in spite of himself at the gravity, the importance of her +air. + +He went off to look all over the house for the nice clean one that Winny +was certain must be somewhere. In a basin by the open window of the +bedroom he found the two horrors that she had put there to soak. + +"What's wrong with these?" said he. + +For one moment it was as if Winny were indignant. + +"You put your nose to them and you'll soon see what's wrong." + +He did and saw. It was not for nothing that he had been born over a +chemist's shop in Wandsworth High Street. He had heard his father and +his mother (and Mercier even) comment on the sluts whose sluttishness +sent up the death rate of the infant population. + +He kept his back to Winny as he stood there by the window. + +"The bi--!" A bad word, a word that he would not for worlds have uttered +in a woman's presence, half formed itself on Ranny's lips. He turned. +"Well," he said, aloud, "I _am_--Let's throw the filthy things away. +They're poisonous." + +"No, I'll see to it. Just bring me another." + +"There isn't another." + +She gazed at him with eyes where incredulity struggled with terror that +responded to his fierceness. She didn't believe, and she didn't want +Ranny to believe that Violet could be so awful. + +"There _must_ be, Ranny, somewhere." + +"There isn't, I tell you." + +"Then run round to the chemist's and get _three_." + +"All right, but it's no good. The kid's been poisoned. Goodness knows +how long it's been going on." + +She looked at him, reproachfully, this time. + +"No, no; it's only the hot weather come on sudden." + +The Baby set up a sorrowful wail as if it knew better and protested +against Winny's softening of the facts. + +"Poor lamb, she's hungry. Jest you run, there's a dear." + +He ran. The chemist, a newcomer, had set up his shop very conveniently +at the corner of Acacia Avenue. + +As Ransome approached, a familiar figure emerged from the shop doorway; +it stood there for a moment as if undecided, then turned and disappeared +round the corner. + +It was Leonard Mercier. + +"What on earth," thought Ranny, "is old Jujubes doing here?" + + * * * * * + +The flying wonder of it had barely flicked his brain when it was gone. +Ranny's thoughts were where his heart was, where he was back again in an +instant, in the bedroom with Winny and the Baby. + +He prepared the child's food under Winny's directions (it was wonderful +how Winny seemed to know); and before nightfall, what with rocking and +singing, she had soothed the Baby to sleep. + +Nightfall, and Violet hadn't come back. + +"I'm glad she's got out at last," Winny said. "She's had such an awful +day." + +"You think she doesn't get out enough, then?" + +She hesitated. + +"I do. Not really _out_ because of Baby." + +They sat near, they spoke low, so as not to wake the child that slept on +Winny's knee. + +"The kid doesn't give her many awful days. It's such a jolly kid. Any +one would think she'd be happy with it." + +"She's so young, Ranny. You should think of that. She's only like a +child herself. She's got to be looked after. She doesn't know much about +babies. She hasn't had one very long, you see." + +"_You_ know, Winny. How's that? You haven't had one at all." + +"No. I haven't had one. I can't say how it is." + +He smiled. "To look at you any one would say you'd nursed a baby all +your life." + +So she had--in fancy and in dreams. + +"It comes more natural to some," she said. "All Violet wants is telling. +You should tell her, Ranny." + +"Tell her what?" + +"Well--tell her to take Baby out more. Tell her to give her a bath night +_and_ morning. Tell her little babies get ill and die if you don't keep +everything about them as clean as clean. Tell her anything you like. But +don't tell her to-night." + +"Why not?" + +"Because she's upset." + +"What's upset her?" + +"I don't know. _You'll_ upset her if you go flying out at her about +those old bottles like you did; and if you go calling her bad names. _I_ +heard you." + +Was it possible? (Why, he hadn't let it out, or, if he had, it had gone, +quite innocently, through the open window.) + +"If you're not as gentle as gentle with her you'll upset her something +awful. You've got to be as gentle with her as you are with Baby." + +So she thought he wasn't gentle, did she? She thought he bullied Violet +and upset her? Whatever could Violet have been saying about him? +Well--well--he couldn't tell her that he _had_ been as gentle with her +as he was with Baby, and that the gentler he was the more Violet was +upset. + +He didn't know that Winky was punishing him in order to punish herself +for having given Violet away. + +"All right, Winky," he said. "If you think I'm such a brute." + +"I don't think anything of the sort, Ranny. You know I don't." + +She rose with the sleeping child in her arms and carried it to its cot. +He followed her and turned back the blanket for her as she laid Baby +down. But it was Winny and not Baby that he looked at. + +And he thought, "Little Winky's grown up." + +To be sure, her hair was done differently. He missed the door-knocker +plat. + +But that was not what he meant. He had only thought of it after she had +left him. + + * * * * * + +It was past ten before Violet came back. He found her in the +sitting-room, standing in the light of the gas flame she had just lit. +Her eyes shone; her face was flushed. She panted a little as if (so he +thought) she had hurried, being late. + +"Well," he said to her, "have you had your little run?" + +She stared and flung three words at him. + +"I wanted it!" + +And still she stared. + +"Vi--" he began. + +"Well--what's the matter with you?" + +"Nothing's the matter with _me_. But I'm afraid Baby's going to be ill." + +She stood before him, her breast heaving. She drew her breath in and let +it out again in a snort of exasperation. + +"What makes you think so?" + +"Something Winny said." + +"What does she know about it?" + +He wanted to say "A jolly sight more than you do," but he stopped +himself in time. + +He began to talk gently to her. + +And Violet was horribly upset. + +Wrap it up as tenderly as he might, there was no mistaking the awfulness +of the charge he brought against her. He had as good as taxed her with +neglecting Baby. She had recourse to subterfuge; she sheltered herself +behind lies, laid on one on the top of the other, little silly +transparent lies, but such a thundering lot of them that Ranny could say +of each that it was jolly thin and of the whole that it was a bit too +thick. + +That brought her round, and he wondered whether gentleness was the best +method for Violet after all. He was disgusted, for he hated subterfuge. + +And she might just as well have owned up at once; for in a day or two +she was defenseless. The Baby was ill; and the illness was accusation +and evidence and proof positive and punishment all rolled into one; +Baby's sufferings being due to the cause that Ransome had assigned. It +had been poisoned, suddenly, from milk gone sour in the abominable +bottles, and slowly, subtly poisoned from the still more abominable +state of its Baby's Comforter. Ransome and his wife sat up three nights +running, and the doctor came twice a day. And every time, except on the +last night, when the Baby nearly died, the doctor spoke brutally to +Violet. _He_ knew that gentleness was not a bit of good. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Still, that was in August, and they could put a good half of it down to +the hot weather. + +Besides, the Baby got over it. With all its accusing and witnessing, it +was, as Ranny said, a forgiving little thing; it had never in its life +done anybody any harm. It did not hurt Violet now. + +And the hot days passed; weeks passed; months passed, and winter and +spring. The Baby had one little attack after another. It marked the +passage of the months by its calamities; and still these might be put +down to the cold weather or the stress of teething. Then, in a temperate +week of May, nineteen-six, it did something decisive. It nearly died +again of enteritis; and again it was forgiving and got over it. + +There could be no doubt that things would have been simpler if it had +been cruel enough to die. For the question was: What were they to do +now? + +Things, Ransome said, had got to be different. They couldn't go on as +they were. The anxiety and the discomfort were intolerable. Still, that +he had conceived an end to them, showed that he did not yet utterly +despair of Violet. She had been terrified by the behavior of the Baby +and by the things, the brutal things, the doctor had said to her, and +she had made another effort. Ransome's trouble was simply that he +couldn't trust her. He said to himself that she had good instincts and +good impulses if you could depend on them. But you couldn't. With all +her obstinacy she had no staying-power. He recognized in her a +lamentable and inveterate flabbiness. + +If he had known all about her he might have formed a larger estimate of +her staying-power. But he did not yet know what she was. That bad word +that he had once let out through the window had been in Ranny's simple +mind a mere figure of speech, a flowering expletive, flung to the dark, +devoid of meaning and of fitness. He did not know what Violet's impulses +and her instincts really were. He did not know that what he called her +flabbiness was the inertia in which they stored their strength, nor that +in them there remained a vigilant and indestructible soul, biding its +time, holding its own against maternity, making more and more for +self-protection, for assertion, for supremacy. He felt her mystery, but +he had never known the ultimate secret of this woman who ate at his +board and slept in his bed and had borne his child. It was with his +eternal innocence that he put it to her, What were they to do now? + +And that implacable and inscrutable soul in her was ready for him. It +prompted her to say that she couldn't do more than she did, and that if +things were to be different he must get some one else to see to them. He +must keep a servant. He should have kept one for her long ago. + +Poor Ranny protested that he'd keep twenty servants for her if he could +afford it. As it was, a charwoman every week was more than he could +manage, and she knew it. And she said, looking at him very straight, +that there was one way they could do it. They could do as other people +did. In half the houses in the Avenue they let apartments. They must +take a lodger. + +Violet had thrown out this suggestion more than once lately. And he had +put his foot down. Neither he nor Granville, he said, could stand a +lodger. A lodger would make Granville too hot by far to hold him. + +Now in their stress he owned that there was something in it. He would +think it over. + +Thinking it over, he saw more than ever how impossible it was. The +charwoman, advancing more and more, had been a fearful strain on his +resources, and the expenses of the Baby's birth had brought them to the +breaking-point. And then there had been Baby's illnesses. Before that +there was the perambulator. + +But that was worth it. He remembered how last year he had seen an +enormous poster in High Street, with the words in scarlet letters: "Are +you With or Without a Pram for Baby?" He had realized then for the first +time that he was without one. And the scarlet letters had burnt +themselves into his brain, until, for the very anguish of it, he had +gone and bought a pram and wheeled it home under cover of the darkness, +disguised in its brown-paper wrappings to heighten the surprise of it. +Violet had not been half so pleased nor yet surprised as he had +expected; but he had got his money back again and again on that pram +with the fun he'd had out of it. + +But before that again, in their first year, things had had to be done +for the house and garden. Ranny shuddered now when he thought of what +the lawn-mower alone had cost him. And that tree! And then the little +pleasures and the outings--when he totted them all up he found that he +had taken Violet to Earl's Court and the Coliseum far, far oftener than +he could have believed possible. Looking back on that first year, he +seemed to have been always taking her somewhere. She wasn't happy when +he didn't. + +No, and she hadn't been very happy when he did. He would never forget +that week they had spent at Southend last Whitsuntide, when he got his +holiday. And it had all eaten into money. Not that he grudged it; but +the fact remained. His margin was gone; half his savings were gone; his +income had suffered a permanent shrinkage of two pounds a year. + +Impossible to keep a servant without the aid of the lodger he abhorred. +But with it not only possible but easy, easy as saying how d'you do. +Except for the presence of the loathsome lodger, nothing would be +changed. The back bedroom was there all ready, eating its head off; and +for all they used the front sitting-room, they might just as well not +have had one. + +They could get somebody who would be out all day. + +He thought about it for three weeks; but before he made up his mind he +talked it over with his mother. She had come to see them late one +evening in June, and he had walked back with her. She was tired, she +said, and they had found a seat in a little three-cornered grove where +the public footpath goes to Wandsworth High Street. + +In this favorable retreat Ranny disclosed to his mother as much as he +could of his affairs. Mrs. Ransome didn't like the idea of the lodger +any more than he did, but she admitted that it was a way out of it. +"Only," she said, "if I was you I should have a lady. Some one you know +about. Some one who might look after Vi'let." + +"That's right. But Virelet would have to look after her, you see." + +"Vi'let's no more idea of looking after anybody than the cat." + +"It isn't her fault, Mother." + +"I'm not saying it's her fault. But it's a pity all the same you should +have to put up with it." + +"It's larks for me to what Vi puts up with. I shouldn't mind, if--" + +He drew back, shy before the trouble of his soul. + +"If what, Ranny?" she said, gently. + +"If she seemed to care a bit more for the kid. Sometimes I think she +actually--" + +Though he could not say it, Mrs. Ransome knew. + +"Don't you think that, Ranny. Don't you think it, my dear." + +She was playing at the old game of hiding things, and she expected him +to keep it up. She had never admitted for one moment that his father +drank; and she wasn't going to admit, or to let him admit, for a moment +that his wife was a bad mother. + +So she changed the subject. + +"That's a nice little girl I see sometimes down at your place. That +Winny Dymond. Is she a friend of Vi'let's?" + +Ranny said she was. + +"Has Vi'let known her long?" + +"I think so. I can't say exactly how long." + +"Before she was married?" + +"Yes." + +Something in his manner made her pause, pondering. + +"Did _you_ know her before you married, Ran?" + +"Ages before." + +His mother sighed. + +"I suppose," said Ranny, harking back, "some women _are_ like that." + +"Like what now?" She didn't want to go back to it. She was afraid of +what she might be driven to say. + +"Not caring much about their own kids." + +"Oh, Ranny, why do you 'arp on it?" + +"Because I don't understand it. It's just the one thing I can't +understand. What does it _mean_, Mother?" + +"Well, my dear, sometimes it means that they can't care for anything but +their 'usbands. It's 'usband, 'usband with them all the time. There's +some," she elaborated, "that care most for their 'usbands, and there's +some that care most for their children." + +(He wondered which would Winny Dymond care for most?) + +"And there's some," said Mrs. Ransome, "that care most for both, and +care different, and that's best." + +(Winny, he somehow fancied, would have been that sort.) + +"Which did _you_ care for most, Mother?" + +"You mustn't ask me that question, Ranny. I can't answer it." + +But he knew. He felt her yearning toward him even then. There was +something very artful, and at the same time very comforting, about his +mother. She had made him feel that Violet was all right, that he was all +right, that everything, in fact, was all right; that he was, indeed, +twice blest since he had a wife who loved him better than her child, and +a mother who loved him better than her husband. + +"Talking of husbands," he said, "how's the Torpichen Badger?" + +She shook her head at him in the old way; keeping it up. + +"Oh, Ranny, you mustn't call your father that." + +"Why not?" + +"It's a whisky, my dear." + +(He could have sworn there was the ghost of a smile about her soft +mouth.) + +"So it is. I forgot. Well, how's the Hedgehog?" + +For all her smile Mrs. Ransome seemed to be breaking down all of a +sudden, as if in another moment the truth would have come out of her; +but she recovered, and she kept it up. + +"He's had the Headache come on more than ever. I've never known a time +when His Headache has been so bad. Most constant it is." + +Ranny preserved a respectful silence. + +"He's worrying. That's what it is. Your father's got too much on His +mind. The business isn't doing quite so well as it did now He can't see +to things. And here's Mercier saying that he's going to leave." + +"What? Old Eno? What's he want to leave for?" + +"To better himself, I suppose. You can't blame him." + +They rose and went on their way that plunged presently into Wandsworth +High Street. + + * * * * * + +By the time he got home again Ransome had braced himself to the prospect +of the thing he hated. They might let the rooms, perhaps, for a little +while, say, till Michaelmas when he would have got his rise. Yes, +perhaps; if they could find a lady. + +But Violet wouldn't hear of a lady. Ladies gave too much trouble; they +nagged at you, and they beat you down. + +Well, then, if she liked, a gentleman. A gentleman who would be out all +day, and whose hours of occupation would coincide strictly with his own. +But he impressed it on her that no rooms were to be let in his absence +to any applicant whom he had not first inspected. + +So they settled it. + +Then, as if they had scented trouble, Mr. and Mrs. Usher came up from +Hertfordshire the very next Saturday. They looked strangely at each +other when the idea of the lodger was put before them, and Mr. Usher +took Ranny out into the garden. + +"I wouldn't do it," Mr. Usher said. "Let her work, let her work with her +'ands. A big, strapping girl like her, it won't hurt her. Why, my Missis +there could turn out your little doll-'ouse in a hour. Don't you take no +gentlemen lodgers. Don't you let her do it, Randall, my boy, or there'll +be trouble." + +The advice came too late. That very evening Violet informed her husband +that she had let the rooms. + +And while Ranny raged she assured him that it was all right. She had +done exactly what he had told her. She had let them to a friend of +his--Leonard Mercier. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +She gathered from his silence that it was all right. Not a muscle of +Ranny's face betrayed to her that it was all wrong. + +Ever since his marriage he had kept Leonard Mercier at a distance. He +had had to meet him, of course, and Violet had had to meet him, now and +again at dinner or supper in his father's house; but Ranny was not going +to let him hang round his own house if he could help it. When Jujubes +suggested dropping in on a Sunday, Ranny assured him that on Sundays +they were always out. And Mercier had met the statement with his +atrocious smile. He understood that Randall meant to keep himself to +himself. Or was it, Mercier wondered, his young wife that he meant to +keep? + +And wondering, he smiled more atrociously than ever. It pleased him, it +excited him to think that young Randall regarded him as dangerous. + +But Randall did not regard him as dangerous in the least. To Ranny, +Jujubes, in his increasing flabbiness, was too disgusting to be +dangerous. And his conversation, his silly goat's talk, was disgusting, +too. Ranny had thought that Violet would find Jujubes and his +conversation every bit as disagreeable as he did. + +Even now, while some instinct warned him of impending crisis, he still +regarded Leonard Mercier as decidedly less dangerous than disgusting. +He wasn't going to have the flabby fellow living in his house. That was +all; and it was enough. + +And in this moment that his instinct recognized as critical, he acquired +a wisdom and a guile that ages of experience might have failed to teach +him. With no perceptible pause, and in a voice utterly devoid of any +treacherous emotion, he inquired what Mercier was doing there, and +learned that Mercier was leaving Wandsworth next week, on the +thirteenth, and would be established as chief assistant in the new +chemist's shop in Acacia Avenue. + +He remembered. He remembered how last year he had seen Jujubes coming +out of the chemist's shop and looking about him. So _that_ was what he +was after! There had been no chance for him last year; but Southfields +was a rising suburb, and this summer the new chemist was able to +increase his staff. + +It was not surprising that Mercier should want to leave Wandsworth, nor +that the new chemist should desire to increase his staff, nor that these +two desires should coincide in time. Nothing, indeed, could be more +natural. But still Ranny's instinct told him that there had been a +curious persistency about old Eno. + +Well, he would have to interview old Eno, that was all. + +He waited a whole hour, to show that he was not excited; and then, +without saying a word to Violet, he whirled himself furiously down to +Wandsworth. + +The interview took place very quietly over his father's counter. He +found his quarry alone there in the shop. + +Leonard Mercier greeted him with immense urbanity. He could afford to be +urbane. He was dressed, and knew that he was dressed, with absolute +correctness in the prevailing style, a style that disguised and +restrained his increasing flabbiness, whereas, though Ranny's figure was +firm and slender, his suit was shabby. Leonard Mercier had the +prosperous appearance of a man unencumbered with a wife and family. And +unless you insisted on hard tissues he was good-looking in his own +coarse way. His face, with all its flabbiness, had its dark accent and +distinction; and these were rendered even more emphatic by the growth of +a black mustache which he had trained with care. The ends of it were +waxed and drawn finely to a point. His finger nails and his skin, his +hair and his mustache showed that the young chemist did not disdain the +use of the cosmetics that lay so ready to his hand. + +The duologue was brief. + +"Hello, old chappy. So you're going to be my new landlord?" + +"Not _much_." + +"What's that?" + +"Some error of my wife's, I fancy." + +"As _I_ understand it Mrs. Ransome's let me two rooms, and I've taken +them." + +"That's right. But you can't have 'em." + +"But I've engaged them." + +"Sorry, Jujubes. You were a trifle previous. I'm not letting any rooms +just yet." + +"Mrs. Ransome told me the contrary." + +"Then Mrs. Ransome didn't know what she was talking about." + +"Rats! When _you_ told _her_--" + +"It's immaterial," said Ranny, with great dignity, "what I told her. For +I've changed my mind. See?" + +"You can't change it. You can't play fast and loose like that. I've +engaged those rooms from a week to-day. Where am I to go to?" + +"You can go to hell if you like," said Ranny, with marked amiability. + +Up to that point Mercier had been amiable too. But when Ranny told him +where he might go to he began to look unpleasant. + +Unpleasant, not dangerous; oh no, not dangerous at all. Ranny looked at +him and thought how he would go in like a pillow if you prodded him, and +of the jelly, the jelly on the floor, he would make if you pounded. + +"You've got to account to me for this," said Mercier. "Those rooms are +let to me from the thirteenth, and on the thirteenth I come into them, +or you pay me fifteen bob for the week's rent." + +"Have you got that down in black and white?" He had not. + +"Well--if you come into those rooms on the thirteenth I shouldn't wonder +if you get it down in black and blue." + +Whereupon Mercier pretended that he was only joking. He was glad that +the counter was between him and young Randall, the silly ass. And Ranny +said it was all right and offered him (magnanimously) the fifteen +shillings, which Mercier (magnanimously) refused on the grounds that he +had been joking. Then Ranny, beholding Jujubes for the lamentably flabby +thing he was, and considering that after all he had not dealt quite +fairly with him, undertook to find him quarters equal if not superior +to Granville; where, he assured him, he would not be comfortable. And +having shaken hands with Jujubes across the barrier of the counter, he +strode out of the shop with a formidable tightening and rippling of +muscles under his thin suit. + +Mercier leaned back against the shelves of white jars and pondered. +Recovering presently, he made a minute inspection of his finger nails. +He then stroked his mustache into a tighter curl that revealed the rich +red curve of his upper lip. And as he caught the pleasing reflection of +himself in the looking-glass panel opposite he smiled with a peculiar +atrocity. + +Up till then his mood had been the petty fury of a shopman balked of his +bargain and insulted. Now, in that moment, the moment of his recovery, +another thought had occurred to Mercier. + +It accounted for his smile. + + * * * * * + +Ransome went back to Granville with his mind unalterably made up. He was +not going to let any rooms to anybody, ever. The letting of rooms was, +if you came to think of it, a desecration of the sanctity of the home +and an outrage to the dignity of Granville. When he thought of Jujubes +sprawling flabbily in the front sitting-room, strolling flabbily (as he +would stroll) in the garden, sleeping (and oh, with what frightful +flabbiness he would sleep!) in the back bedroom next his own, filling +the place (as he would) with the loathsome presence and the vision and +the memory of Flabbiness, he realized what it was to let your rooms. And +realizing it, he had no doubt that he could make Violet see the horror +and the nuisance of it. Come to that, she shrank from trouble, and +Jujubes would have been ten times more trouble than he was worth. + +In fact, Ranny, having settled the affair so entirely to his own +satisfaction, could no longer perceive any necessity for caution, and +rushed on it recklessly at supper; though experience had taught him to +avoid all unpleasant subjects at the table. The unpleasantness soaked +through into the food, as it were, and made it more unappetizing and +more deleterious than ever. Besides, Violet was apt to be irritable at +meal-times. + +"It's off, Vikes, that letting." + +He saw nothing at all unpleasant in the statement as it stood, and he +was not prepared for the manner in which she received it. + +"Off? What d'you mean?" + +"I've been down and I've seen Mercier." + +"He told you what?" + +She had raised her head. Her red mouth slackened as if with the passage +of some cry inaudible. Her eyes stared, not at her husband, but beyond +and a little above him; there was a look in them of terror and enraged +desire, as if the object of their vision were retreating, vanishing. + +But it was all vague, meaningless, incomprehensible to Ranny. He only +remembered afterward, long afterward, that on that night when he had +spoken of Mercier she had "looked queer." + +And the queerest thing was that she did not know Mercier then, or +hardly; hardly to speak to. + +He answered her question. + +"He told me he'd taken the rooms, of course." + +"And so he _did_ take them!" + +"Yes, he took them all right. But I had to tell him that he couldn't +have them." + +"But you can't act like that. You can't turn him out if he wants to +come." + +"Oh, _can't_ I? _He_ knows that. Jolly well he knows it. _He_ won't want +to come. Anyhow, he isn't coming." + +"You stopped him?" + +"Should think I did. Rather," said Ranny, cheerfully. + +She shot at him from those covering brows of hers a look that was +malignant and vindictive. It missed him clean. + +"Y--y--you----!" Whatever word she would have uttered she drew it back +with her vehement breath. "_What_ did you do that for?" + +"Why, because I don't want the fellow in the house." + +"Why--don't--you want him?" Her shaking voice crept now as if under +cover. + +"Because I don't approve of him. That's why." + +"What have you got against him?" + +"Never you mind. I don't approve of him. No more would you if you knew +anything about him. Don't you worry. You couldn't stand him, Vi, if you +had him here." + +She pushed her plate violently away from her with its untasted food, and +planted her elbows on the table. She leaned forward, her chin sunk in +her hands, the raised arms supporting this bodily collapse. +Foreshortened, flattened by its backward tilt, its full jowl strained +back, its chin thrust toward him and sharpened to a V by the pressure of +her hands, its eyes darkened and narrowed under their slant lids, her +face was hardly recognizable as the face he knew. + +But its sinister, defiant, menacing quality was lost on Ranny. He said +to himself: "She's rattled, poor girl; and she's worried. That's why she +looks so queer." + +"You haven't told me yet," she persisted, "what you've got against him." + +And Ranny replied in a voice devoid of rancor: "He's a low swine. If we +took him in I should have to build a pigsty at the bottom of the garden +for him, and I can't afford it. Granville isn't big enough for him and +me. And it wouldn't be big enough for him and you, neither. You'd be the +first to come and ask me to chuck him out." He spoke low, for he heard +the neighbors talking in the next garden. + +"Fat lot you think of _me_!" she cried. + +"It's you I _am_ thinking of." + +She rose from the table, dragging the cloth askew in her trailing, +hysterical stagger. She lurched to the French window that, thrown back +against the wall, opened onto the little garden. And she stood there, +leaning against the long window and pressing her handkerchief to her +mouth till the storm of her sobbing burst through. + +The people in the next garden stopped talking. + +"For God's sake," said Ranny, "shut that window." + +He got up and shut it himself, moving her inert bulk aside gently for +the purpose. And she stood against the wall and laid her face on it and +cried. + +And Ranny called upon the Lord in his helplessness. + +He went and put his arm round her, and she thrust him from her, and then +whimpered weakly: + +"Wh--wh--wh--why are you so unkind to me?" + +"Unkind! Oh, my Aunt Eliza!" + +"You don't care. You don't care," she moaned. "You don't care what +happens to me. I might die to-morrow, and you wouldn't care." + +"Oh, come--" he ventured. + +But Violet wouldn't come. She was off, borne from him on the rising tide +of hysteria. + +"It's true! It's true!" she cried. "Else you wouldn't use me like you +do." + +"But look here. Whatter you goin' on about? Just because I don't want +you to have anything to do with Mercier." + +She raised her flaming face at that. + +"It's a lie! It's a beastly lie! I never had anything to do with +Mercier." + +"Who said you'd had anything to do with him?" + +"You did. And I hardly know him. I've hardly seen him. I've hardly +spoken to him be--be--before." + +"I never said you had." + +"You thought it." + +"You know I didn't. How _could_ I think it?" + +"You _did_. That's why you wouldn't let him come. You won't trust me +with him." + +"Trust you with him? I should think I _would_ trust you. Him! The flabby +swine!" + +Violet's sobs sank lower. They shook her inwardly, which was terrible to +see. + +And as he looked at her he remembered yet again how in the beginning he +had wronged her. _That_ was what made her think he wouldn't trust her. +There would always be that wrong between them. + +He drew her (unresisting now) to the other side of the room and lowered +her to the couch that stood there. He looked into the teapot, where the +drained leaves were still warm. He filled it up again with boiling water +from the kettle on the gas ring, and poured out a cup and gave it her to +drink, supporting her stooping head tenderly with his hand. Her forehead +burned to his touch. + +"Poor little Vi," he said. "Poor little Vi." + +She glanced at him; slantwise, yet the look made his heart ache. + +"Then you _do_ trust me?" she muttered. + +"You _know_ I do." + +They sat there leaning against each other till the room grew dim. Then +they rose, uncertainly; and hand in hand, as it were under the old +enchantment, they went upstairs into the dark room where the Baby slept. + +To-night he did not look at it. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +That was on the eighth of June. + +He remembered, because it was a Saturday, Saturdays and Sundays being +the landmarks of his existence by which alone he measured the distances +and marked the order of events. The habit of so regarding them was +contracted in his early days at Woolridge's, when only in and by those +hours snatched from Woolridge's did he live. All other days of the week +were colored and had value according to their nearness to Saturday and +Sunday. Monday was black, Tuesday brown, Wednesday a browny gray, +Thursday a rather clearer gray (by Thursday you had broken the back of +the week), Friday distinctly rosy, and Saturday and Sunday, even when it +rained, a golden white. + +He hadn't been married a year before all the seven were shady; the +colors ran into each other till even Sundays became a kind of grayish +drab. And still he continued to date things by Saturdays and Sundays; as +he did now in his mind, exultantly, thus: "Saturday, the eighth: Jujubes +knocked out in the first round." + +Not that the dates went for very much with Ranny, to whom interesting +things so seldom happened. He remembered this one more because of his +scoring off Jujubes than because of the scene with Violet and its +sequel. He was used to scenes and sequels, and was no longer concerned +to note their correspondence and significance. So that he never noted +now that it was on and after Thursday, the thirteenth, that what he +called the Great Improvement had begun. + +He meant the improvement in Violet's appearance. He had accepted the +fact that, in all household matters, his wife was a slut and a slattern; +yet it staggered him when it first dawned on him that, in the awful +deterioration of Granville and the Baby, the standard of her own +toilette had gradually lowered. Then gradually he got inured to it. The +tousled, tumbling hair, the slipshod feet, the soiled blouse gaping at +the back, were, he reflected bitterly, in perfect harmony with +Granville, and of a piece with everything. He had ceased to censure +them; they belonged so inalienably to the drab monotone; they were so +indissolubly a part of all his life. And somehow she bloomed in spite of +them. Ranny's unconquerable soul still cried "Stick it!" as he grappled +with her shameless blouses. + +And now, suddenly, she had changed all that. She had become once more +the creature of mysterious elegance, of beauty charged with magical +reminiscence, in the trim skirt and stainless blouse, clipped by the +close belt; and with the bit of narrow black velvet ribbon round her +throat. Even in the morning she appeared once more with a clear parting +in her brushed and burnished hair. Even in the morning her soft skin was +once more sweet in its sheer cleanness. And in the evening there soaked +through and fell and hung about her that old fragrance of violets that +invariably turned his head. + +And she had bought new stockings and new shoes; openwork stockings that +showed her white feet through, and little, little shoes with immense +steel buckles. And her new mushroom with the big red roses round it +assaulted, battered, and beat into cocked hats all the other mushrooms +in the Avenue. + +But it was the stockings and the shoes that made him kiss her feet when, +on Sunday, the sixteenth, he first saw them coming down the stairs. + +"Do you like my shoes?" she said. And she stuck them out one after the +other. As she was standing four steps above him they were on a level +with his mouth; so he kissed them one after another, on the instep, just +above the buckles. + +"Do you like my dress?" + +"It's ripping." + +"Do you like my hat?" + +"It's an A 1 hat; but it's those feet that fetch me." + +He had not been so fetched for a whole year. It was a most peculiar +fetching. + +They went to church together (they had hired a little girl for the last +week to mind the toddling Baby in the mornings). It might have been for +church that she had put on that hat. It could only be for him that she +wore the shoes. All through the service Ranny's heart was singing a hymn +to the blessed little feet that had so fetched him, the blessed little +tootsy-woots in the blessed little shoes. He knelt, adoring, to the hem +of the new white dress. He bowed his head under the benediction of the +hat. + +The fact that Mercier was established in the chemist's pew opposite, and +was staring at the hat, and under it, did not interfere with his +devotions in the least. He could even afford to let old Jujubes walk +home with them, though he managed to shake him off adroitly at his shop +door. Nothing could really interfere with his devotions. For he felt +that those things, especially the shoes, were the outward and visible +signs of an inward and spiritual grace. Some grace that had descended +out of Heaven upon Violet. + +The signs would be, no doubt, expensive; they should not have been so +much as dreamed of before Michaelmas, when he would get his rise; that +splendiferous get-up would in all probability just about clean him out, +rise and all; but he tried not to look on the dark side of it. He was +not one to quench the spirit or the smoking flax. + +But, as the hours and the days went by, it was borne in upon him that +there was absolutely no connection between Violet's inward state and +that regenerated outside. This perturbed him; and it would have +perturbed him more but that he had other things to think of, and that in +any case he believed that a woman's clothes do not necessarily point to +an end beyond themselves. + +Now, if he had been less preoccupied and had paid more heed to dates, he +would have noted three things: that it was on and after the evening of +Thursday, the twentieth, that her mood of gay excitement and of +satisfaction died and gave place to restlessness, irritation, and +expectancy (a strained and racking, a dismayed and balked expectancy); +that Thursday, the twentieth, was early-closing day in Southfields; and +that consequently Leonard Mercier was at large. And having gone thus far +in observation, he must have seen that it was on and after Thursday, the +twenty-seventh (early-closing day again) that she became intolerable. + +Intolerable. There was no other word for it. The "_joie de veeve_" was +so intense that it was not to be borne. She had days of stupor now that +followed fits of fury. He didn't know which was the worse, the fury or +the stupor. + +But it was the stupor that made him burst out one night (at supper; it +was always at supper that these things happened). + +She had brought it on herself by asking what he wanted _now_ when he had +broken the frightful silence by addressing her affectionately as +"Vikey." + +"What I want," said Ranny then, "is a change. I want bracing; and bright +surroundings, and entertaining society. I shall go and live at +Brookwood." + +At last it was too much for anybody (the fury, this time). It was too +much for the charwoman, even once a fortnight, and she refused to come +again. It was too much for the little girl who minded Baby in the +mornings, and she left. Her mother said she wouldn't "have her put +upon," and complained that Mrs. Ransome had served her something +shameful. Ransome hardly liked to think how Violet could have served the +little girl. + +Before long he had an inkling. For presently a new and incredible +quality revealed itself in Violet. + +Up till now she had never been unkind to the Baby. She had neglected it; +she had been indifferent to it; but it had seemed impossible, not only +to Ransome, but to Violet herself, that she could be positively unkind. +He had charged the neglect to her ignorance, and the indifference to the +perversity of her passion for her husband. It was thus that his mother +had explained the mystery, and at moments it looked as if she might be +right. + +But now that the little thing was on its feet, padding about with a +pathetic and ridiculous uncertainty, stumbling and upsetting itself, +sitting down suddenly, and clutching at things as it overbalanced, and +dragging them with it in its fall, Violet could only think of it as a +perfect and omnipresent nuisance, a thing inspired to torment her with +its malignant and deliberate activity. And from this she went on to +think of it as grown-up at fifteen months, a mature person, infinitely +responsible. Its misfortunes, its infirmities, its innocences were +counted to it as sins. When jam spread itself over Baby's face and +buried itself in Baby's neck, and leaped forth and ran down to the +skirts of its clothing, Baby was "a nasty little thing!" and "a naughty, +naughty girl!" + +Then once, in a fit of exasperation, Violet slapped Baby's hands and +found such blessed relief in that exercise that the slapping habit grew +on her. Cries of anguish went up from Granville, till the neighbors two +doors on either side complained. + +But tiny hands, slapped till (as she said) she was tired of slapping +them, gave no scope, offered no continuous outlet to the imprisoned +spirit within. Violet, under a supreme provocation, advanced to +arm-dragging and shaking. + +She found that shaking on the whole did her most good. + +And then, one Sunday morning, Ransome caught her at it. + +He caught her, coming up softly behind her and pinning her, so that her +fingers relaxed their hold, and he swung her from him. + +"I'm not going to have that, my girl," he said. + +He was deadly quiet about it; and the deadliness and quietness subdued +her. But he kept the child away from her all day till it dropped off to +sleep at bedtime. + +After that he never knew another peaceful moment. All his life was +narrowed suddenly into the circle of one terror and one care. It was +like a nightmare while it lasted. And it tethered him tight. He couldn't +get off by himself now on Saturdays and Sundays, for he was afraid to +leave the child with Violet and Violet with the child. He came pounding +home from Woolridge's at a frantic pace, for he never knew now what +might be happening, what might have happened in his absence. + +And so on to the last days of July. + + * * * * * + +In that month Granville, so long deteriorating, was at its worst. The +paper on the walls was blistering here and there like the paint; the red +and blue roses and the rosebuds wilted, with an effect of putrefaction, +and the love knots faded. + +The front sitting-room, furnished so proudly and expensively, had been +long abandoned because of the attendance it exacted. In there you could +positively smell the dust. The pile of the plush held it and pierced +through it, as grass holds and pierces through the earth. Ranny had a +landed estate in his chairs and sofa. And the bright surfaces of +polished wood and looking-glass were blurred as if the breath of +dissolution had passed over them. Ranny's silver prize cups, standing in +a row on the little sideboard, were tarnished every one. Violet had no +pride in them. That sitting-room was not supposed to be sat in; yet +Ranny sat in it sometimes with Baby, as a refuge from the other. + +For the other was awful. It had the look, not only of being lived in, +but of having lived; of having lived hard, brutally, squalidly, and of +being worn out. A room of which Ranny said that, go into it when you +would, it looked as if it had been up all night. A stained, +bleared-eyed, knocked-kneed sinner of a room. + +And oh! the scullery, where the shining sink had grown a gray, rough +skin, a sort of fungoid coat, from the grease that clung to it, and the +gas stove, furred with rust, skulked like some obscene monster in its +corner. He was afraid, morally and physically afraid, to look at that +thing of infamy behind the back door. He tried to pretend the scullery +wasn't there. + +And in the middle of it, and through the fury and the stupor, Violet +bloomed. + +That was what he could not understand; how between her own cruelty and +that squalor she had the heart to bloom. + +He dreaded every interruption and delay that detained him at +Woolridge's, every chance encounter that kept him from that lamentable +place where he feared and yet desired to be. + +Yet it was in those last days of July that Granville, as if it had +passed through its mortal crisis, took, suddenly, a turn for the better. + +He came into his house late one evening and found peace and order there, +and the strange, pungent smell of a thorough cleaning. There was a +clean, white cloth spread in the sitting-room for supper, spoons and +forks, and the china on the dresser and the table glistened; everything +that could be made to shine was shining. From the gas stove in the +scullery there came the alluring smell of a beefsteak pie baking. It was +wonderful. And it all seemed to have been done by some divine, invisible +agency. There was nobody about; not, at any rate, at the back; and +overhead there was no sound of footsteps. + +He was gripped by a sense of mystery, almost of disaster; as if a wonder +so extreme had something ominous in it. Then he went into the front +sitting-room. + +On the plush sofa, which had been moved from its place against the wall +and drawn right across the bow of the window, Violet lay, veiled from +the street by white Nottingham lace curtains. Pure white they were; such +whiteness as was not to be seen in the newest houses in the Avenue. The +furniture had been polished till it looked like new. All in a row +Ranny's silver prize cups shone again as on the day when he bore them +from the field. The smell of dust was gone. Instead of it there came +toward him a sweet smell of violets and of woman's hair. + +On the sofa in the window Violet lay like a suburban odalisk, +voluptuous, heavy-scented. The flesh of her neck and arms showed rosy +under the thin, white muslin of her gown that clung to her in slender +folds and fell away, revealing the prone beauty of her body. The dim +light came on her through the Nottingham lace curtains, as light might +come through some Oriental lattice of fretted ivory. She bloomed, like a +heavy flower, languid, sullen-sweet, heavy-scented. + +It was Thursday, the twenty-fifth. + +Ransome looked about him and smiled. + +"I say, this is a bit of all right. Did you do it yourself, Vi?" + +Her large eyes opened on him in the pale light; dark they were with a +sensuous mockery in them. + +"Do I look as if I'd done it myself?" she said. + +She certainly didn't. + +"Did you get a woman in, then, or what?" + +She hesitated a moment. + +"Yes. I got a woman in." + +And the miracle continued; so that Ranny said that Granville was not +such a bad little fellow, after all, if you took him the right way and +humored him. + +Then he began to make discoveries. + +The first was on the Sunday morning when he went to his drawer for a +pair of clean socks. He had no hope of finding so much as one whole one. +And yet, there were all his socks sorted, and folded, and laid in a row; +and every single one of them had been made whole with exquisite darning. +The same with his shirts and vests and things; and they had been in rags +when he had last looked at them. And something had been done to his +cuffs and collars, too. + +Then there was the Baby. Her hair, that used to cling to her little head +in flat rings as her sleep had crushed it, was all brushed up and +fluffed into feathery ducks' tails that shone gold in gold. She came to +him lifting up her little clean pinafore and frock to show him. She knew +that she was fascinating. + +"It must be Mother, bless her," he said to himself. + +But it wasn't Mother; or if it was she lied about it. + +Then Violet let it out. + +It was on the night of Tuesday, the first of August, at bedtime. Ransome +was leaning over the cot where the Baby lay, tossed half naked between +sleep and waking, drowsy with dreams. She was adorable with her Little +Rose face half unfolded, and the Honeypot smell of her silken skin. + +Violet stood beside him, looking at the two, sullenly, but with a +certain unwonted tolerance. She was strange and still, as if the unquiet +spirit that had torn her was appeased. + +"I say, it's worth while keeping this kid clean, Vi. It repays you." + +"It pays Winny, I suppose. Else she wouldn't do it." + +"_Winny?_" + +"Yes. What are you staring at? She's a pretty kid," she added, as if the +admission had been wrung from her. + +"She's not been here?" said Ransome. + +"Hasn't she! She was here all morning and all day yesterday, and pretty +nearly every day last week." + +"But--how did she get off? Why--it's sale-time!" + +"She's chucked them." + +"What's she done that for?" + +"You'd better ask her." + +His instinct told him that he would do well to let it pass. He said no +more that night. + +But in the morning, over his hurried breakfast, he returned to it. + +"I don't like this about Winny," he said. "Has she got another job, or +what?" + +"She's got what she wanted." + +"What's that?" + +"A job at Johnson's." + +Johnson's was the new drapers at the other corner of Acacia Avenue, +opposite the chemist. + +"Johnson's?" Ranny could not conceal his innocent dismay. Johnson's +operations and his premises were so diminutive that for Winny--after +Starker's--the descent seemed awful. + +"Are you sure she wanted it?" + +"She must have wanted it pretty badly when she's willing to take seven +bob a week less screw. And if she'd waited till Michaelmas she'd have +got her rise." + +Ranny bent his head low over his cup. He felt his face burning with a +shame that he could not comprehend. He knew that Violet was looking at +him, and that made it worse. + +"You needn't worry," she was saying. "It isn't your fault if she makes a +fool of herself." + +"Makes a fool of herself? What do you mean?" + +The heat in his face mounted and flamed in his ears; and he knew that he +was angry. + +"_You_ ought to know," she sneered. + +He was hotter. He was intolerably hot. + +"I don't, then," he retorted. + +"You silly cuckoo, d'you mean to say you don't know she's gone on you? +Lot of pains she takes to hide it. You've only got to look at her to +know." + +At that the fire in him blazed out. He rose, bringing his fist down on +the table. + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," he said. "A low animal wouldn't +say a thing like that. When she's been so good to you! Where would you +be, I should like to know, if it hadn't been for Winny?" + +She looked at him under her lowered brows; and in her look there was +that strange tolerance, and mockery, and a feigned surprise. And with it +all a sort of triumph, as if she were rich in some secret and insolent +satisfaction and could afford her tolerance. + +"Me?" she mocked. "Do you suppose it's me she comes for?" + +"I don't know and I don't care. But as long as she does come you've got +to be decent to her. See?" + +"I _am_ decent to her. _I_ don't mind her coming. What difference does +it make to _me_?" + +"I should say it makes a thundering lot of difference, if you ask me. +Considering the work you've managed to get out of her for nothing." + +"It isn't my business. I can't help it, if she likes to come here and +work for nothing." + +"You make me sick," said Ranny. + +His eyelids stung him as if they had been cut by little, little knives +close under the eyeballs. He turned from her, shamed, as if he had +witnessed some indecency, some outrage on a beautiful innocent thing. + +Outside in the sunlight his tears dazzled him an instant and sank back +into their stinging ducts. + + * * * * * + +Yes, it had stung him. And he had got to end it, somehow, for Winny's +sake. He had no idea how to set about it. He could not let the little +thing come and do his wife's work for her, like that, on the sly, for +nothing. And yet he could not tell her not to come. + +And he asked himself again and again, "Why, why does she do it? Why? +Like that--for nothing?" + +His heart began to beat uncomfortably, trying to tell him why. But he +did not listen to it. He was angry with his heart for trying to tell him +things he did not know and did not want to know. + +No. He ought not to let her keep on coming. But what was he to do? How +could he tell her not to come? + +He went home through Wandsworth that evening and called at St. Ann's +Terrace. Winny was there. She came down to him where he waited on the +doorstep. As they stood there he could see over the low palings of the +gardens the window of the little house where he had climbed in that +night, that Sunday night, more than two years ago. + +He said he had come to ask her to spend Bank Holiday with them. They +might go for a sort of picnic to Richmond Park, and she must come back +to supper. + +That was his idea, his solution, his inspiration; that she must come; +that she must be asked, must be implored to come; but as a guest, in +high honor, and in festival. + +They settled it. And still he lingered awkwardly. + +"I say--is it true that you've left Starker's?" + +"Yes." + +"What did you do that for, Winky?" + +He did not know that he was going to ask her that; but somehow he had +to. + +She paused, but with no sign of embarrassment; looking at him with her +profound and placid eyes. It was as if she had to search for the truth +before she answered him. + +"I thought it best," she said at last. "I didn't want to stay." + +"Were you wise?" + +She smiled. + +"Yes, Ranny. I think so." + +No. There was not a trace of embarrassment about her, such embarrassment +as she would have been bound to feel if Violet had been right. She had +spoken in measured tones, as if from some very serious, secret, and +sincere conviction. + +She went on. "You see, Maudie won't want me any more. They're going to +be married when Fred gets his holiday." + +"Yes. But it isn't such a good thing for _you_, is it?" + +Her deed thus exposed, presented to her in all the high folly of it, she +seemed to flinch as if she herself were struck with the frightful +indiscretion of her descent from Starker's. + +"It's quieter. That's more what I want." + +He smiled. Pressed home, she was evasive as she had ever been. + +"Look here," he said, as if he were changing the subject. "_You've_ been +found out." + +"Found out, Ranny?" + +"Yes. What have you been about this last week? I can't have you going +and doing Vi's work for her, you know." + +"Oh _that_! That was nothing. I just put things straight a bit, and now +she's got to keep them straight." + +He sighed, and reverted. "I don't like your throwing up that good job. I +don't reelly." + +He meant to go, leaving it there, all that she had done, +unacknowledged, unexplained between them, as she would have it left. And +instead of going he stood rooted to that doorstep, and to his amazement +he heard himself saying, "I wish I could do something for you, Winny." + +And then (he took his own breath away with the abruptness of it). "Look +here--why not come and make your home with us, when Maudie's married?" + +She smiled dimly, as if she hardly saw him, as if, instead of standing +beside him on the doorstep, she were saying good-by to him from +somewhere a long way off. + +"Oh no, Ranny, that would never do." + +"Why not? There's that back room there doing nothing. We don't want it. +You'd be welcome to it if it was any good." + +She shook her head slowly. "It's very kind of you, but it wouldn't do. +It really wouldn't. I don't mean the room, Ranny--it's a dear little +room--I mean--I mean, you know----" + +Now at last she was embarrassed, helpless, shaken from her defenses by +the suddenness of his proposal. + +"All right, Winky," he said, gently. + +Then she broke down, but without self-pity, tearless, in her own +fashion. + +"Oh, Ranny, _please_ don't think I'm horrid and ungrateful." + +"That's all right," he said, feebly. + +He turned as if to go; but she recalled him. + +"There's one thing you could do," she said. + +"What's that? I'll do anything." + +"Well--You can let me come over Saturdays and Sundays sometimes and look +after Baby while you take Violet somewhere." + +He said nothing, and she went on. + +"If I were you, Ranny, I'd take her somewhere every week. I'd get her +out all I could." + +And he said again for the third time, very humbly: + +"All right." + +And as he went he called over his shoulder, "Don't forget Monday." + +As if she was likely to forget it! + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +And, after all, Monday, that is to say the day at Richmond, never came. + +On Monday morning when Violet got up she was seized with a slight +dizziness and sickness. It passed off. She declared that earthquakes +shouldn't stop her going to Richmond, and dressed herself in defiance of +all possible disturbance. Ransome took the Baby over to Wandsworth, to +his mother, to be looked after. At ten o'clock he joined Winny and +Maudie and Fred Booty at St. Ann's Terrace, where they had arranged that +Violet was to meet them. Following on her bicycle, she would be there at +ten sharp, when the five would go on to Richmond by the tram that passed +Winny's door. + +Ransome had no sooner left Granville than Violet slipped out to the +chemist's at the corner. + +Ten o'clock struck, and the quarter and the half hour, and Violet had +not appeared at St. Ann's Terrace. + +Ransome proposed that the others should go on without him; he said he +thought there must be something wrong, and that he had better go and see +what had happened. They argued about it for a while, and finally Maudie +and Fred Booty started. Winny refused flatly to go with them. She was +convinced that they would meet Violet on the road to Southfields. She +must have had a puncture, Winny said. + +But they did not meet her. + +And there was no sign of her downstairs at Granville. + +"Hark! What's that?" said Winny, listening at the foot of the stair. +"Oh, Ranny!" + +From the room above there came a low, half-stifled sound of sobbing and +groaning. + +He dashed upstairs. + +In a few minutes he returned to Winny in the front sitting-room. + +"What's the matter? Is she ill?" she said. + +"No, I don't think so. She won't tell me. She's horribly upset about +something." + +"Shall I go to her?" + +"No; better not, Winny. Look here, she won't come to Richmond. She says +we're to go without her." + +"We can't, Ranny." + +"I don't know. Upon my word, I think we may as well. She'll be more +upset if we don't go. She says she wants to be left to herself for _one_ +day." + +A sort of tremor passed over her eyes. They did not look at him; they +looked beyond him, as if somewhere they saw something that frightened +her. + +"You mustn't leave her, Ranny," she said. + +He laughed. "She doesn't want me. She's just told me so." + +"Whether she wants you or not you've got to stay with her." + +She said it sternly. + +"I say, you needn't talk like that. To hear you any one would think I +fair neglected her." + +She bit her lip. Her eyes wandered in their troubled way. She looked +like a thing held there under his eyes against its will and seeking +some way of escape. + +"I don't think you neglect her, Ranny," she said at last. + +"Well, then, what _do_ you think?" + +She turned. "I think I'm going for a little spin somewhere by myself. I +shall come back in time for dinner. Then I shall go down to Wandsworth +and fetch Baby." + +"I'll do that." + +"No, you won't. You'll stay with Violet," she said. + +"And what about your holiday?" + +"My holiday's all right. Don't you worry." + +She was out of the house and in the garden. Mechanically he wheeled her +bicycle out into the road. He was utterly submissive to her will. + +She mounted, and he ran by her side; she pressed on her pedals, +compelling him to run fast and faster; she set her mouth hard, grinning, +and forced the pace, and he ran at the top of his speed and laughed. At +the end of the Avenue she turned, waved to him gaily and was gone. + +Upstairs on her bed, in the room of the love knots, Violet lay and +writhed. She lay on her face. She had wetted her pillow with her tears; +she had flung it aside and was digging her hands into Ransome's pillow +with a tearing, disemboweling motion. Every now and then, with the +regularity of a machine, she gave out a sob and a groan that shook her. + +He found her so. + +She turned on her side as he entered, and showed him her face scarlet +and swollen with crying. + +"What have you come for?" she said. "I _told_ you to go." + +"I haven't gone. I'm not going." + +"But you've got to go. You shall go. D'you hear? I won't have you +hanging about, watching and tormenting me. What are you afraid of? What +d'you think I'm going to do?" + +She turned and raised herself on her elbow and stared about her as if at +a host of enemies surrounding her, then she sank back helpless. + +"Won't you tell me what it is, Vi?" he said, tenderly. + +He sat beside her, leaning over into her hot lair, and made as though he +would have put his hand on her shoulder. She writhed from him. + +"Why can't you let me be," she cried, "when I don't want you? I don't +want you, I tell you, and I wish you'd go away. You've done enough harm +as it is." + +He rose and went to the foot of the bed and stood there, regarding her +somberly. + +"What did you mean by that? What harm have I done you?" + +She had flung herself down again. + +"You _know_--you _know_," she moaned into the pillow. + +"My God, I wish I did!" + +Then he remembered. + +"Unless--you mean--" + +"You ought to know what I mean without my telling you." + +"Well, if I do, you needn't cast it up to me. I married you right +enough, Vi." + +"Yes, that's what you did. And that's why I hate you." + +"It seems to me a queer reason. But, come to that, what else could we +do?" + +She sat up, pulling herself together like a woman who had things to say +and meant to say them now. + +"We could have done as I wanted. We could have gone on as we were." + +"That's what you wanted, was it?" + +"You know it was. I never asked you to marry me. I asked you not to. And +you _would_--you _would_. I didn't _want_ to marry you." + +"And why didn't you want? That's what I'd like to get at?" + +"Because I knew what it would be." + +"Has it been so very bad then?" + +She sat up straighter, wringing her hands as if she wrung her words out. +"It's been awful--something awful. All the things I don't like--all the +time. And it's made me hate the sight of you. It's made me wish I'd died +before I'd seen you. And I want to get away. I want to get out of this +horrid, hateful little house. I knew I would. I knew--I knew----" + +"My God--if _I_'d known----" + +"_You_? If _you_'d known! I wish to God you had. I wish you had just! If +that would have stopped you marrying me. Oh, you _knew_ all right; only +you didn't care. You never have cared. I suppose you think it's what I'm +made for." + +"I don't follow. It may be all wrong. I'll allow it _is_ all wrong, all +the time. What I want to know is what's up now?" + +"Can't you see what's up? Can't you think?" + +He thought. And presently he saw. + +"You don't mean to say it's--it's another?" + +"Of course it is. What else have I been talking about?" + +"Are you sure, Vi?" + +He was very grave, very gentle. + +"Sure? D'you think I wouldn't make sure, when it's what I'm afraid of +all the time?" + +"Don't you want it? Have you never wanted it?" + +"Want it? Want it? I'll hate it if it comes. But it won't come. It +sha'n't come. I won't have it. I won't live and have it. I shall die +anyway." + +"Oh no, you won't," he said. + +But she flung herself back and writhed and sobbed again. He sat down and +watched with her. In silence and utter hopelessness he watched. +Presently she lay motionless, worn out. + + * * * * * + +At one o'clock Winny knocked at the door and said dinner was ready. + +Violet stirred. "What's the good of sitting staring there like a stuck +ox?" She raised herself. "Since you _are_ there you can get me that +eau-de-Cologne." + +He brought it. He bathed her hands and forehead and wiped them with his +handkerchief. + +She dragged herself downstairs and sat red-eyed through the dinner, the +materials for the picnic which Winny had unpacked and spread. + +The day wore on. Violet dragged herself to her bed again, and lay there +all afternoon while Ransome hung about the house and garden, unable to +think, unable to work, or take an interest in anything. He was oppressed +by a sense of irremediable calamity. + +At four o'clock he made tea and took it to Violet in her room. + +She sat up, weak and submissive, and drank, crying softly. + +She turned her face to him as she sank back on her pillow. "I'm sorry, +Ranny," she said; "but you shouldn't have married me. I'm not that sort. +I told you; and you see." + +He could not remember when she had ever told him. But it was clear that +he saw. For he said to himself, "They say a lot of things they don't +mean when they're like this." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +That was the first and by far the most impressive of their really great +scenes. There was no doubt about it, Violet could make scenes, and there +was no end to the scenes she made. But those that followed, like those +that had gone before, were beyond all comparison inferior. They lacked +vehemence, vividness, intensity. After that first passion of resentment +and revolt Violet declined upon sullenness and flat, monotonous +reproach. + +Ransome put it all down to her condition. He set his mouth with a hard +grin and stuck it. He told himself that he had no illusions left, that +he saw the whole enormous folly of his marriage, and that he saw it +sanely, as Violet could not see it, without passion, without revolt, +without going back for one moment on anything that he or she had done. +He saw it simply as it was, as a thing that had to be. She, being the +more deeply injured of the two, must be forgiven her inability to see it +that way. He had done her a wrong in the beginning and he had made +reparation, and it was not the reparation she had wanted. She had never +reproached him for that wrong as many women would have; on the contrary, +he remembered how, on the night when it was done, she had turned to +comfort him with her "It had got to be." She had been generous. She had +never hinted at reparation. No; she certainly had not asked him to marry +her. + +But that also had had to be. They couldn't help themselves. They had +been caught up and flung together and carried away in a maze; like the +Combined Maze at the Poly., it was, when they had to run--to run, locked +together. + +What weighed on him most for the moment was the financial problem. He +lived in daily fear of not being able to pay his way without breaking +into the rest of his small savings. His schemes, that had looked so fine +on paper, had left, even on paper, no margin for anything much beyond +rent and clothing and their weekly bills. There had been no margin at +all for Baby; Baby who, above all, ought to have been foreseen and +provided for. Baby had been paid for out of capital. So that from the +sordid financial point of view Violet's discovery was a calamity. + +It was a mercy he had got his rise at Michaelmas. But even so they were +behindhand with their bills. That, of course, would not have happened if +he hadn't had to buy a new suit that winter. Ranny had found out that +his bicycle, though it diminished his traveling expenses and kept him +fit, was simply "ruination" to his clothes. + +It was awful to be behindhand with the bills. But if they got behind +with the rent they would be done for. He would lose Granville. His rent +was not as any ordinary rent that might be allowed to run on for a week +or two in times of stress. Granville was relentless in exaction of the +weekly tribute. If payments lapsed, he lost Granville and he lost the +twenty-five pounds down he paid for it. + +And Granville, that scourged him, was itself scourged of Heaven. That +winter the frosts bound the walls too tight and the thaws loosened +them. The rain, beating through from the southwest, mildewed the back +sitting-room and the room above it. The wind made of Granville a pipe, a +whistle, a Jew's harp to play its tunes on; such tunes as set your teeth +on edge. + +Ransome said to himself bitterly that his marriage had not been his only +folly. He should have had the sense to do as Booty had done. Fred had +married soon after Michaelmas, when he too had got his rise. He and +Maudie had not looked upon houses to their destruction; they had simply +taken another room in St. Ann's Terrace where she had lived with Winny. +And she had kept her job at Starker's, and meant to keep it for another +year or so. Fred wasn't going to have any kids he couldn't provide for. +Ranny's case had been a warning to him. + +And Ranny's case was lamentable that winter, after he had paid for his +suit. They lived almost entirely now on hampers sent from Hertfordshire. +The hampers were no longer treated as mysterious windfalls; they came +regularly once a week, and were shamefully and openly allowed for in the +accounts. And regularly once a week the young Ransomes had their Sunday +dinner at Wandsworth; they reckoned it as one square meal. + +All this squeezing and pinching was to pay for a little girl to look +after Baby in the mornings. They had found another, and had contrived to +keep her. For Violet, though she went on making scenes with Ranny, was +quiet enough now when Ranny wasn't there, if only Baby was kept well out +of her way. In the autumn months and in the early winter she even had +her good days, days of passivity, days of exaltation and of rapt +brooding, days when she went as if sustained by some mysterious and +secret satisfaction, some agreeable reminiscence or anticipation. And if +Ransome never noticed that these days were generally Thursdays, it was +because Thursday (early-closing day in Southfields) had no interest or +significance for Ranny. And of all Violet's moods he found the one +simple explanation in her state. + + * * * * * + +On the whole, he observed a change for the better in his household. +Things were kept straighter. There was less dust about, and Ranny's +prize cups had never ceased to shine. His socks and vests were +punctually mended, and Baby at his homecoming was always neat and clean. +He knew that Winny had a hand in it. For Winny, established at Johnson's +at the corner, was free a good half hour before he could get back from +Oxford Street; and as often as not he found her putting Baby to bed when +Violet was out or lying down. But he did not know, he was nowhere near +knowing, half the things that Winny did for them. He didn't want to +know. All that he did know made him miserable or pleased him according +to his mood. Of course it couldn't really please him to think that Winny +worked for him for nothing; but to know that she was there, moving about +his house, loving and caring for his child as he loved and cared for it, +whether it was sick or well, clean or dirty, gave him pleasure that when +he thought about it too much became as poignant as pain. For there was +nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do for Winny to repay her. He +did not know that Winny paid herself in a thousand inimitable +sensations every time she touched the things that he had touched, or +that belonged to him; that with every stitch she put into his poor +clothes her fingers satisfied their longing, as it were, in an +attenuated, reiterated caress; that to feel the silken flesh of his +child against her flesh was for Winny to know motherhood. + +Her life had in it the wonder and beauty and mystery of religion. All +the religion that she knew was in each service that she did for Ranny in +his house. Acacia Avenue, with its tufted trees, with its rows of absurd +and pathetic and diminutive villas, was for Winny a shining walk between +heavenly mansions. She handled each one of Ranny's prize cups as if it +had been the Holy Grail. + +And religion went hand in hand with an exquisite iniquity. In all that +she did there was something unsanctioned, something that gave her the +secret and essential thrill of sin. When Winny made that beefsteak pie +for Ranny she had her first taste of fearful, delicious, illegitimate +joy. For it was not right that she should be there making beefsteak pies +for Ranny. It was Violet who should have been making beefsteak pies. But +once plunged in Winny couldn't stop. She went on till she had mended all +Ranny's clothes and sewed new Poly. ribbon on all the vests he ran in. +She loved those vests more than anything he wore. They belonged to the +old splendid Ranny who had once been hers. + +And under it all (if she had cared to justify herself), under the +mystery and the beauty and the wonder, there was the sound, practical +common sense of it all. As long as Violet was comfortable with Ranny +she would stay with him. But she would not be comfortable if she had too +many things to do; and if she became uncomfortable she would leave him; +and if she left him Ranny would be unhappy. So that the more you did for +her the more likely she was to keep straight. Keeping Violet straight +had always been Winny's job; it always would be; and she was more than +ever bound to stick to it now that it meant keeping Ranny's home +together. In Winny's eyes the breaking up of a home was the most awful +thing that could happen on this earth. In Leonard Mercier (established +so dangerously near) she recognized a possible leader of the forces of +disruption. When she left Starker's for Johnson's (where, as she put it +to herself, she could look after Violet), she had hurled her small body +into the first breach. Johnson's was invaluable as a position whence she +could reconnoiter all the movements of the enemy. + +But it was a strain upon the heart and upon the nerves; and the effect +on Winny's physique was so evident that Ranny noticed it. He noticed +that Winny was more slender and less sturdy than she used to be; her +figure, to his expert eye, suggested the hateful possibility of +flabbiness. He thought he had traced the deterioration to its source +when he asked her if she had chucked the Poly. + +She had. + +What did she do that for? Well--she didn't think she cared much for the +Poly. now. It was different somehow. At least that was the way she felt +about it. ("Same here," said Ranny.) And she couldn't keep up like she +did. The running played her out. + +He saw her, then, a tired, indifferent little figure, padding through +the circles and the patterns of the Combined Maze; padding listlessly, +wearily, with all the magic and the joy gone out of her. + +"We had grand times there together," he said then. "Do you remember the +Combined Maze?" + +She remembered. + +"Sometimes I think that life's like that--a maze, Winny. A sort of +Combined Maze--men and women--mixed up together." + +She thought so too. + + * * * * * + +Violet had got used to Winny's being there. She took it for granted, as +if it also were one of those things that had to be. She depended on it, +and owned herself dependent. When Winny was there, she said, things went +right, and when she wasn't there they went wrong. She didn't know how +they had ever got along without her. + +Ransome was surprised to see in Violet so large a heart and a mind so +open. For not only did she tolerate Winny, she clung, he could see that +she clung, to her like a child. She even tolerated what he wouldn't have +thought a woman would have stood for a single instant, the fact, the +palpable fact, that Ranny couldn't get along without her any more than +she could. + +And if they could, the Baby couldn't. Baby (she was Dorothy now and +Dossie) cried for Winny when Winny wasn't there. She would run from her +mother's voice to hide her face in Winny's skirts. Baby wasn't ever +really happy without Winny. + +That was how she had them, and she knew it, and the Baby knew it; and +the two of them simply rode roughshod over Ranny and his remonstrances. + +"What are you doing there, Winky?" he would say, when he caught her on a +Sunday morning in the bathroom, with Baby happy on a blanket at her +feet. + +"Washing Dossie's pinafores," she would sing out. + +"I wish to Goodness I could stop you." + +"But you can't. Can he, Lamby Lamb? Laugh at him, then. Laugh at Daddy." + +And the Lamby Lamb would laugh. + +He knew, and they knew, that he couldn't stop her except by doing the +work for her; and the more things he did the more things she found to do +that he couldn't do, such as washing pinafores. So he gave it up; and +gradually he too began to take it for granted that Winny should be +there. + +And she was more than ever there after April of nineteen-seven, when the +little son was born. The little son that they called Stanley Fulleymore. + +When _he_ came more and more of Ranny's savings had to go. He didn't +care. For he had gone again through deep anguish, again believing that +Violet would die, that she couldn't possibly get over it. And she _had_ +got over it; beautifully, the doctor said. He assured him that she +hadn't turned a hair. And after it she bloomed as she had never bloomed +before; she bloomed to excess; she coarsened in sheer exuberance and +rioting of health. She was built magnificently, built as they don't seem +able to build women now, built for maternity. + +"You don't think," said Ranny to the doctor, "that it really does her +any harm?" + +For she had tried to frighten him with the harm she said it did her. + +"My dear Ransome, if she had a dozen children it wouldn't do her any +harm." + +It was the same tale as before, and he couldn't understand it. For of +the flame of maternity, the flame that burned in Winny, it was evident +that Violet hadn't got a spark. If she had been indifferent to her +daughter Dorothy, she positively hated her son, Stanley Fulleymore. She +intimated that he was a calamity, and an ugly one at that. One kid, she +said, was bad enough; what did he expect that she should do with two? + +She did nothing; which was what he had expected. She trailed about the +house, glooming; she sank supine under her burden and lay forever on the +sofa. When he tried to rouse her she burst into fury and collapsed in +stupor. The furies and the stupors were worse than he had ever known. +They would have been unendurable if it had not been for Winny. + +And in the long days when Winny was not there he was always afraid of +what might happen to the children. He had safeguarded them as far as +possible. He had engaged an older and more expensive girl, who came from +nine to six, five days a week and Saturday morning. Soon after six Winny +would be free to run in and wash the Baby and put Dossie to bed. + +Shamelessly he accepted this service from her; for he was at his wits' +end. As often as not he took Violet out somewhere (to appease the +restlessness that consumed her), leaving Winny in charge of the babies. +Winny had advised it, and he had grown dependent on her judgment. He +considered that if anybody understood Violet it was Winny. + +And slowly, month by month, the breach that Winny had hurled herself +into widened. It was as if she stood in it with arms stretched wide, +holding out a desperate hand to each of them. + +Everything conspired to tear the two asunder. In summer the heat of the +small rooms became intolerable. Ransome proposed that he should sleep in +the back bedroom and leave more air for Violet and the children. + +Violet was sullen but indifferent. "If you do," she said, "you'll take +Dossie. _I_ won't have her." + +He took Dossie. The Baby was safe enough for all her dislike of it, and +for all it looked so sickly. For it slept. It slept astoundingly. It +slept all night and most of the day. There never was such a sleeper. + +He thought it was a good sign. But when he said so to Winny she looked +grave, so grave that she frightened him. + +Then suddenly the Baby left off sleeping. Instead of sleeping he cried. +He cried piteously, inveterately; he cried all night and most of the +day. He never gave them any peace at all. His crying woke little Dossie, +and she cried; it kept Ransome awake; it kept Violet awake, and she +cried, too, hopelessly, helplessly; she was crushed by the everlasting, +irremediable wrong. + +And it was then, in those miserable days, that she turned on Winny, +until Ransome turned on her. + +"It's shameful the way you treat that girl, after all she's done for +you." + +"What's she been telling you?" There was fright in Violet's eyes. + +"She's not told me anything. I've got eyes. I can see for myself." + +"Oh, you've got eyes, have you? Jolly lot you see!" + +But she was penitent that night and asked Winny to forgive her. She +implored her not to leave off coming. + +And Winny came and went now in pain instead of joy. Everything in +Ranny's house pained her. Violet's voice that filled it pained her, and +the crying of the little children. Ranny's face pained her. Most of all +it pained her to see Dossie's little cot drawn up beside Ranny's bed in +the back room; they looked so forlorn, the two of them; so outcast and +so abandoned. + +She went unhindered and unheeded into Ranny's room, tidying it and +putting the little girl to bed. But into Violet's room she would not go +more than she could help. She hated Violet's room; she loathed it; and +she dared not think why. + + * * * * * + +One Saturday evening in the last week of September Ransome had come home +late after a long solitary ride in the country. Violet, who was busy +making a silk blouse for herself, had refused to go with him. Winny had +laid it down as a law for Ranny that Violet was never to be left for +very long to herself, if he wanted her to be happy. And, of course, he +wanted her to be happy. But if ever there was a moment when he could +leave her with a clear conscience it was when she was dressmaking. + +She gave herself to it with passion, with absorption. He had known her +to sit for hours over a new blouse in apparently perfect happiness. + +And to-day he could have sworn that she was happy. She had risen of her +own accord and kissed him good-by and told him to enjoy himself and not +hurry home. She would be all right, and Winny had said she would drop in +for tea. He left her sewing white lace onto blue silk in a matchless +tranquillity. + +And he _had_ enjoyed his ride, and he had not hurried home, for he knew +that the children would be all right (even if Violet's happy mood had +changed) as long as Winny was there to look after them. + +He rode far out into the open country, into the deep-dipping lanes, +between fields, and through lands scented with autumn. And as he rode he +was a boy again. Never since his marriage had he known such joy in +freedom and such ecstasy in speed. There was a wind that drove him on, +and the great clouds challenged him and raced with him as he went. + +He came home against the wind, but that was nothing. The wind was a +challenge and a defiance of his strength; it set the blood racing in his +veins, and cooled it in his face when it burned. It was good to be +challenged by the wind and to defy it. It was good to struggle. It was +all good that happened to him on that day. + +Night had fallen when he returned. Granville was lit up behind its +yellow blinds. Winny stood at the open door with the lighted passageway +behind her. Granville in the autumnal dark, with the gas turned full on +inside it, looked all light, all quiet flame, as if the walls that were +the substance of it had been cut clean away, leaving a mere shell, a +mere framework for its golden incandescence. + +So small, so fragile, so insubstantial was the shell, that Winny's +slight figure in the doorway showed in proportion solid and solitary and +immense, as if it sustained the perishable fabric. + +She was leaning forward now, bearing up the shell on her shoulders. She +was looking out, up and down the Avenue. + +"That you, Winny?" he said. + +"Yes. I'm looking for Vi." + +"She gone out?" + +"Gone into Wandsworth." + +"What did she go for?" + +"To have a dress tried on." + +"I say, she _is_ going it!" + +"There's a girl in St. Ann's," said Winny, "what makes for her very +cheap." + +He sighed and checked his sigh. "You bin slavin', Win?" + +"No. Why?" + +"You looked fagged out." + +Winny's face was white under the gaslight. + +She said nothing. She stood there looking out while he propped his +bicycle up against the window sill. + +He followed as she turned slowly and went through the passage to the +back room. + +"Kids asleep?" + +"Yes. Fast." + +She went to the dresser, and he helped her to take down the cups and +plates and set the table for their supper. In all her movements there +was a curious slowness and constraint, as if she were spinning time +out, thread by thread. It was five-and-twenty past eight. + +"Who's that for?" she asked as he laid a third place at the side. + +"Well, I should think it was for you." + +She started ever so slightly, and stared at the three plates, as if +their number put her out in some intricate calculation. + +"I must be going," she said. + +"Not you. Not much!" + +She submitted, moving uneasily about the place, but busy, folding things +and putting them away. He ran upstairs to wash. She could hear him +overhead, splashing, rubbing, and brushing. + +When he came down again she was sitting on the sofa with her hands +clasped in front of her, her head bent, her eyes fixed, gazing at the +floor. + +"I suppose we've got to wait for Vi," he said. + +"Oh yes." + +They waited. + +"I say, it's a quarter to nine, you know," he said, presently. + +"Hungry, Ran?" + +"My word! I should think I was just. D'you think she's gone to Mother +and had supper there?" + +"She--might have." + +"Well, then, let's begin. Come along." + +She shook her head. There was a slight spasm in her throat as if the +idea of food sickened her. + +"What's the matter?" + +"Nothing--nothing. I'm all right. I don't want to eat anything, that's +all. I must be going soon." + +"You're tired out, Win. You've got past it. Tell you what, I'll make you +a cup of tea." + +"No, Ranny, don't. I'd rather not." + +She rose, and yet she did not go. He had never known Winny so undecided. + +Then suddenly she stooped. On the floor of the hearth rug she had caught +sight of some bits of blue silk left from Violet's sewing. With an +almost feverish concentration of purpose she picked up each one of the +scraps and snippets; she threw them on the hearth. Slowly, deliberately, +spinning out her thread of time, she gathered what she had strewed; she +gathered into a handful the little scraps and snippets of blue silk, +powdered with the gray ashes from the hearth, and dropped them in the +fire, watching till the last shred was utterly destroyed. + +There was a faint cry overhead and Ransome started up. + +The cry or his movement clenched her resolution. + +"_I'll_ go, Ranny," she said. + +And as she went she drew a letter in a sealed envelope from the bosom of +her gown and laid it on the table. + +"Vi said I was to give you that if she wasn't back by eight. It's nine +now." + +He stared and let her go. He waited. He was aware of her footsteps in +the front room upstairs, of the baby crying, and of the sudden stilling +of his cry. Then he opened the letter. + +He read in Violet's tottering, formless handwriting: + +/# + <sc>Dear Randall,</sc>--This is to let you know I've gone and that I'm not + coming back again. I stuck to you as long as I could, but it was + misery. You and me aren't suited to live together, and it's no use + us going on any more pretending. If you'd take me back to-morrow I + wouldn't come. I can't live without Leonard Mercier, nor he without + me. I dare say you know it's him I've gone with. + + We're awfully sorry for all the trouble we're bringing on you. But + we couldn't help ourselves. We were driven to it. I've been off my + head all this year thinking how I must do it, and all the time + being afraid to take the step. And ever since I made up my mind to + it I've been quiet inside and happy, which looks as if it was meant + and had got to be. + + You needn't blame Leonard. He held off till he couldn't hold off + any more, because he was a friend of yours and didn't want to hurt + you. It was really me made him. It's a tragedy, but it would be a + bigger tragedy if we didn't, for we belong to one another. And he's + taking me to Paris to live so as nobody need know anything about + it. He's got a post in a shop there. And we're starting on a + Saturday so as you can have Sunday to turn round in. + + You'll forgive me, Ranny dear. It's what I've always told you--you + shouldn't have married me. You should have married a girl like + Winny. She was always fond of you. It was a lie what I told you + once about her not being. I said it because I was mad on you, and I + knew you'd marry her if I let you alone. So you can say it's all my + fault, if you like. + + Yours truly, + + [she had hesitated, with some erasures, over the form of + valedictions] + + Vi. +#/ + +There was a postscript: + +/# + "You can do anything you like to me as long as you don't touch + Leonard. It's not his fault my caring for him more than you." +#/ + +And in a small hand squeezed into the margin he made out with difficulty +two more lines. "You needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby. There was +never anything between me and Leonard before July of last year." + +He did not read it straight through all at once. He stuck at the opening +sentence. It stupefied him. Even when he took it in it did not tell him +plainly what it was that she had done besides going away and not coming +back again. It was as if his mind were unable to deal with more than one +image at a time, as if it refused to admit the hidden significance of +language. + +Realization came with the shock of the name that struck at him suddenly +out of the page in a flash that annihilated the context. The name and +his intelligence leaped at each other and struck fire across the +darkness. His gorge rose at it as it would have risen at a foul blow +under the belt. + +Leonard Mercier; he saw nothing else; he needed nothing else but that; +it showed him her deed as the abomination that it was. If it had been +any other man he thought he could have borne it, for he might still have +held her clean. + +As it was, the uncleanness was such that his mind turned from it +instinctively as from a thing unspeakable. He closed his eyes, he hid +his face in his hands, as if the two had been there with him in the +room. And still he saw things. There rose before him a sort of welter of +gray slime and darkness in which were things visible, things white and +vivid, yet vague, broken and unfinished, because his mind refused to +join or finish them; things that were faceless and deformed, like white +bodies that tumble and toss in the twilight of evil dreams. These white +things came tumbling and tossing toward him from the gray confines of +the slime; urged by a persistent and abominable life, they were borne +perpetually on the darkness and were perpetually thrust back into it by +his terror. + +He turned the letter and read it to the end, to the last scribble on the +margin: "You should have married a girl like Winny Dymond." "It was a +lie what I told you once about her." "You needn't be afraid of being +fond of Baby." There was nothing evocative, nothing significant for him +in these phrases, not even in the names. His mind had no longer any grip +on words. The ideas they stood for were blurred; they were without form +or meaning; they rose and shifted like waves, and like waves they +disappeared on the surface of the darkness and the slime. + +He was roused from his sickening contemplation by a child's cry +overhead. It came again; it pierced him; it broke up the horror and +destroyed it. He woke with it to a sense of sheer blank calamity, of +overpowering bereavement. + +His wife had left him. That was what had happened to him. His wife had +left him. She had left her little children. + +It was as if Violet had died and her death had cleansed her. + +When the child cried a third time he remembered Winny. He would have to +tell her. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +He rose and went to the fireplace mechanically. His impulse was to tear +up and burn Violet's letter and thus utterly destroy all proof and the +record of her shame. He was restrained by that strong subconscious +sanity which before now had cared for him when he was at his worst. It +suggested that he would do well to keep the letter. It was--it was a +document. It might have value. Proofs and records were precisely what he +might most want later on. He folded it and replaced it in its envelope +and thrust it into the breast pocket of his coat. + +And it occurred to him again that he had got to tell Winny. + +He could hear her feet going up and down, up and down, in the front room +overhead where she walked, hushing the crying baby. Presently the crying +ceased and the footsteps, and he heard the low humming of her cradle +song; then silence; and then the sound of her feet coming down the +stairs. + +He would have to tell her now. + +He drew himself up, there where he was, standing by his hearth, and +waited for her. + +She came in softly and shut the door behind her and stood there as if +she were afraid to come too near. Her face was all eyes; all eyes of +terror, as before a grief too great, a bereavement too awful for any +help or consolation. She spoke first. + +"What is it, Ranny?" Her low voice went light like a tender hand that +was afraid to touch his wound. + +"She's left me; that's all." + +Her lips parted, but no words came; they parted to ease the heart that +fluttered with anguish in her breast. She moved a little nearer into the +room, not looking at him, but with her head bowed slightly as if her +shoulders bore Violet's shame. She stood a moment by the table, looking +at her own hand as it closed on the edge, the fingers working up and +down on the cloth. It might have been the hand of another person, for +all she was aware of its half-convulsive motion. + +"Oh, Ranny, _dear_--" At last she breathed it out, the soul of her +compassion, and all her hushed sense of his bereavement. + +"Did you know?" + +She shook her head, slowly, closing in an extremity of negation the eyes +that would not look at him. + +"No--No--" It was as if she had said, "Who _could_ have known it?" Yet +her voice had an uncertain sound. + +"But you had an idea?" + +"No," she said, taking courage from his incredible calmness. "I was +afraid; that was all." And then, as one utterly beaten by him and +defenseless, she broke down. "I tried so hard--so hard, so as it +shouldn't happen." + +It was as if she had said, "I tried so hard--so hard to save her for +you; but she had to die." + +"I know you did." + +But it was only then, in the long pause of that moment, that he knew; +that he saw the whole full, rich meaning and intention of the things +that she had done for him. + +And now, as if she were afraid lest he should see too much, as if +somehow his seeing it would sharpen the perilous edge she stood on, +would wind up to the pitch of agony her tense feeling of it all, Winny +suddenly became evasive. She found her subterfuge in stark matter of +fact. + +"You haven't had any supper," she said. + +"No more have you." + +"I don't want anything." + +"I'm sure _I_ don't. But you must. You'll be ill, Winny, if you don't." + +White-faced and famished, they kept it up, both struck by the indecency +of eating in the house of sorrow. Then for his sake she gave in, and he +for hers. + +"If you will, I will," she said. + +"That's right," said he. + +And together helping each other, they filled the kettle and set it on +the fire to boil, moving in silence and with soft footsteps, as in the +house where death was. And together they sat down to the table and +forced themselves to eat a little, each for the sake of the other, +encouraging each other with such difficult, broken speech as mourners +use. They behaved in all ways as if the ghost of a dead Violet sat in +her old place, facing Ranny. The feeling, embraced by each of them with +the most profound sincerity, was that Ranny's bereavement was +irreparable, supreme. Each was convinced with an inassailable and +immutable conviction that the thing that had happened was, for each of +them, the worst that could happen. + +Half through the meal he got up suddenly and left her. He was seized +with violent sickness, such sickness as he had never yet known, and +would have believed impossible. The sounds of his bodily anguish reached +her from the room above. They stirred her emotion to a passion of +helpless, agonizing pity. If she could only go up to him and put her +hand on his forehead, and do things for him! But she couldn't; and she +felt poignantly that if she did Ranny somehow wouldn't like it. So, as +there was nothing she could do for him, she laid her head down on her +arms and wept. + +She raised it suddenly, like a guilty thing, and dashed the tears from +her eyes, as if she were angry with them for betraying her. + +Ranny had recovered and was coming downstairs again. As he came in he +saw at once what she had been doing. + +"You've been crying, Winny?" + +She said nothing. + +"I wouldn't if I were you," he said. "There's no need." + +She rose and faced him bravely, for there were things that must be +thought of. + +"What are you going to do, Ranny?" she said. + +"Nothing. What is there to be done?" + +"Well--" She paused, breathing painfully. + +"Look here, Winny, you're dead-beat and you must go home to bed. Do you +know it's past ten?" + +She drew herself up. "I'm not going." + +"You must, dear, I'm afraid." + +He smiled, and the smile and his white face made her heart ache. Also +they made her more determined. + +"You must have somebody. You can't be left like this all by yourself. Do +you think I can go and leave you, when you're ill and all?" + +"I'm all right now. I wish I could see you home, but I can't leave the +house with the kids, you see, all alone." + +"Ranny," she said, "I'm not going." She was very grave, very earnest, +absolutely determined, and, child that she still was, absolutely unaware +of the impossibility of the thing that she proposed. She was blind to +herself, blind to all appearances, blind to all aspects of the case, but +one, his desolation and his necessity. + +"I can't leave you. I wouldn't be happy if I didn't stay. You might be +taken bad or something, in the night." + +"You can't stay, Winny. It wouldn't do." They were the words she had +used to him, in her wisdom, when he had asked her to make her home with +him and Violet. + +But the vision of propriety, which he raised and presented thus for her +consideration, it was nothing to her. She swept it all aside. + +"But I _must_," she said. "There's Baby." + +He remembered then that little one, above in Violet's deserted room. +Almost she had persuaded him, but for that secret sanity which had him +in its care. + +"I'll take him. You must go now," he said, firmly. "Now this minute." + +He looked for her hat and coat, found them and put her into them, +handling her with an extreme inflexibility of manner and tenderness of +touch, as if she had been a child. + +"Well, then," she compromised. "Let me help you move him." + +He let her; and they went upstairs and into Violet's room. Winny had +removed every sign of disorder left by Violet in the precipitancy of her +flight. Between them, very gently, they carried the cot, with the +sleeping baby in it, out of the room of the love knots and the rosebuds +into Ranny's room. They set the cot close up against the side of his bed +with the rail down so that Ranny's arms might reach out to Baby where he +lay. Dossie's little bed was drawn up at the foot. They stood together +for a moment, looking at the two children, at Dossie, all curled up and +burrowing into her pillow, and at Baby, lying by Ranny's bed as a +nursling lies by its mother. + +They were silent as the same thought tore at them. + +Night after night, for years, as long as Dossie and Baby were little, +Ranny would lie like that, on that narrow bed of his, shut in by the two +cots, one at his side and the other at his feet. And to Winny it had +come, for Ranny had rubbed it into her (tenderly enough; but he had +rubbed it in), that this was the last night when she could stand beside +him there. She had tried so hard to hold him and Violet together; and +all the time it had been Violet who had held her and him. It was +Violet's presence that had made it possible for her to go in and out +with Ranny in his house. + +She stooped for a final, reassuring look at Baby. + +"Can you manage with him?" she whispered. + +He nodded. + +"I've made him his food in that saucepan. You'll have to heat it on the +gas ring--in there." + +"In there" was Violet's room. + +They went downstairs together. + +"I wish I could see you home," he said again. + +"I'm all right." But she paused on the doorstep. "You ought to have +somebody. You can't be left all alone like this. Mayn't I run down and +fetch your mother?" + +"No," he said, "you mayn't. I'll go down myself to-morrow morning, if +you wouldn't mind coming in and looking after the kids for a bit." + +"Of course I'll come. Good night, Ranny." + +"Good night, Winky. And thanks--" His throat closed with a sharp +contraction on the words. She slipped into the darkness and was gone. + + * * * * * + +He was thankful that he had had the sense to see the impossibility of +it, of her spending the night in his house with nobody in it but the two +of them and the two children. + +But it was only when, in the act of undressing, he was reminded of +Violet's letter by its bulging in his breast pocket, that he glimpsed +the danger they had escaped. Up till then he had only thought of Winny, +of her reputation, of her post at Johnson's (imperiled if she were not +in by eleven), of all that she would not and could not think of in her +thought for him. Now, that inner sanity, that secret wisdom which had +made him preserve Violet's letter as a possibly valuable document, +suggested that if Winny had stayed all night in the house with him that +document would have lost its value. Not that he had meant to do anything +with it, that he had any plan, or any certain knowledge. Those two +ideas, or rather, those two instinctive appreciations, of the value of +the document, and of the awfulness of the risk they ran, were connected +in his mind obscurely as the stuff of some tale that he had been told, +or as something he had seen sometime in the papers. He put them from him +as things that he himself had no immediate use for; while all the time +subconscious sanity guarded them and did not let them go. + +But that was all it did for him. It did not lift from him his +oppression, or fill with intelligible detail his blank sense of +calamity, of inconsolable bereavement. This oppression, this morbid +sense, amounted almost to hallucination; it prevented him from thinking +as clearly as he might about all that, the value of the document, and +the rest of it, and about what he ought to do. It was with him as he lay +awake on his bed, shut in by the two cots; it, and the fear of +forgetting to feed Baby, got into his dreams and troubled them; they +watched by him in his sleep; they woke him early and were with him when +he woke. + +Dossie woke too. He took her into his bed and played with her, and in +playing he forgot his grief. A little before seven he got up and +dressed. He washed Dossie and dressed her as well as he could, with +tender, clumsy fingers that fumbled over all her little strings and +buttons. Pain, and pleasure poignant as pain, thrilled him with every +soft contact with her darling body. He tried to brush her hair as Winny +brushed it, all in ducks' tails and in feathers. + +He went down and busied himself, hours earlier than he need, making the +fire, getting ready Dossie's breakfast and Baby's and his own. Foraging +in the larder, he came upon a beefsteak pie that, evidently, Winny had +made for him, as if in foreknowledge of his need. When he had washed up +the breakfast things and the things that were left over from last night, +he went upstairs and made his bed, clumsily. Then he went down again and +tidied the sitting-room. In all this he was driven by his determination +to leave nothing for Winny to do for him when she came. He went to and +fro, with Dossie toddling after him and laughing. + +Upstairs, Baby laughed in his cot. + +And all the time, Ranny, with his obsession of bereavement and calamity, +was unaware of the peace, the exquisite, the unimaginable peace that had +settled upon Granville. + + * * * * * + +At half past eight Winny looked in (entering by the open door of +Granville) to see what she could do. + +She found him in the bathroom, trying to wash Baby. He had put the +little zinc bath with Baby in it inside the big one. + +"Whatever did you do that for, Ranny?" Winny asked, while her heart +yearned to him. + +He said he had to. The little beggar splashed so. Good idea, wasn't it? + +Almost he had forgotten his bereavement. + +Winny shook her head. + +"Anyhow, I've washed him all right." + +"Yes," said she. "But you'll never dry him." + +"Why not?" + +"You can't. Not in here. There isn't room for you to set. Where's your +chair and your flannel apron?" + +"Flannel apron?" + +"Yes. If you don't wear one you'll not get any hold on him. He'll slip +between your knees before you know he's gone." + +"Not if I keep 'em together." + +"_Then_ there's no lap for him. What he wants is petticoats." + +(Petticoats? That was the secret, was it? He had tried to soap Baby, bit +by bit, as he had seen Winny do, holding him, wrapped in a towel, on his +knees--a disastrous failure. It was incredible how slippery he was.) + +"There's his blanket. I thought I'd dry him on the floor." + +"He'll catch his death of cold, Ranny, if you do. There, give him to me. +We'll take him downstairs to the fire." + +He gave her the little naked, dripping body, and she wrapped it in the +warm blanket and carried it downstairs. + +"You bring the towels and the powder puff, and all his vests and +flannels and things," said Winny. + +He brought them. She established herself in the low chair by the fire +downstairs. He played with Dossie as he watched her. And all the time, +through all the play, his obscure instinct told him that she ought not +to be there. It suggested that if he desired to preserve the integrity +of the document, Winny and he must not be known to be alone in the house +together. + +But it was a question of petticoats. He realized it when he saw Baby +sprawling in the safe hollow of her lap. He had meant to tell Winny +that she mustn't stay; but she had him by those absurd petticoats of +hers, and behind her petticoats he shielded himself from the upbraidings +of his sanity. + +But Winny knew. She was not going to stay, to be there with him more +than was strictly necessary. When, with exquisite gentleness, she had +inserted Baby into all his little vests and things, she put on him his +knitted Baby's coat and hat, and gave him to Ranny to hold while she +arrayed Dossie in her Sunday best. Then she packed them both into the +wonderful pram, and wheeled them out into the Avenue, far from Ranny. + +For she knew that Ranny didn't want her. He wanted to be left alone to +think. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +He had been incapable of thinking until now, the first moment (since it +had happened) that he had been left alone. Last night the thing had +stupefied him so that he could not think. If he had tried to describe +what had been before him last night, he would have said there was a lot +of cotton wool about. It had been all like wool, cotton wool, nothing +that the mind could bite on, nothing that it could grasp. Last night +Winny had been there, and that had stopped his thinking. It was absurd +to say that what had happened had disturbed his night's rest. What had +disturbed his night's rest had been his fear lest he should forget to +feed Baby. And in the morning there had been too many things to do, +there had been Dossie and Baby. And then Winny again. + +And now they were all gone. There was silence and a clear space to think +in. His brain too was clear and clean. The clouds of cotton wool had +been dispersed in his movements to and fro. + +As an aid to thinking he brought out of his breast pocket Violet's +letter. He spread it on the table in the back sitting-room and sat down +to it, seriously, as to a document that he would have to master, a thing +that would yield its secret only under the closest examination. He was +aware that he had not by any means taken it all in last night. + +That she had gone off with Leonard Mercier, _that_ he had indeed +grasped, _that_ he knew. But beyond that the letter gave him no solid +practical information. It did not and it was not meant to give him any +clue. In going off Violet had disappeared and had meant to disappear. He +gathered from it that she had been possessed by one thought and by one +fear, that he would go after her and bring her back. + +"What on earth," he said to himself, "should I go after her for?" + +She made that clear to him as he read on. Her idea was that he would go +after her, not so much to bring her back as to do something to Mercier, +to inflict punishment on him, to hurt Mercier and hurt him badly. That +was what Violet was afraid of; that was why she tried to shield Mercier, +to excuse him, to take the whole blame on herself. And, evidently, that +was what Mercier was afraid of too. That was why he had bolted with her +to Paris. They must have had that in their minds, they must have planned +it months before. He must have been trying for the post he'd got there. +Ransome could see further, with a fierce shrewdness, that it was +Mercier's "funk" and not his loyalty that accounted for his "holding +off." "He held off because I was his friend, did he? He held off to save +his own skin, the swine!" + +And now she drew him up. What was all this about Winny Dymond? He must +have missed it last night. "She was always fond of you. It was a lie +what I told you about her not being. I said it because I was mad on you. +I knew you'd have married her if I'd let you alone." + +She was cool, the way she showed herself up. That's what she'd done, +had she? Lied, so that he might think Winny didn't care for him? Lied, +so that he mightn't marry her? Lied, so that she might get him for +herself? For her fancy, for no more than a low animal would feel. He +could see it now. He could see what she was. A woman who could fancy +Mercier must have been a low animal all through and all the time. + +How he had ever cared for her he couldn't think. There must have been +some beastliness in him. Men _were_ beasts sometimes. But he was worse. +He was a fool to have believed her lie. Even her beastliness sank out of +sight beside that treachery. + +Well--she'd been frank enough about it now. She must have had a face, to +own that she'd lied to him and trapped him! After that, what did it +matter if she _had_ left him? "I dare say you know who I've gone with." +What did it matter who she'd gone with? Good God! What did it matter +what she'd done? + +He could smile at her fear and at the cause of it. Mercier must have +terrified her with his funk. The postscript said as much. "You can do +anything you like to me, so long as you don't hurt Leonard." He smiled +again at that. What did she imagine he'd like to do to her? As for +Mercier, what should he want to hurt the beast for? He wouldn't touch +him--now--with the end of a barge-pole. + +Oh, well, yes, he supposed he'd have to leather him if he came across +him. But he wouldn't have any pleasure in it--now. Last year he would +have leathered him with joy; his feet had fairly ached to get at him, to +kick the swine out of the house before he did any harm in it. Now it was +as if he loathed him too much in his flabbiness to care for the contact +that personal violence involved. + +Yet, through all the miserable workings of his mind the thought of +Mercier's flabbiness was sweet to him. It gave him a curious consolation +and support. True, it had been the chief agent in the process of +deception; it had blinded him to Mercier's dangerous quality; it had +given him a sense of false security; he could see, now, the fool he'd +been to imagine that it would act as any deterrent to a woman so +foredoomed as Violet. Thus it had in a measure brought about the whole +catastrophe. At the same time it had saved him from the peculiar +personal mortification such catastrophes entail. In comparison with +Mercier he sustained no injury to his pride and vanity of sex. And +Mercier's flabbiness did more for him than that. It took the sharpest +sting from Violet's infidelity. It removed it to the region of insane +perversities. It removed Violet herself from her place in memory, that +place of magic and of charm where if she had remained she would have had +power to hurt him. + +When he considered her letter yet again in the calmness of that thought, +it struck him that Violet herself was offering him support and +consolation. "You shouldn't have married me. You should have married a +girl like Winny Dymond."--"I knew you'd marry her if I let you alone." +Why, after all these years, had she confessed her treachery? Why had she +confessed it now at the precise moment when she had left him? There was +no need. It couldn't help her. No, but it was just possible (for she was +quite intelligent) that she had seen how it might help him. It was +possible that some sort of contrition had visited her in that last +hour, and that she had meant to remind him that he was not utterly +abandoned, that there was something left. + +That brought him to the lines, almost indecipherable, squeezed in her +last hurried moment into the margin of the letter. "You mustn't be +afraid of being fond of Baby. There was nothing between me and Leonard +before July of last year." + +She had foreseen the supreme issue; she had provided for the worst +sting, the unspeakable suspicion, the intolerable terror. It was as if +she had calculated the precise point where her infidelity would touch +him. + +Faced with that issue, Ranny's mind, like a young thing forced to sudden +tragic maturity by a mortal crisis, worked with an incredible clearness +and capacity. It developed an almost superhuman subtlety of +comprehension. He looked at the thing all round; he controlled his +passion so that he might look at it. It was of course open to him to +take it that she had lied. Passion indeed clamored at him, insisting +that she did lie, that lying came easier to her than the truth. But, +looking at it all round without passion, he was inclined to think that +Violet had not lied. She had not given herself time or space to lie for +lying's sake. If she had lied, then, she had lied for a purpose. A +purpose that he could very well conceive. But if she lied for _that_ +purpose she would have given importance and prominence to her lie. She +wouldn't have hidden it away in an almost invisible scrawl on an +inadequate margin. + +Of course, she might have lied to deceive him for another purpose, for +his own good. But there again conscious deception would have made for +legibility at the least. + +Besides, she had put it in a way that left no room for doubt. "You +needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby." Even passion had to own that +the words had the ring of remorse, of insight, of certainty, and, above +all, of haste. Such haste as precluded all deliberation. Evidently it +was an afterthought. It had come to her, inopportunely, in the last +moment before flight, and she had given it the place and the importance +she would naturally give to a subject in which she herself was not in +any way concerned. + +There remained the possibility that she might be mistaken. But the dates +upheld her. In the beginning he and she had, of necessity, gone very +carefully into the question of dates. He remembered that there had been +a whole body of evidence establishing the all-important point beyond a +doubt. All of his honor that he most cared for she had spared. She had +not profaned the ultimate sanctity, nor poisoned for him the very +sweetness of his life. + + * * * * * + +There were sounds in the front garden. Winny was bringing in the +children. He went out to meet them as they came up the flagged walk. +Dossie toddled, clinging to the skirts of Winny, who in all her +tenderness and absurdity, with her most earnest air of gravity and +absorption in the adventure, pushed the pram. In the pram, tilted +backward, with his little pink legs upturned, Baby fondled, deliciously, +his own toes. He was jerking himself up and down and making for the +benefit of all whom it might concern his very nicest noises. + +Ranny stood in the doorway, silent, almost austere, like a man escaped +by a hair's breadth from great peril. + +When he caught sight of the silent and austere young man in the doorway, +Baby let go his fascinating toes. He chuckled with delight. He jerked +himself more than ever up and down. He struggled to be free, to be +lifted up and embraced by the young man. Silence and austerity were no +deterrent to Baby, so assured was he of his position, of his welcome, of +the safe, warm, tingling place that would presently be his in the hollow +of the young man's arm. The desire of it made Baby's arms and his body +writhe, with a heartrending agitation, in his little knitted coat. + +All this innocent ecstasy of Baby the young man met with silence and +austerity and somber eyes. + +With Winny's eyes on him he indeed lifted Baby up, disclosing, first, +his pathetically bunched and bundled back, and then his face, +exquisitely contorted. + +And Winny, who had _forgotten_ for a minute, laughed. + +"He is funny, isn't he? He smiles just like you do, all up in the +corners like." + +At that the young man's arms tightened, and he gripped Baby with passion +to his breast. He kissed him, looking down at him, passionately, +somberly. + +Winny saw, and the impulse seized her to efface herself, to vanish. + +"I must be going," she said, "or I shall be late for dinner. Can you +manage, Ranny? There's a beefsteak pie. I made it yesterday." + +As she turned Dossie trotted after her; and as she vanished Dossie +cried, inconsolably. + +He managed, beautifully, with the beefsteak pie. + +His sense of bereavement which still weighed on him was no longer +attached in any way to Violet. He could not say precisely what it _was_ +attached to. There it was. Only, when he thought of Violet it seemed to +him incomprehensible, not to say absurd, that he should feel it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +In the afternoon Winny came again for the children, so that he could go +to Wandsworth unencumbered. The weather was favorable to her idea, which +was not to be in Ranny's house more than she could help, but to be seen, +if seen she must be, out of doors with the children, in a public +innocence, affording the presumption that Violet was still there. + +Above all, she was not going to be seen with Ranny, or to be seen by him +too much, if she could help it. With her sense of the sadness of his +errand, the sense (that came to her more acutely with the afternoon) of +things imminent, of things, she knew not what, that would have to be +done, she avoided him as she would have avoided a bereaved person +preoccupied with some lamentable business relating to the departed. + +He was aware of her attitude; he was aware, further, that it would be +their attitude at Wandsworth. They would all treat him like that, as if +he were bereaved. They would not lose, nor allow him to lose for an +instant, their awestruck sense of it. That was why he dreaded going +there, why he had put it off till the last possible moment, which was +about three o'clock in the afternoon. His Uncle Randall would be there. +He would have to be told. He might as well tell him while he was about +it. His wife's action had been patent and public; it was not a thing +that could be hushed up, or minimized, or explained away. + +As he thought of all this, of what he would have to say, to go into, to +handle, every moment wound him up to a higher and higher pitch of +nervous tension. + +His mother opened the door to him. She greeted him with a certain +timidity, an ominous hesitation; and from the expression of her face you +might have gathered, in spite of her kiss, that she was not entirely +glad to see him; that she had something up her sleeve, something that +she desired to conceal from him. It was as if by way of concealing it +that she let him in stealthily with no more opening of the door than was +absolutely necessary for his entrance. + +"You haven't brought Vi'let?" she whispered. + +"No." + +They went softly together through the shop, darkened by the blinds that +were drawn for Sunday. In the little passage beyond he paused at the +door of the back parlor. + +"Where's Father?" + +She winced at the word "Father," so out of keeping with his habitual +levity. It was the first intimation that there was something wrong with +him. + +"He's upstairs, my dear, in His bed." + +"What's the matter with him?" + +"It's the Headache." She went on to explain, taking him as it were +surreptitiously into the little room, that the Headache had been +frequent lately, not to say continuous; not even Sundays were exempt. + +"He's a sad sufferer," she said. + +Instead of replying with something suitable, Ranny set his teeth. + +She had sat down helplessly, and as she spoke she gazed up at him where +he remained standing by the chimney-piece; her look pleaded, deprecated, +yet obstinately endeavored to deceive. But for once Ranny was blind to +the pathos of her deception. Vaguely her foolish secrecy irritated him. + +"Look here, Mother," he said, "I want to talk to you. I've got to tell +you something." + +"It's not anything about your Father, Ranny?" + +"No, it is not." + +(She turned to him from her trouble with visible relief.) + +"It's about my wife." + +"Vi'let?" + +"She's left me." + +"Left you? What d'you mean, Ranny?" + +"She's gone off--Bolted." + +"When?" + +"Last night, I suppose--to Paris." + +She stared at him strangely, without sympathy, without comprehension. It +was almost as if in her mind she accused him of harboring some monstrous +hallucination. With her eternal instinct for suppression she fought +against it, she refused to take it in. He felt himself unequal to +pressing it on her more than that. + +"Would she go there--all that way--by herself, Ranny?" she brought out +at last. + +"By herself? Not much!" + +"Well--how--" + +And still she would not face the thing straight enough to say, "How did +she go, then?" + +He flung it at her brutally, exasperated by her obstinacy. + +"She went with Mercier." + +"With _'im_--? _She_--" + +Her face seemed suddenly to give way under his eyes, to become +discolored in a frightful pallor, to fall piteously into the lines of +age. + +This face that his words had so crushed and broken looked up at him with +all its motherhood, mute yet vibrant, brimming in its eyes. + +"Sit down, dear," she said. "You'll be tired standing." + +He sat down, mechanically, in the nearest chair, bending forward, +contemplating his clenched hands. His posture put him at her mercy. She +came over to him and laid one hand on his shoulder; the other touched +his hair, stroking it. He shrank as if she had hurt him and leaned back. +She moved away, and took up a position in a seat that faced him. There +she sat and gazed at him, helpless and passive, panting a little with +emotion; until a thought occurred to her. + +"Who's looking after the little children?" + +"Winny--Winny Dymond." + +"Why didn't you send for _me_, Ranny?" + +"It was too late--last night." + +"I'd have come, my dear. I'd have got out of me bed." + +"It wouldn't have done any good." + +There was a long pause. + +"Were you alone in the house, dear?" + +He looked up, angry. "Of course I was alone in the house." + +She sat silent and continued to gaze at him with her tender, wounded +eyes. + +Outside in the passage the front-door bell rang. She rose in +perturbation. + +"That's them. Do you want to see them?" + +"I don't care whether I see them or not." + +She stood deliberating. + +"You'd better--p'raps--see your uncle. I'll tell him, Ranny. Your +Father's not fit for it to-day." + +"All right." + +He rose uneasily and prepared himself to take it standing. + +He heard them come into the shop, his Uncle and his Aunt Randall. He +heard his uncle's salutation checked in mid-career. He heard his +mother's penetrating whisper, then mutterings, commiserations. Their +communion lasted long enough for him to gather that his mother would +have about told them everything. + +They came in, marking their shocked sense of it by soft shufflings at +the door of the parlor, his sanctuary. He felt obscurely that he had +become important to them, the chief figure of a little infamous tragedy. +He had a moment's intense and painful prescience of the way they would +take it; they would treat him with an excruciating respect, an awful +deference, as a person visited by God and afflicted with unspeakable +calamity. + +And they did. It was an affair of downcast eyes and silent, embarrassed +and embarrassing hand-shakings. Ransome met it with his head in the air, +clear-eyed, defiant of their sympathy. + +"I think," his mother said, "we'd better come upstairs if we don't want +to be interrupted." For on Sundays the back parlor was assigned to the +young chemist, Mercier's successor, who assisted Mr. Ransome. + +Upstairs, the ordered room, polished to perfection, steadfast in its +shining Sunday state, appeared as the irremovable seat of middle-class +tradition, of family virtue, of fidelity and cleanliness, of sacred +immutable propriety. And into the bosom of these safe and comfortable +sanctities Ranny had brought horror and defilement and destruction. + +His Uncle Randall, try as he would, could not disguise from him that +this was what he had done. Because of Ranny's wife, Respectability, the +enduring soul of the Randalls and the Ransomes, could never lift up its +head superbly any more. All infamies and all abominations that could +defile a family were summed up for John Randall in the one word, +adultery. It was worse than robbery or forgery or bankruptcy; it struck +more home; it did more deadly havoc among the generations. It excited +more interest; it caused more talk; and therefore it marked you more and +was not so easily forgotten. It reverberated. The more respectable you +were the worse it was for you. If, among the Randalls and the Ransomes, +such a plunge as Violet's was unheard of, it made the more terrific +splash, a splash that covered the whole family. The Ransomes, to be +sure, stood more in the center, they were more deplorably bespattered, +and more, much more intimately tainted. But, by the very closeness of +their family attachment, the mud of Violet's plungings would adhere +largely to the Randalls, too. The taint would hang for years around him, +John Randall, in his shop. He had hardly entered his sister's room +before he had calculated about how long it would be before the scandal +spread through Wandsworth High Street. It wasn't as if he hadn't been +well known. As a member of the Borough Council he stuck in the public +eye where other men would have slipped through into obscurity. It was +really worse for him than any of them. + +All this was present in the back of John Randall's mind as he prepared +to deal efficiently with the catastrophe. Having unbuttoned his coat and +taken off his gloves with exasperating, slow, and measured movements, he +fairly sat down to it at the table, preserving his very finest military +air. The situation required before all things a policy. And the policy +which most appealed to Mr. Randall, in which he showed himself most +efficient, was the policy of a kindly hushing up. It was thus that for +years he had dealt with his brother-in-laws' inebriety. Ranny's case, to +be sure, was not quite so simple; still, on the essential point Mr. +Randall had made up his mind--that, in the discussion that must follow, +the idea of adultery should not once appear. If they were all of them as +a family splashed more or less from head to foot with mud of a kind that +was going to stick to them, why, there was nothing to be done but to +cover it up as soon as possible. + +It was in the spirit of this policy that he approached his nephew. It +involved dealing with young Mrs. Ransome throughout as a good woman who +had become, somehow, mysteriously unfortunate. + +"I'm sorry to hear this about your wife, Randall. It's a sad business, a +sad business for you, my boy." + +From her seat on the sofa beside Ranny's mother, Aunt Randall murmured +inarticulate corroboration of that view. + +Ranny had remained standing. It gave him an advantage in defiance. + +"I've never heard anything," his uncle continued, heavily, "that's +shocked and grieved me more." + +"I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, Uncle." + +At that Mr. Randall fumed a little feebly, thereby losing some of the +fineness of his military air. It was as if his nephew had disparaged his +importance, ignored his stake in the family's reputation, and as good as +told him it was no business of his. + +"But I _must_ worry about it. _I_ can't take it like you do, as cool as +if nothing had happened. Such a thing's never been known, never so much +as been named in your mother's family, or your father's, either. +It's--it's so unexpected." + +"I didn't expect it any more than you did." + +"You needn't take that tone, Randall, my boy. I'm sorry for you, but +you're not the only one concerned. Still, I'm putting all that aside, +and I'm here to help you." + +"You can't help me. How can you?" + +"I can help you to consider what's to be done." + +"There isn't anything to be done that I can see." + +"There are several things," said Mr. Randall, "that can be done." He +said it as if he were counsel giving an opinion. "You can take her back; +you can leave her alone; or you can divorce her. First of all I want to +know one thing. Did you give her any provocation?" + +"What do you mean by provocation?" + +"Well--did you give her any cause for jealousy?" + +Ranny's mother struck in. "He wouldn't, John." And his Aunt Randall +murmured half-audible and shocked negation. + +Ranny stared at his uncle as if he wondered where he was coming out +next. + +"Of course I didn't." + +"Are--you--quite--sure about that?" + +"You needn't ask him such a thing," said Ranny's mother; and Ranny +fairly squared himself. + +"Look here, Uncle, what d'you want to get at?" + +"The facts, my boy." + +"You've got all there are." + +"How about that young woman up at your place?" + +"What young woman?" + +"That Miss--" + +Ranny's mother supplied his loss. "Miss Dymond." + +"What's she got to do with it?" said Ranny. + +"I'm asking you. What _has_ she?" + +"Nothing. You can keep her out of it." + +"That's what I should advise _you_ to do, my boy." + +Ranny dropped his defiance and sank his flushed forehead. "I _have_ kept +her out of it." His voice was grave and very low. + +"Not if she's there. Taking everything upon her and looking after your +children." + +"What harm's she doing looking after them?" + +"You'll soon know if you take it into a court of law." + +"Who told you I was going to take it?" + +"That's what I'm trying to get at. _Are_ you?" + +"Am I going to divorce her, you mean?" + +That was what he had meant. It was also what he was afraid of, what he +hoped to dissuade his nephew from. Above all things he dreaded the +public scandal of divorce. + +"Yes," he said. "Is it bad enough for that?" + +"It's bad enough for anything. But I don't know what I'm going to do." + +"Well, it won't do to have that young woman's name brought forward in +the evidence." + +"Who'd bring it?" + +"Why, _she_ might" (Randall's face was blank). "Your wife, if she +defends the suit. That would be her game, you may be sure." + +It would, Randall reflected. That was the very point suggested last +night by his inner sanity, the use that might be made of Winny. Winny's +innocent presence in his house might ruin his case if it were known. +What was worse, far worse, it would ruin Winny. Whatever he did he must +keep Winny out of it. + +"I haven't said I was going to bring an action." + +"Well--and I don't advise you to. Why have the scandal and the publicity +when you can avoid it?" + +"Why, Ranny," his mother cried, "it would kill your Father." + +Ranny scowled. Her cry failed to touch him. + +Mr. Randall went on. He felt that he was bringing his nephew round, that +he was getting the case into his own hands, the hands that were most +competent to deal with it. It was only to be expected that with his +experience he could see farther than the young man, his nephew. What Mr. +Randall saw beyond the scandal of the Divorce Court was a vision of +young Mrs. Ransome, wanton with liberty and plunging deeper, splashing +as she had not yet splashed, bespattering them all to the farthest +limits of her range. The question for Mr. Randall was how to stop her, +how to get her out of it, how to bring her to her sober senses before +she had done more damage than she had. + +He wondered, had it occurred to Randall that he might take her back? + +"Have you any idea," he said, "what made her do it?" + +"Good God, what a question!" + +Mr. Randall made a measured, balancing movement of his body while he +drummed with his fingers on the table. + +"Well--" It was as if he took his question back, conceding its enormity. +He leaned forward now in his balancing, and lowered his voice to the +extreme of confidence. + +"Have you any idea how far she's gone?" (It was as near as he could get +to it.) + +"She's gone as far as Paris," said Ranny, with a grin. "Is that far +enough for you?" + +Mr. Randall leaned back as with relief, and stopped balancing. "It might +be worse," he said, "far worse." + +"How d'you mean--worse? Seems to me about as bad as it can be." + +"It's unfortunate--but not so serious as if--" He paused profoundly. He +was visibly considering it from some private and personal point of view. +"She might have stayed in London. She might have carried on at your own +door or here in Wandsworth." + +His nephew, Randall, was now regarding him with an attention the nature +of which he entirely misconceived. It gave him courage to speak out--his +whole mind and no mincing matters. + +"If I were you, Randall, the first thing I should do is to get rid of +that young woman--that Dymond girl--" He put up his hand to ward off the +imminent explosion. "Yes, yes, I know _all_ you've got to say, my boy, +but it won't do. She's a young girl--" + +"She's as good as they make them," said Ranny, glaring at him, "as good +as my mother there." + +"Yes, yes, yes. I know all about it. But you mustn't have her there." + +"Have her where?" + +"Where I know she's been--where your mother says she's been--in your +house. Now, don't turn on your mother; she hasn't said a word against +her. I'm not saying a word. But you mustn't--have--her--about, Randall. +You mustn't have her about. There'd be talk and all, before you know +where you are. It isn't right and it isn't proper." + +"No, Ranny, it isn't proper," said his mother; and his aunt said, No, it +wasn't, too. + +Ranny laughed unpleasantly. + +"You think it's as improper as the other thing, do you?" + +He addressed his uncle. + +"What other thing?" said Mr. Randall. It had made him wince even while +he pretended not to see it. It had brought him so near. + +"What my wife's done." + +"Well, Randall, since you ask me, to all appearances--appearances, mind +you--it is." + +"Appearances?" + +"Well, you must save appearances, and you must save 'em while you can." + +"How am I to save them, I should like to know?" + +"By actin' at once. By stoppin' it all before it gets about. You can't +have your wife over there in Paris carryin' on. You must just +start--soon as you can--to-morrow--and bring her back." + +"Not much!" + +"It's what you got to do, Randall. She's been unfortunate, I know; but +she's young, and you don't know how she may have been led on. 'S +likely's not you haven't looked after her enough. You don't know but +what you may have been responsible. You got to take her back." + +"What should I take her back for?" said Ranny, with false suavity. + +"To save scandal. To save trouble and misery and disgrace all round. You +got to think of your family." + +"What do you mean by my family? Me and my children?" + +"I mean the family name, my boy." + +A frightful lucidity had come upon Ranny, born of the calamity itself. +It was not for nothing that he had attained that sudden violent maturity +of his. He saw things as they were. + +"You mean yourself," he said. "Jolly lot you think of me and my children +if you ask me to take her back. Not me! I'll be damned first." + +"You married her, Randall, against the wishes of your family; and you're +responsible to your family for the way she conducts herself." + +"I should rather think I _was_ responsible! If I wasn't--if I was a +bletherin' idiot--I might take her back--" + +"I don't say if she leaves you again you'll take her back a second time. +But you got to give her a chance. After all, she's the mother of your +children. You married her." + +"Yes. That's where I went wrong. That's what made her do it, if you want +to know. _That's_ the provocation I gave her. It's what she always had +against me--the children, and my marrying her. And she was right. She +never ought to have had children. I never ought to have married +her--against her will." + +"Well, I can't think what you did it for--in such haste." + +"I did it," said Ranny, in his maturity, his lucidity, "because it was +the way I was brought up. I suppose, come to that, I did it for all +you." + +He saw everything now as it was. + +"How d'you make that out? Did it for us!" + +Then Ranny delivered his soul, and the escape, the outburst was +tremendous, cataclysmic. + +"For you and your rotten respectability! What you brought me up on. What +you've rammed down my throat all along. What you're thinking of now. +You're not thinking of me; you're thinking of yourself, and how +respectable you are, and how I've dished you. You don't want me to take +my wife back because you care a rap about me and my children. It's +because you're afraid. That's what it is, you're afraid. You're afraid +of the rotten scandal; you're afraid of what people'll say; you're +afraid of not looking respectable any more. You know what my wife's +done--you know what she _is_--" + +"She's a woman, Randall, she's a woman." + +"She's a--Well, she _is_, and you know it. You know what she is, and you +want me to take her back so as you can lie about it and hush it all up +and pretend it isn't there. Same as you've done with my father. He's a +drunkard--" + +"For shame, Randall," said his uncle. + +"He is, and you know it, and he knows it, and my mother knows it. And +yet you go on lying about him and pretending. I'm sick of it. I'm sick +of hearing about how good he is, and his Headaches--Headaches!" + +"Oh! Ranny, dear," his mother wailed, piteously. + +"I'm not blaming him, Mother. Poor old Humming-bird, he can't help it. +It's the way he's made. I'm not blaming Virelet. She can't help it, +either. It's my fault. If I'd wanted her to stick to me I oughtn't to +have married her." + +"What ought you to have done then?" his uncle inquired, sternly. + +"Anything but that. That's what started her. She couldn't stand it. +She'll stick to Mercier all right, you'll see, because she isn't married +to the swine; whereas if I took her back to-night she'd chuck me +to-morrow. Can't you see that she's like that? She's done the best day's +work she ever did for herself and me, too." + +"Well, how you can speak about it so, Ranny," said his mother. + +"There you're at it again, you know--pretendin'. You go on as if it was +the most horrible thing that could happen to any one, her boltin', when +you know the most horrible thing would be her comin' back again. To look +at you and Uncle and Aunt there, any one would think that Virelet was +the best wife and mother that ever lived, and that she'd only left me to +go to heaven." + +"Well, there's no good my saying any more, I can see," said Mr. Randall. +And he rose, buttoning his coat with dignity that struggled in vain +against his deep depression. He was profoundly troubled by his nephew's +outburst. It was as if peace and honesty and honor, the solid, +steadfast tradition by which he lived, had been first outraged, then +destroyed in sheer brutality. He didn't know himself. He had been +charged with untruthfulness and dishonesty; he, who had been held the +soul of honesty and truth; who had always held himself at least sincere. + +And he didn't know his nephew Randall. He had always supposed that +Randall was refined and that he had a good heart. And to think that he +could break out like this, and be coarse and cruel, and say things +before ladies that were downright immoral-- + +"Well," he said, as he shook hands with him, "I can't understand you, my +boy." + +"Sorry, Uncle." + +"There--leave it alone. I don't ask you to apologize to me. But there's +your mother. You've done your best to hurt her. Good-by." + +"He's upset, John," said Ranny's mother, "and no wonder. You should have +let him be." + +"I'm not upset," said Ranny, wearily. "What beats me is the rotten +humbug of it all." + +And no sooner did Mr. Randall find himself in the High Street with his +wife than he took her by the arm in confidence. + +"He was quite right about that wife of his. Only I thought--if he could +have patched it up--" + +"Ah, I dare say he knows more than we do. What I can't get over is the +way he spoke about his poor father." + +"Well--I wouldn't say it to Emma, but Fulleymore _does_ drink. Like a +fish he does." + +(It was his sacrifice to honesty.) + +"But Randall was wild. He didn't quite know what he was saying. Poor +chap! It's hit him harder than he thinks." + + * * * * * + +Ranny, alone with his mother, put his arm round her neck and kissed her. +(She had gone into her room and returned dressed, ready to go back with +him to Southfields.) + +"I'm sorry, Mother, if I hurt you." + +"Never mind, Ranny, I know how hurt you must have been before you could +do it. It was what you said about your Father, dear. But there--you've +always been good to him no matter what he's been." + +"Is he _very_ bad, Mother?" + +"He is. I don't know, I'm sure, how I'm going to leave him; unless he +can manage with Mabel and Mr. Ponting. She's a good girl, Mabel. And +he's got a kind heart, Ranny, that young man." + +"D'you think I haven't?" + +"I wasn't meaning you, my dear. Come, I'm ready now." + +They went downstairs. Mrs. Ransome paused at the kitchen door to give +some final directions to Mabel, the maid, and a message for Mr. Ponting, +the assistant; and they went out. + +As they were going down the High Street, her thoughts reverted to +Ranny's awful outburst. + +"Ranny, I wish you hadn't spoken to your uncle like you did." + +"I _know_, Mother--but he set my back up. He was talkin' through his +Sunday hat all the time, pretendin' to stick up for Virelet, knowin' +perfectly well what she is, and cussin' and swearin' at her for it in +his heart, and naggin' at me because there wasn't anybody else to go +for." + +"He was trying to help you, Ranny." + +"If God can't help me, strikes me it's pretty fair cheek of Uncle to +presume--" He meditated. + +"But he wasn't tryin' to help me. He was thinkin' how he could help his +own damned respectability all the blessed time. He knows what a bloomin' +hell it's been for Virelet and me this last year--and he'd have forced +us back into it--into all that misery--just to save his own silly skin." + +"No, dear, it isn't that. He doesn't think Vi'let should be let go on +living like she is if you can stop her. He thinks it isn't proper." + +"Well, that's what I say. It's his old blinkin', bletherin' morality +he's takin' care of, not me. Everybody's got to live like he thinks they +ought to, no matter how they hate it. If two Kilkenny cats he knew was +to get married and one of them was to bolt he'd fetch her back and tie +'em both up, heads together, so as she shouldn't do it again. And if +they clawed each other's guts out he wouldn't care. He'd say they were +livin' a nice, virtuous, respectable and moral life. + +"What rot it all is! + +"Stop her? As if any one could stop her! God knows she can't stop +herself, poor girl. She's made like that. I'm not blamin' her." + +For, with whatever wildness Ranny started, he always came back to +that--He didn't blame her. He knew whereof she was made. It was proof of +his sudden, forced maturity, that unfaltering acceptance of the fact. + +"Talk of helpin'! Strikes me poor Vi's helpin' more than anybody, by +clearin' out like she's done." + +That was how, with a final incomparable serenity, he made it out. + +But his mother took it all as so much wildness, the delirium, the +madness, born of his calamity. + +"He'd have been all right if I'd been ass enough to play into his hands +and gone blowin' me nose and grizzlin', and whinin' about my misfortune, +and let _him_ go gassin' about the sadness of it and all that. But +because I kept my end up he went for me. + +"Sadness! He doesn't know what sadness is _or_ misfortune. + +"My God! If every poor beggar had the luck I've had--to be let off +without having to pay for it!" + +Up till then his mother had kept silence. She had let him rave. "Poor +boy," she had said to herself, "he doesn't mean it. It'll do him good." + +But when he talked about not having to pay for it, that reminded her +that paying for it was just what he would have to do. + +"How'll you manage," she said now, "about the children? I can take them +for a week or two or more while you get settled." + +"Would you?" + +It _was_ a way out for the present. + +"I'd take them altogether--I'd love to, Ranny--if it wasn't for your +Father bein' ill." + +In spite of the cataclysm, she still by sheer force of habit kept it up. + +"I don't want you to take them altogether," he said. + +"I could do it--if you was to come with them--" + +That, indeed, was what she wanted, the heavenly possibility she had +sighted from the first. But she had hardly dared to suggest it. Even +now, putting out her tremorous feeler, she shrank back from his refusal. + +"If you could let Granville--and come and live with us." + +His silence and his embarrassment pierced her to the heart. + +"Won't you?" she ventured. + +"Well--I've got to think of them. For them, in some ways, the poor old +Humming-bird might, you see, be almost as bad as Virelet." + +She knew. She had known it all the time. She had even got so far in +knowledge as to see that Ranny's father was in a measure responsible for +Ranny's marriage. If Ranny had had more life, more freedom, and more +happiness around him in his home, he would not have been driven, as he +was, to Violet. + +"Well, dear, you just think it over. If you don't come you must get +somebody." + +Yes. He must get somebody. He had thought of that. + +"It can't be Winny Dymond, dear." + +"No," he assented. "It can't be Winny Dymond." + +"And you'll have to come to me until I can find you some one." + +They left it so. After all, it made things easier, the method that his +mother had brought to such perfection, her way of skating rapidly over +brittle surfaces, of circumnavigating all profound unpleasantness, and +of plunging, when she did plunge, only into the vague, the void. + +And through it all he was aware of the brittleness, the unpleasantness, +the profundity of what was immediately before him, how to deal with poor +Winny and her innocent enormity; the impropriety, as it had been +presented to him, of her devotion. + +But even this problem, so torturing to his nerves, was presently lost +sight of in the simple, practical difficulty of detaching Winny from the +children; or rather, of detaching the children from Winny, of tearing, +as they had to tear, them from her, piecemeal, first Baby, then Dossie, +with every circumstance of barbarous cruelty. + +It was a spectacle, an operation of such naked agony that before it the +most persistent, the most incorruptible sense of propriety broke down. +It was too much altogether for Mrs. Ransome. + +Dossie was the worst. She had strength in her little fingers, and she +clung. + +And the crying, the crying of the two, terrible to Ranny, terrible to +Winny, the passionate screams, the strangled sobs, the long, +irremediable wailing, the terrifying convulsive silences, the awful +intermissions and shattering recoveries of anguish--it was as if their +innocence had insight, had premonition of the monstrous, imminent +separation, of the wrong that he and she were about to do to each other +in the name of such sanctities as innocence knows nothing of. For +outrage and wrong it was to the holy primal instincts, drawing them, as +it had drawn them long ago, seeking to bind them again, body and soul, +breaking all other bonds; insult and violence to honest love, to +fatherhood and motherhood, to the one (one and threefold) perfection +that they could stand for, he and she. + +It ended by its sheer terror in Winny's staying just for that evening, +to put the little things to sleep. For nobody else, not Ranny, and not +his mother, was able to do that. The dark design of their torturers was +to take these innocent ones by night, drugged with their sleep, and pack +them in the pram, snugly blanketed, and thus convey them in secrecy to +Wandsworth, where, it was hoped, they would wake up, poor lambs, to a +morning without memory. + +"Well--Winky," he said. But it was not yet well. He had to stand by and +see Winky stoop over Baby's cot (it was her right) for the last look. + +She knew it was her last look, in that room--in that way that had been +the way of innocence. + +"Well, I never!" said Ranny's mother, as he returned from seeing Winky +home. (So much was permitted him. It was even imperative.) + +"Did they ever cry like that for their Mammy?" + +He smiled grimly. His illumination was more than he could bear. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +It was in the cruelty of it, in that sudden barbarous tearing of the +children from Winny, of Winny from Ransome, and of Ransome from his +home, in that hurried, surreptitious flight through the darkness, that +he most felt the pressure and the malignant pinch of poverty. Owing to +his straitened circumstances, with all his mother's forethought and good +will, with all the combined resources of their ingenuity, they could do +no better to meet his lamentable case than this. "This," indeed, was +imperative, inevitable. He reflected bitterly that, if he had been a +rich man, like the manager or the secretary of Woolridge's, instead of a +ledger clerk (that was all that his last rise had made him) at a hundred +and fifty a year, he would have been spared "this." It would have been +neither inevitable nor imperative. It simply wouldn't have happened. He +would have had a house with a staff of competent servants, a nurse for +the children, a cook, and maybe a housemaid to manage for him, and so +forth. Winny wouldn't have come into it. It would never have occurred to +her to run the risks she had run for him. There would have been no need. +She would have remained, serene, beautiful in sympathy, outside his +calamity, untouched by its sordidness, its taint. All the machinery of +his household would have gone on in spite of it, without any hitch or +dislocation, working all the more smoothly in the absence of its +mistress. + +That was how rich people came out of this sort of thing, right side up, +smiling, knowing as they did that there was nothing to spoil the peace +of it for them, or make them apt to mistake it for anything but the +blessing that it was. Thus they got, as you may say, the whole good out +of it without any waste. At the worst, if they didn't like it, rich +people, driven to flight, depart from the scene of their disaster with +dignity, in cabs. + +But Ranny's departure, with all its ignominy, was not by any means the +worst. The worst, incomparably, was the going back on Monday evening to +settle up. There was a man coming from Wandsworth with a handcart for +the cots, the high chair and all the babies' furniture, and the kids' +toys and the little clothes, their whole diminutive outfit, and for what +he needed of his own. And when all the packing was done he would still +have to go into things. + +By the things he had to go into he meant the drawers and the cupboards +in his wife's room. + +And such things! It was as if the whole tale of her adultery, with all +its secret infamy, its squalor, its utter callousness, was there in that +room of the love-knots and the rosebuds. + +In the locked wardrobe--the key was on the chimney piece where he could +find it--he came on her old skirts, draggled and torn and stained as he +had known them, on the muslin gown of last year, loathsome and limp, +bent like a hanged corpse; and on her very nightgown of the other night, +dreadfully familiar, shrinking, poor ghost of an abomination, in its +corner. And under them, in a row, the shoes that her feet had gone in, +misshapen, trodden down at heel, gaping to deliver up her shame. + +These things Winny had collected and put away in order, and hidden out +of his sight as best she could. Seeing, she too, the tale they told, she +had hung a sheet in front of them and locked the door on them and laid +the key aside, to break in some degree the shock of them. For they were +things that had been good enough for him, but not good enough for +Violet's lover. She had gone to him in all her bravery, leaving them +behind, not caring who found them. + +And there was more to be gone through before he had finished with it. +There were the drawers, crammed with little things, the collars, the +ribbons and the laces, and one or two trinkets that he had given her, +cast off with the rest, all folded and tidied by Winny, smoothed and +coaxed out of the memories they held, the creases that betrayed the +slattern; and with them, tucked away by Winny, defiled beyond +redemption, almost beyond recognition, the sachet, smelling of violets +and with the word "Violet" sprawling all across it in embroidery. + +All these things, the dresses, the shoes, and the rest of them, he +gathered up in handfuls and flung into an old trunk which he locked and +pushed under the bed. + +Then he set his teeth and went on with his task. In the soiled linen +basket, among his own handkerchiefs as he counted them, he found one +queerly scented and of a strange, arresting pattern. It had the monogram +"L. M." stitched into the corner. She must have borrowed it from the +beast. Or else--the beast had been in the house and had left it there. + +That finished him. + + * * * * * + +Finished as he was in every sense, thoroughly instructed, furnished with +details that fitted out and rounded off all that was vague and +incomplete in his vision of the thing, he was still unprepared for the +question with which his mother met him. + +"Have you told Mr. and Mrs. Usher?" + +He hadn't. + +He had forgotten Mr. and Mrs. Usher, forgotten that this prolongation of +his ordeal would be necessary. + +"Well, you'll have to." + +"Of course I'll have to." + +"Will you go and see him?" + +"No. I--can't. I'll write." + +He wrote in the afternoon of the next day at Woolridge's, in the +luncheon hour when he had the ledger clerks' pen to himself. He was very +brief. + +He received his father-in-law's reply by return. Mr. Usher made no +comment beyond an almost perfunctory expression of regret. But he said +that he must see Randall. And, as the journey between Elstree and +Wandsworth was somewhat long to be undertaken after office hours, he +proposed the "Bald-Faced Stag," Edgware, as a convenient halfway house +for them to meet at, and Wednesday, at seven or thereabouts, as the day +and hour. Thus he allowed time for Randall to receive his letter and, if +necessary, to answer it. No telegraphing for Mr. Usher, except in case +of death, actual or imminent. + +Ransome supposed that he would have to see him and get it over. Soon +after seven on Wednesday, then, Mr. Usher having ridden over on his mare +Polly and Ransome on his bicycle, they met in the parlor of the +"Bald-Faced Stag," Edgware. Mr. Usher's friend the landlord had +undertaken that they should not be disturbed. + +It was impossible for Ransome not to notice something queer about his +father-in-law, something utterly unlike the bluff and genial presence he +had known. Mr. Usher seemed to have shrunk somehow and withered, so that +you might have said the catastrophe had hit him hard, if that, his mere +bodily shrinkage, had been all. What struck Ransome as specially queer +about Mr. Usher was his manner and the expression of his face. You could +almost have called it crafty. Guilty it was, too, consciously guilty, +the furtive face of a man on the defensive, armed with all his little +cunning against a possible attack, having entrenched himself in the +parlor of the "Bald-Faced Stag" as on neutral territory. + +"What say to a bit of supper, my boy, before we begin business?" + +It was a false and feeble imitation of his old heartiness. + +Over a supper of cold ham and cheese and beer they discussed Ransome's +father's health and his mother's health, and Mrs. Usher's health, which +was poor, and Mr. Usher's prospects, which were poorer, not to say bad. +He leaned on this point and returned to it, as if it might have a +possible bearing on the matter actually in hand, and with a certain +disagreeable effect of craftiness and intention. It was as if he wished +to rub it in that whatever else Randall forgot, he wasn't to forget +_that_, that he had nothing to look to, nothing to hope for in his +father-in-law's prospects; as if he, Mr. Usher, had arranged this +meeting at the "Bald-Faced Stag" for the express purpose of making that +clear, of forestalling all possible misunderstanding. He kept it before +him, with the cheese and beer, on the brown oil-cloth of the table from +which poor Randall found it increasingly difficult to lift his eyes. + +It was almost a relief to him when Mr. Usher pushed his plate away with +a groan of satiety, and began. + +"Well, what's all this I hear about Virelet?" + +Randall intimated that he had heard all there was. + +"Yes, but what's the meaning of it? That's what I want to know." + +Randall put it that its meaning was that it had simply happened, and +suggested that his father-in-law was in every bit as good a position for +understanding it as he. + +"I dare say. But what I'm trying to get at is--did you do anything to +make it happen?" + +"What on earth do you suppose I did?" + +"There might be faults on both sides, though I don't say as there were. +But did you do anything to prevent it? Tell me that." + +"What could I do? I didn't know it was going to happen." + +"You should have known. You was warned fair enough." + +"Was I? Who warned me, I should like to know?" + +"Why, I did, and her mother did. Told you straight. Don't you go for to +say that I let you marry the girl under false pretenses, or her mother +either. I told you what sort Virelet was, straight as I could, without +vilifying my own flesh and blood. Did you want me to tell you +straighter? Did you want me to put a name to it?" + +His little eyes shot sidelong at Randall, out of his fallen, shrunken +fatness, more than ever crafty and intent. + +He was pitiful. Randall could have been sorry for him but that he showed +himself so mean. His little eyes gave him so villainously away. They +disclosed the fullness of his knowledge; they said he had known things +about Violet; he had known them all the time, things that he, Randall, +never knew. And he hadn't let on, not he. Why should he? He had been too +eager, poor man, to get Violet married. His eagerness, that had appeared +as the hardy flower of his geniality, betrayed itself now as the +sinister thing it was--when you thought of the name that he could have +given her! + +Randall did not blame him. He was past blaming anybody. He only said to +himself that this explained what had seemed so inexplicable--the +attitude, the incredible attitude of Mr. and Mrs. Usher; how they had +leaped at him in all his glaring impossibility, an utter stranger, with +no adequate income and no prospects; how they had hurried on the +marriage past all prudence; how they had driven him on and fooled him +and helped him to his folly. + +But he was not going to let them fool him any more. + +"Look here, Mr. Usher, I don't know what your game is and I don't care. +I dare say you _think_ you told me what you say you did. But you +didn't. You didn't tell me anything--not one blessed thing. And if you +had it wouldn't have done any good. I wouldn't have believed you. You +needn't reproach yourself. I was mad on Virelet. I meant to marry her +and I did marry her. That's all." + +"Well," said Mr. Usher, partially abandoning his position, "so long as +you don't hold me responsible--" + +"Of course, I don't hold you responsible." + +"I'm sure me and the Missis we've done what we could to make it easier +for you." + +He gazed before him, conjuring up between them a quiet vision of the +long procession of hampers, a reminder to Randall of how deeply, as it +was, he stood indebted. + +"And we can't do no more. That's how it is. No more we can't do." + +"I'm not asking you to do anything. What do you _want_?" + +"I want to know what you're going to do, my boy." + +"Do?" + +"Yes, do." + +"About what?" + +"About Virelet. Talk of responsibility, you took it on yourself contrary +to the warnings what you had, when you married her. And having taken it +you ought to have looked after her. Knowing what she is you ought to +have looked after her better than you've done." + +"How _could_ I have looked after her?" + +"How? Why, as any other man would. You should have made her work, work +with her 'ands, as I told you, 'stead of giving her her head, like you +did, and lettin' her sit bone-idle in that gimcrack doll-house of yours +from morning till night. Why, you should have taken a stick to her. +There's many a man as would, before he'd 'a' let it come to that. Damn +me if I know why you didn't." + +"Well, really, Mr. Usher, I suppose I couldn't forget she was a woman." + +"Woman? Woman? I'd 'a' womaned 'er! Look 'ere, my boy, it's a sad +business, and there's no one sorrier for you than I am, but there's no +good you and me broodin' mournful over what she's done. Course she'd do +it, 's long's you let her. You hadn't ought to 'ave let 'er. And seein' +as how you have, seems to me what you've got to do now is to take her +back again." + +"I can't take her back again." + +"And why not?" + +"Because of the children--for one thing." + +That argument had its crushing effect on Mr. Usher. It made him pause a +perceptible moment before he answered. + +"Well--you needn't look to me and her mother to 'ave her--" + +Randall rose, as much as to say that this was enough; it was too much; +it was the end. + +"We've done with her. You took her out of our 'ands what 'ad a hold on +her, and you owe it to her mother and me to take her back." + +"If that's all you've got to say, Mr. Usher--" + +"It isn't all I've got to say. What I got to say is this. Before you was +married, Randall, I don't mind telling you now, my girl was a bit too +close about you for my fancy. I've never rightly understood how you two +came together." + +There, as they fixed him, his little eyes took on their craftiness again +and his mouth a smile, a smile of sensual tolerance and understanding, +as between one man of the world and another. + +"I don't know, and I don't want to know. But however it was--I'm not +askin', mind you--however it was"--He was all solemn now--"you made +yourself responsible for that girl. And responsible you will be held." + +It may have been that Mr. Usher drew a bow at a venture; it may have +been that he really knew, that he had always known. Anyhow, that last +stroke of his was, in its way, consummate. It made it impossible for +Randall to hit back effectively; impossible for him to say now, if he +had wished to say it, that he had not been warned (for it seemed to +imply that if Mr. Usher's suspicions were correct, Randall had had an +all-sufficient warning); impossible for him to maintain, as against a +father whom he, upon the supposition, had profoundly injured, an +attitude of superior injury. If Mr. Usher had deceived Randall, hadn't +Randall, in the first instance, deceived Mr. Usher? In short, it left +them quits. It closed Randall's mouth, and with it the discussion, and +so that the balance as between them leaned if anything to Mr. Usher's +side. + +"Well, I'm sorry for you, Randall." + +As if he could afford it now, Mr. Usher permitted himself a return to +geniality. He paused in the doorway. + +"If at any time you should want a hamper, you've only got to say so." + +And Randall did not blame him. He said to himself: "Poor old thing. It's +funk--pure funk. He's afraid he may have to take her back himself. And +who could blame him?" + +Funny that his father-in-law should have taken the same line as his +Uncle Randall. Only, whereas his Uncle Randall had reckoned with the +alternative of divorce, his father-in-law had not so much as hinted at +the possibility. + + * * * * * + +It was almost as if Mr. Usher had had a glimpse of what was to come when +he had been in such haste, haste that had seemed in the circumstances +hardly decent, to saddle Ransome with the responsibility. + +For, if Ransome had really thought that Violet was going to let him off +without his paying for it, the weeks that followed brought him proof +more than sufficient of his error. He had sown to the winds in the +recklessness of his marriage and of his housekeeping, and he reaped the +whirlwind in Violet's bills that autumn shot into the letter box at +Granville. + +He called there every other day for letters; for he was not yet +prepared, definitely, to abandon Granville. + +The bills, when he had gathered them all in, amounted in their awful +total to twenty pounds odd, a sum that exceeded his worst dreams of +Violet's possible expenditure. He had realized, in the late summer and +autumn of last year, before the period of compulsory retirement had set +in, that his wife was beginning to cost him more than she had ever done, +more than any woman of his class, so far as he knew, would have dreamed +of costing; and this summer, no sooner had she emerged triumphant +than--with two children now to provide for--she had launched out upon a +scale that fairly terrified him. But all her past extravagance did +nothing to prepare him for the extent to which, as he expressed it, she +could "go it," when she had, as you might say, an incentive. + +The most astounding of the bills his whirlwind swept him was the bill +from Starker's--from Oxford Street, if you please--and the bill (sent in +with a cynical promptitude) from the chemist in Acacia Avenue at the +corner. That, the chemist's, was in a way the worst. It was for scent, +for toilette articles, strange yet familiar to him from their presence +in his father's shop, for all manner of cosmetics, for things so +outrageous, so unnecessary, that they witnessed chiefly to the shifts +she had been put to, to her anxieties and hastes, to the feverish +multiplication of pretexts and occasions. Still, they amounted but to a +few pounds and an odd shilling or two. Starker's bill did the rest. + +That, the high, resplendent "cheek" of it, showed what she was capable +of; it gave him the measure of her father's "funk," for, of not one of +the items, from the three-guinea costumes (there were several of them) +down to the dozen of openwork Lisle-thread hose at two and eleven the +pair, had Ransome so much as suspected the existence. The three-guinea +costumes he could understand. It was the three nightgowns, trimmed lace, +at thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen shillings apiece, that took his breath +away, as with a vision of her purposes. Still, to him, her husband, +Starker's statement of account represented directly, with the perfection +of business precision, the cost of getting rid of her; it was so simply +and openly the cost of her outfit, of all that she had trailed with her +in her flight. + +Yet, as he grasped it, he saw with that mature comprehension which was +now his, that, awful as it was, that total of twenty pounds odd +represented, perfectly, the price of peace. It was open to him to +repudiate his wife's debts, in which case she would appear in the County +Court, which, with its effect of publicity, with the things that would +be certain to come out there, was almost as bad as the Divorce Court. +Then the unfortunate tradespeople would not be paid, a result of her +conduct which was intolerable to Ranny's decency. Besides, he wanted to +be rather more than decent, to be handsome, in his squaring of accounts +with the woman whom, after all, in the beginning he had wronged. He +could even reflect with a humor surviving all calamity, that though +twenty-odd pounds was a devil of a lot to pay, his deliverance was +cheap, dirt cheap, at the money. + +But that was not all. There was Granville. + +He hated Granville. He could not believe how he ever could have loved +it. The fact that he was gradually becoming his own landlord only made +things worse. It gave Granville a malignant power over him, that power +which he had once or twice suspected, the power to round on him and +injure him and pay him back. He knew he was partly responsible for +Granville's degradation. He had done nothing for this property of his. +He had not given it a distinctive character; he had not covered it with +creepers or painted it green or built a balcony. He had left it to +itself. + +He asked himself what it would look like in seventeen years' time when +it would be his. In seventeen years' time he would be forty-two. What +good would he be then? And what good would Granville be to him? What +good was it now? In its malignancy it demanded large sums to keep it +going and if it didn't get them it knew how to avenge itself. Slowly +perishing, it would fall to dust in seventeen years' time when it came +into his hands. + + * * * * * + +But he had not dreamed of the extent to which Granville could put on the +screw. + +He was enlightened by the agent of the Estate Company to which Granville +owed its being. The agent, after a thorough inspection of the premises, +broke it to Ransome that if he did not wish to lose Granville, he would +have to undertake certain necessary repairs, the estimate for which +soared to the gay tune of ten pounds eight shillings and eightpence. It +was the state of the roof, of the southwest wall, and of the scullery +drain that most shocked the agent. Of the scullery drain he could hardly +bring himself to speak, remarking only that a little washing down from +time to time with soda would have saved it all. The state of that drain +was a fair disgrace; and it was not a thing of days; it dated from +months back--years, he shouldn't be surprised. It was fit to breed a +fever. + +Of course, it wasn't quite as bad as the agent had made out. But Ranny, +knowing Violet, believed him. It gave him a feeling of immense +responsibility toward Granville, and the Estate Company, and the agent. + +Finally, owing to Violet's reckless management, his debts to the grocer, +the butcher, and the milkman had reached the considerable total of nine +pounds eighteen shillings and eleven pence. It would take about forty +pounds odd to clear his obligations. + +The question was how on earth was he to raise the money? Out of a salary +of twelve pounds a month? + +He would have to borrow it. But from whom? Not from his father. To +whatever height his mother kept it up, she could not conceal from him +that his father was in difficulties. Wandsworth was going ahead, caught +by the tide of progress. The new Drug Stores over the way were drawing +all the business from Fulleymore Ransome's little shop. Even with the +assistance of the young man, Mr. Ponting, Fulleymore Ransome was not in +a state to hold his own. But John Randall, the draper, if you like, was +prosperous. He might be willing, Ransome thought, to lend him the money, +or a part of it, at a fair rate of interest. + +And John Randall indeed lent him thirty pounds; but not willingly. His +reluctance, however, was sufficiently explained by the fact that he had +recently advanced more than that sum to Fulleymore. He was careful to +point out to Randall that he was helping him to meet only those +catastrophes which might be regarded as the act of God--Violet's bills +and the deterioration of Granville. He was as anxious as Randall himself +to prevent Violet's appearance in the County Court, and he certainly +thought it was a pity that good house property should go out of his +nephew's hands. But he refused flatly to advance the ten pounds for the +weekly arrears, in order to teach Randall a lesson, to make him feel +that he had some responsibility, and to show that there was a limit to +what he, John Randall, was prepared to do. + +For days Ransome went distracted. The ten pounds still owing was like a +millstone round his neck. If he didn't look sharp and pay up _he_ would +be County-Courted too. He couldn't come down on his father-in-law. His +father-in-law would tell him that he had already received the equivalent +of ten pounds in hampers. There was nobody he _could_ come down on. So +he called at a place he had heard of in Shaftesbury Avenue, where there +was a "josser" who arranged it for him quite simply by means of a bill +of sale upon his furniture. After all, he did get some good out of that +furniture. + +And he got some good, too, out of Granville when he let it to Fred Booty +for fifteen shillings a week. + +He was now established definitely in his father's house. The young man +Mr. Ponting had shown how kind his heart was by turning out of his nice +room on the second floor into Ranny's old attic. The little back room, +used for storage, served also as a day nursery for Ranny's children. Six +days in the week a little girl came in to mind them. At night Ranny +minded them where they lay in their cots by his bed. + +It was all that could be done; and with the little girl's board and the +children's and his own breakfast and supper and his Sunday dinner, it +cost him thirty shillings a week. There was no way in which it could be +done for less, since it was not in him to take advantage of his +mother's offer to let him have the rooms rent free. + + * * * * * + +And underneath Ranny's rooms, between the bedroom at the back and the +back parlor, between the parlor and the shop, between the shop and the +dispensing-room, Fulleymore Ransome dragged himself to and fro, more +than ever weedy, more than ever morose, more than ever sublime in his +appearance of integrity; and with it all so irritable that Ranny's +children had to be kept out of his way. He would snarl when he heard +them overhead; he would scowl horribly when he came across the "pram," +pushed by the little girl, in its necessary progress through the shop +into the street and back again. + +But at Ranny he neither snarled nor scowled, nor had he spoken any word +to him on the subject of the great calamity. No reproach, no reminder of +warnings given, none of that reiterated, "I told you so," in which, +Ranny reflected, he might have taken it out of him. He also seemed to +regard his son Randall as one smitten by God and afflicted, to whose +high and sacred suffering silence was the appropriate tribute. His very +moroseness provided the sanctuary of silence. + +And all the time he drank; he drank worse than ever; furtively, +continuously he drank. Nobody could stop him, for nobody ever saw him +doing it. He did it, they could only suppose, behind Mr. Ponting's back +in the dispensing-room. + +They were free to suppose anything now; for, since Ranny's great +delivering outburst, they could discuss it; and in discussion they +found relief. Ranny's mother owned as much. She had suffered (that also +she owned) from the strain of keeping it up. Ranny's outburst had saved +her, vicariously. It was as if she had burst out herself. + +There were, of course, lengths to which she would never go, admissions +which she could not bring herself to make. There had to be some +subterfuge, some poor last shelter for her pride. And so, of the +depression in Fulleymore's business she would say before Mr. Ponting, +"It's those Drug Stores that are ruining him," and Mr. Ponting would +reply, gravely, "They'd ruin anybody." + +Mr. Ponting was a fresh-colored young man and good-looking, with his +blue eyes and his yellow hair sleeked backward like folded wings, so +different from Mercier. Mr. Ponting had conceived an affection for Ranny +and the children. He would find excuses to go up to the storeroom, where +he would pretend to be looking for things while he was really playing +with Dossie. He would sit on Ranny's bed while Ranny was undressing, and +together they would consider, piously, the grave case of the +Humming-bird, and how, between them, they could best "keep him off it." + +"It's the dispensary spirits that he gets at," Mr. Ponting said. "That's +the trouble." + +(And it always had been.) + +"The queer thing is," said Ranny, "that you never fairly see him tight. +Not to speak of." + +"That's the worst of it," said Mr. Ponting. "I wish I _could_ see your +father tight--tumbling about a bit, I mean, and being funny. The beastly +stuff's going for him inside, all the time--undermining him. There +isn't an organ," said Mr. Ponting, solemnly, "in your father's body that +it hasn't gone for." + +"How d'you know?" + +"Why, by the medicines he takes. He's giving himself strophanthus now, +for his heart." + +"I say--d'you think my mother knows that?" + +"It's impossible to say what your mother knows. More than she lets on, I +shouldn't be surprised." + +Mr. Ponting pondered. + +"It's wonderful how he keeps it up. His dignity, I mean." + +"It's rum, isn't it?" said Ranny. He was apparently absorbed in tying +the strings of his sleeping-suit into loops of absolutely even length. +"But he always _was_ that mysterious kind of bird." + +He began to step slowly backward as he buttoned up his jacket. Then, by +way of throwing off the care that oppressed him, and lightening somewhat +Mr. Ponting's burden, he ran forward and took a flying leap over the +Baby's cot into his own bed. + +Mr. Ponting looked, if anything, a little graver. "I wouldn't do that, +if I were you," he said. + +"Why not?" said Ranny over his blankets, snuggling comfortably. + +"Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Ponting, vaguely. + +In a day or two Ranny himself knew. + +His arrangements had carried him well on into October. In the last week +of that month, on a Tuesday evening, he appeared at the Regent Street +Polytechnic, where he had not been seen since far back in the last year. +It was not at the Gymnasium that he now presented himself, but at the +door of that room where every Tuesday evening, from seven-thirty to +eight-thirty, a qualified practitioner was in attendance. + +It was the first time that Ransome had availed himself of this privilege +conferred on him by the Poly. + +He said he wouldn't keep the medical man a minute. + +But the medical man kept Ranny many minutes, thumping, sounding, +intimately and extensively overhauling him. For more minutes than Ranny +at all liked, he played about him with a stethoscope. Then he fired off +what Ranny supposed to be the usual questions. + +"Had any shock, worry, or excitement lately? + +"Been overdoing it in any way? + +"Gone in much for athletics?" + +Ranny replied with regret that it was more than three years since he had +last run in the Wandsworth Hurdle Race. + +He was then told that he must avoid all shock, worry, or excitement. He +mustn't overdo it. He must drop his hurdle-racing. He mustn't bicycle +uphill, or against the wind; he mustn't jump; he mustn't run-- + +"Not even to catch a train?" + +"Not to catch anything." + +And the doctor gave him a prescription that ran: + +/P + Sodae Bicarb., one dram. + Tinct. Strophanthi, two drams-- +P/ + +He remembered. That was the stuff he'd measured for old Mr. Beasley's +heart mixture. It was the stuff that Ponting said his father was taking +now. + +If any one had told him three years ago that his heart was rocky he'd +have told them where to go to. It had been as sound as a bell when he +entered for the Poly. Gym. + +Well, he supposed that was about the finishing touch--if they wanted to +do the thing in style. + +He went slowly over Wandsworth Bridge and up the High Street, dejected, +under the autumn moon that had once watched his glad sprinting. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +And in all this time he had not heard again from Violet, nor had he +written to her. + +Then--it was in the first week of November--Violet wrote. + +She wrote imploring him to set her free. It was rooted in her, the fear +that he would compel her to come back, that he had the power to make +her. She wanted (he seemed to see it) to feel safe from him forever. +Leonard had promised to marry her if she were free. She intimated that +Leonard was everything that was generous and honorable. She wanted (she +who had abused him so for having married her), she wanted to marry +Mercier, to have a hold on him and be safe. Marriage was her idea of +safety now. + +She went on to say that if he would consent to divorce her, it would be +made easy for him, she would not defend the suit. + +That meant--he puzzled it out--that meant that it would lie between the +two of them. Nobody else would be dragged into it. Winny's name would +not by any possibility be dragged in. Violet would have no use for +Winny, since she was not going to defend the suit. She might--at the +worst--have to appear as witness, if the evidence of Violet's letters +(her own admission) was not sufficient. It looked as if it would be +simple enough. Why should he not release her? He had no business not to +give her the chance to marry Mercier, to regulate the relation, if that +was what she wanted. + +It was his own chance, too, his one chance. He would be a fool not to +take it. + +And as it came over him in its fullness, all that it meant and would yet +mean, Ranny felt his heart thumping and bounding, dangerously, in its +weakened state. + +On a Wednesday evening in November, he presented himself once more at +the Regent Street Polytechnic and at the door of an office where, on +Wednesday evenings, an experienced legal adviser held himself in +readiness to give advice, that legal adviser who had been the jest of +his adolescence, whose services he had not conceived it possible that he +should require. + +He had a curiously uplifting sense of the gravity and impressiveness of +the business upon which at last, inconceivably, he came. But this odd +elation was controlled and finally overpowered by disgust and shame, as +one by one, under the kind but acute examination of the legal man, he +brought out for his inspection the atrocious details. And he had to show +Violet's letter of September, the document, supremely valuable, +supremely infamous, supported by the further communication of November. +The keen man asked him, as his uncle and his father-in-law had asked, if +he had given any provocation, any cause for jealousy, misunderstanding, +or the like? Had his own conduct been irreproachable? When all this part +of it was over, settled to the keen man's satisfaction, Ranny was told +that there was little doubt that he could get his divorce if--that was +the question--he could afford to pay. Divorce was, yes, it was a costly +matter, almost, you might say, the luxury of the rich. A matter, for +him, probably of forty or fifty pounds--well, say, thirty, when you'd +cut expenses down to the very lowest limit. Could he, the keen but +kindly man inquired, afford thirty? + +No, he couldn't. He couldn't afford twenty even. With all his existing +debts upon him he couldn't now raise ten. + +He asked whether he could get his divorce if he put it off a bit until +he could afford it? + +The legal man looked grave. + +"Well--yes. If you can show poverty--" + +Ranny thought he could undertake to show _that_ all right. + +At the legal man's suggestion he wrote a letter to his wife assuring her +that it was impossible for her to desire a divorce more than he did; +that he meant to bring an action at the very moment when he could afford +it, pointing out to her that her debts which he had paid had not made +this any easier for him; that in the meanwhile she need not be anxious; +that he would not follow her or molest her in any way; and that in no +circumstances would he take her back. + +And now Ranny's soul and all his energy were set upon the one aim of +raising money for his divorce. It was impossible to lay his hands upon +that money all at once. He could not do it this year, nor yet the next, +for his expenses and his debts together exceeded the amount of his +income; but gradually, by pinching and scraping, it might be done +perhaps in two or three years' time. + +His chief trouble was that in all these weeks he had seen nothing of +Winny. He had called twice at the side door of Johnson's, but they had +told him that she was not in; and, hampered as he was with the children, +he had not had time to call again. Besides, he knew he had to be +careful, and Winny knew it too. That, of course, would always help him, +her perception of the necessity for care. There were ways of managing +these things, but they required his mother's or his friends' +co-operation; and so far Mrs. Ransome had shown no disposition to +co-operate. Winny was not likely to present herself at Wandsworth +without encouragement, and she had apparently declined to lend herself +to any scheme of Maudie's or of Fred Booty's. With Winny lying low there +was nothing left for him but the way he shrank from, of persistent and +unsolicited pursuit. + +November passed and they were in December, and he had not seen her. +After having recovered somewhat under the influence of the drug +strophanthus, he now became depressed, listless, easily fatigued. + +Up till now there had been something not altogether disagreeable to Mrs. +Ransome in the misfortunes of her son. They had brought him back to her. +But he had not wanted to come back; and now she wondered whether she had +done well to make him come, whether (after all he had gone through) it +was not too much for him, realizing as he did his father's awful state. +It had gone so far, Mr. Ransome's state, that there was no way in which +it could be taken lightly. + +And she was depressed herself, perceiving it. Mr. Ransome's state made +him unfit for business now, unfit to appear in the shop, above all +unfit for the dispensary. Fit only to crawl from room to room and +trouble them with the sad state of his peaked and peevish face. He +required watching. He himself recognized that in his handling of tricky +drugs there was a danger. The business was getting out of hand. It was +small and growing smaller every month, yet it was too much for Mr. +Ponting to cope with unassisted. They were living, all three of them, in +a state of tension most fretting to the nerves. + +The whole house fairly vibrated with it. It was as if the fearful +instability of Mr. Ransome's nervous system communicated itself to +everybody around him. At the cry or the sudden patter of Ranny's +children overhead, Mr. Ransome would be set quivering and shaking, and +this disturbance of his reverberated. Ranny set his teeth and sat tight +and "stuck it"; but he felt the shattering effect of it all the same. + +And the children felt it too, subtly, insidiously. Dossie became +peevish, easily frightened; she was neither so good nor so happy with +her Granny and the little girl as she had been with Winny. Baby cried +oftener. Ranny sometimes would be up half the night with him. + +All this Mrs. Ransome saw and grieved over and was powerless to help. + +In Christmas week the state of Mr. Ransome became terrible, not to be +borne. Ranny was working hard at the counting-house; he was worn out, +and he looked it. + +The sight of him, so changed, broke Mrs. Ransome down. + +"Ranny," she said, "I wish you'd get away somewhere for Christmas. Me +and Mabel'll look after the children. You go." + +He said there wasn't anywhere he cared to go to. + +"Well--is there anything you'd like to do?" + +"To do?" + +"For Christmas, dear. To make it not so sad like. Is there anybody," she +said, "you'd like to ask?" + +No, there wasn't. At any rate, if there was he wouldn't ask them. It +wouldn't be exactly what you'd call fun for them, with the poor old +Humming-bird making faces at them all the time. + +His mother looked at him shrewdly and said nothing. But she sat down and +wrote a letter to Winny Dymond, asking her to come and spend Christmas +Day with them, if, said Mrs. Ransome, she hadn't anywhere better to go +to and didn't mind a sad house. + +And Winny came. She hadn't anywhere better to go to, and she didn't mind +a sad house in the least. + +They wondered, Ranny and his mother, how they were ever going to break +it to the Humming-bird. + +"Your Father won't like it, Ranny. He's not fit for it. He'll think us +heartless, having strangers in the house when he's suffering so." + +But Mr. Ransome, when asked if he was fit for it, replied astoundingly +that he was fit enough if it would make Randall any happier. + +It did. It made him so happy that his recovery dated from that moment. +He had only one fear, that Dossie would have forgotten Winky. + +But Dossie hadn't, though after two months of Wandsworth she had +forgotten many things, and had cultivated reserve. When Ranny said, +"Who's this, Dossie?" she tucked her head into her shoulder and smiled +shyly and said, "Winty." But they had to pretend that Baby remembered, +too. He hadn't really got what you would call a memory. + +And, after all, it was Ranny (Winny said to herself) who remembered +most. For he gave her for a Christmas present, not only a beautiful +white satin "sashy," scented with lavender (lavender, not violets, this +time), but a wonderful hot-water bag with a shaggy red coat that made +you warm to look at it. + +"Ranny! Fancy you remembering that I had cold feet!" + +That night he went home with her to Johnson's side door, carrying the +sachet and the hot-water bag and the things his mother had given her. + +Upstairs, in the attic she shared with three other young ladies, the +first thing Winny did was to turn to the Cookery Book she had bought a +year ago and read the directions: "How to Preserve Hot-Water Bags"--to +preserve them forever. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +Thus nineteen-seven, that dreadful year, rolled over into +nineteen-eight. By nineteen-ten, at the very latest, Ransome looked to +get his divorce. He had no doubt that he could do it, for he found it +far less expensive to live with his mother at Wandsworth than with +Violet at Granville. He knew exactly where he was, he had not to allow +so considerably for the unforeseen. His income had a margin out of which +he saved. To make this margin wider he pinched, he scraped, he went as +shabby as he dared, he left off smoking, he renounced his afternoon cup +of tea and reduced the necessary dinner at his A B C shop to its very +simplest terms. + +The two years passed. + +By January, nineteen-ten, he had only paid off what he already owed. He +had not raised the thirty pounds required for his divorce. Indomitable, +but somewhat desperate, he applied to his Uncle Randall for a second +loan at the same interest. He did not conceal from him that divorce was +his object. He put it to him that his mind was made up unalterably, and +that since the thing had got to be, sooner or later, it was better for +everybody's sake that it should be sooner. + +But Mr. Randall was inexorable. He refused, flatly, to lend his money +for a purpose that he persisted in regarding as iniquitous. Even if he +had not advanced a further sum to young Randall's father, he was not +going to help young Randall through the Divorce Court, stirring all that +mud again. Not he. + +"You should wash your dirty linen at home," he said. + +"You mean keep it there and never wash it. That's what it comes to," +said young Randall, furiously. + +"It's been kept. And everybody's forgotten that it's there by this time. +Why rake it up again?" said his Uncle Randall. + +And there was no making him see why. There was no making any of them +see. Mrs. Ransome wouldn't hear of the divorce. "It'll kill your Father, +Ranny," she said, and stuck to it. + +And Ranny set his mouth hard and said nothing. He calculated that if he +put by twelve shillings a week for twenty-five weeks that would be +fifteen pounds. He could borrow the other fifteen in Shaftesbury Avenue +as he had done before, and in six months he would be filing his +petition. + +As soon as he was ready to file it he would tell Winny he cared for her. +He would ask her to be his wife. + +He had not told any of them about Winny. But they knew. They knew and +yet they had no pity on him, nor yet on her. When he thought of it Ranny +set his face harder. + + * * * * * + +Yet Winny came and went, untroubled and apparently unconscious. She was +not only allowed to come and go at Wandsworth as she had come and gone +at Granville, by right of her enduring competence; she was desired and +implored to come. For if she had (and Mrs. Ransome owned it) a "way" +with the children, she had also a way with Mrs. Ransome, and with Mr. +Ransome. The Humming-bird, growing weedier and weaker, revived in her +presence; he relaxed a little of his moroseness and austerity. "I don't +know how it is," said Ranny's mother, "but your Father takes to her. He +likes to see her about." + +Saturday afternoons, and Sundays, and late evenings in summer were her +times, so that of necessity she and Ranny met. + +Not that they pleaded necessity for meeting. Since his awful +enlightenment and maturity, Ransome had never thought of pleading +anything; for he did not hold himself accountable to anybody or require +anybody to tell him what was decent and what wasn't. And Winny was like +him. He couldn't imagine Winny driven to plead. She had gone her own way +without troubling her head about what people thought of her, without +thinking very much about herself. As long as she was sure he wanted her, +she would be there, where he was. He felt rather than knew that she +waited for him, and would wait for him through interminable years, +untroubled as to her peace, profoundly pure. He was not even certain +that she was aware that she was waiting and that he waited too. + + * * * * * + +In the spring of nineteen-ten it looked as if they would not have very +long to wait. He had measured his resources with such accuracy that by +June, if all went well, he could set about filing his petition. + +And now, seeing the thing so near and yet not accomplished, Ranny's +nerve went. He began to be afraid, childishly and ridiculously afraid, +of something happening to prevent it. He had a clear and precise idea of +that something. He would die before he could file his petition, before +he could get his divorce and marry Winny. His heart to be sure was +better; but at any moment it might get worse. It might get like his +father's. It might stop altogether. He thought of it as he had never +thought of it before. He humored it. He never ran. He never jumped. He +never rode uphill on his bicycle. He thought twice before hurrying for +anything. + +Against these things he could protect himself. + +But who could protect him against excitement and worry and anxiety? Why, +this fear that he had was itself the worst thing for him imaginable. And +then worry. He _had_ to worry. You couldn't look on and see the poor old +Humming-bird going from bad to worse, you couldn't see everybody else +worrying about him, and not worry too. He would go away and forget about +it for a time, and when he came back again the terrible and intolerable +thing was there. + +And at the heart of the trouble there was a still more terrible and +intolerable peace. It was as if Mr. Ransome had made strange terms with +the youth and joy and innocent life that had once roused him to such +profound resentment and disgust. His vindictive ubiquity had ceased. +When the spring came he could no longer drag himself up and down stairs. +His feet and legs were swollen; they were like enormous weights +attached to his pitifully weedy body. His skin had the sallow +smoothness, the waxen substance that marked the deadly, unmistakable +progress of his disease. He could not always lie down in his bed. +Sometimes he lived, day and night, motionless in his invalid's chair, +with his legs propped before him on a footrest. He would sit for hours +staring at them in lamentable contemplation. He could measure his span +of life from day to day as the swelling rose or sank. On his good days +they wheeled him from his bedroom at the back to the front sitting-room. + +And through it all, as by some miracle, he preserved his air of +suffering integrity. + +It was quite plain to Ranny that his father could not live long. And if +he died? Even in his pity and his grief Ranny could not help wondering +whether, if his father died any time that year, it would not make a +difference, whether it would not, perhaps, at the last moment prevent +his marrying? + +Partly in defiance of this fear, partly by way of committing himself +irretrievably, he resolved to speak to Winny. He desired to be +irretrievably committed, so that, whatever happened, decency alone would +prevent him from drawing back. Though he could not in as many words ask +Winny to marry him before he was actually free, there were things that +could be said, and he saw no earthly reason why he should not say them. + +For this purpose he chose, in sheer decency, one of his father's good +days which happened to be a fine, warm one in May and a Saturday. He had +arranged with Winny beforehand that she should come over as early as +possible in the afternoon and stay for tea. He now suggested that, as +this Saturday was such a Saturday as they might never see again, it +would be a good plan if they were to go somewhere together. + +"Where?" said Winny. + +Wherever she liked, he said, provided it was somewhere where they'd +never been before. And Winny, trying to think of something not too +expensive, said, "How about the tram to Putney Heath?" + +"Putney Heath," Ranny said, "be blowed!" + +"Well, then--how about Hampton Court or Kew?" + +But he was "on to" her. "Rot!" he said. "You've been there." + +"Well--" Obviously she was meditating something equally absurd. + +"What d'you say to Windsor?" + +But Winny absolutely refused to go to Windsor. She said there was one +place she'd never been to, and that was Golder's Hill. You could get tea +there. + +"Right--O!" said Ranny. "We'll go to Golder's Hill." + +"And take the children," Winny said. + +Well, no, he rather thought he'd leave the kids behind for once. + +"Oh, Ranny!" Voice and eyes reproached him. "You couldn't! You may never +get a day like this again." + +"I know. That's why," said Ranny. + +The kids, Stanley, aged three, and Dossie, aged five, understanding +perfectly well that they were being thrown over, began to cry. + +"Daddy, take _me_--take _me_," sobbed Dossie. + +"And me!" Stanley positively screamed it. + +"I say, you know, if they're going to howl," said Ranny. + +"You _must_--" + +"That's it, I mustn't. They can't have everything they choose to howl +for." + +"There," said Winny. "See! Daddy can't take you if you cry. He can't, +really." + +(She had gone--perfidious Winny!--to the drawer where she knew Stanley's +clean suit was. Stanley knew it too.) + +The children stopped crying as by magic. With eyes where pathos and +resentment mingled they gazed at their incredible father. Tears, large +crystal tears, hung on the flame-red crests of their hot cheeks. + +Winny turned before she actually opened the drawer. + +"Who wants," said she, "to go with Daddy?" + +"Me," said Dossie. + +"Me," said Stanley. + +"Well, then, give Daddy a kiss and ask him nicely. Then perhaps he'll +take you." + +And they did, and he had to take them. But it was mean, it was +treacherous of Winny. + +"What did you do that for, Winky?" he said, going over to her where she +rummaged in the drawer. + +"Because," she said, "you promised." + +"Promised what?" + +"Promised you'd take them. Promised Stanny he should wear his knickers. +They told me you'd promised." + +And he had. + +"I forgot," he said. + +"_They'd_ never have forgotten." + +She was holding them, the ridiculous knickers, to the nursery fire. + +It took ten minutes to get Stanley into them, into the little blue linen +knickers he had never worn before, and into his tight little white +jersey; and then there was Dossie and her wonderful rig-out, the clean, +white frock and the serge jacket of turquoise blue and the tiny mushroom +hat with the white ribbon. It took five minutes more to find Stanley's +hat, the little soft hat of white felt, in which he was so adorable. +They found it on Ranny's bed, and then they started. + +It was a great, an immense adventure, right away to the other side of +London. + +"We'll take everything we can," said Ranny. And they did. They took the +motor bus to Earl's Court Tube Station, and the Tube (two Tubes they had +to take) to Golder's Green. The adventure began in the first lift. + +"Where we goin'?" the children cried. "Where we goin', Daddy?" + +"We're going down--down--ever so far down, with London on the top of +us--All the horses"--Winny worked the excitement up and up--"All the +people--All the motor buses on the top of us--" + +"On top of me?" + +"And on me?" cried Dossie. "And on Daddy and on Winky?" + +"Will it make us _dead_?" said Stanley. He was thrilled at the prospect. + +"No. More alive than ever. We shall come rushing out, like bunny +rabbits, into the country on the other side." + +Ever so far down into the earth they went, with London, and then Camden +Town, and then Hampstead Heath--a great big high hill--right on the top +of them; and then, all of a sudden, just as Winny had said, they came +rushing out, more alive than ever, into the country, into the green +fields. + +But there was something wrong with Ranny. He wasn't like himself. He +wasn't excited or amused or interested in anything. He looked as if he +were trying not to hear what Winny was saying to the children. He was +abstracted. He went like a man in a dream. He behaved almost as if he +wanted to show that he didn't really belong to them. + +Of course, he did all the proper things. He carried his little son. He +lifted him and Dossie in and out of the trains as if they had been +parcels labeled "Fragile, with Care." But he did it like a porter, a +sulky porter who was tired of lifting things; and they might really have +been somebody else's glass and china for all he seemed to care. + +Ranny was angry. He was angry with the little things for being there. He +was angry with himself for having brought them, and with Winny for +having made him bring them; and he was angry with himself for being +angry. But he couldn't help it. Their voices exasperated him. The +children's voices, the high, reiterated singsong, "Where we goin'?" +Winny's voice, poignantly soft, insufferably patient, answering them +with all that tender silliness, that persistent, gentle, intolerably +gentle tommy-rot. + +For all the time he was saying to himself, "She doesn't care. She +doesn't care a hang. It's them she cares for. It's them she wants. It's +them she's wanted all the time. She's that sort." + +And as he brooded on it, hatred of Winky, who had so fooled him, crept +into his heart. + +"Oh, Daddy!" Dossie shouted, with excitement. (They had emerged into the +beautiful open space in front of Golder's Green Station.) "Daddy, we're +bunnies now! We'll be dea' little baby bunnies. You'll be Father Bunny, +and Winky'll be Mrs. Mother Bun! _Be_ a bunny, Daddy?" + +Perceiving his cruel abstraction, Dossie entreated and implored. "_Be_ +it!" + +But Daddy refused to be a bunny or anything that was required of him. So +silent was he and so stern that even Winny saw that there was something +wrong. She knew by the way he let Stanny down from his shoulder to the +ground, a way which implied that Stanny was not so young nor yet so +small and helpless as he seemed. He could walk. + +Stanny felt it; he felt it in the jerk that landed him; but he didn't +care, he was far too happy. + +"He's a young Turk," said Winny, and he was. By his whole manner, by the +swing of his tiny arms, by his tilted, roguish smile, by his eyes, +impudent and joyous (blue they were, like his mother's, but clear, +tilted, and curled like Ranny's), Stanny intimated that Daddy was sold +if he imagined that to walk was not just what Stanny wanted. And in +spite of it he was heartrending, pathetic; so small he was, with all his +baby roundness accentuated absurdly by the knickers. + +"He's just such another as you, Ranny," Winny said. (She was +uncontrollable!) "Such a little man as he is, in those knickers." + +"Damn his knickers," said Ranny to himself, behind his set teeth. But he +smiled all the same; and by the time they had got into the wonderful +walled garden of Golder's Hill he had recovered almost completely. + +It was not decent to keep on sulking in a place which had so laid itself +out to make you happy; where the sunshine flowed round you and soaked +into you and warmed you as if you were in a bath. The garden, inclosed +in rose-red walls and green hedges, was like a great tank filled with +sunshine; sunshine that was visible, palpable, audible almost in its +intensity; sunshine caught and contained and brimming over, that +quivered and flowed in and around the wall-flowers, tulips and +narcissus, that drenched them through and through and covered them like +water, and was thick with all their scents. You walked on golden paths +through labyrinths of brilliant flowers, through arches, tunnels and +bowers of green. You were netted in sunshine, drugged with sweet live +smells, caged in with blossoms, pink and white, of the espaliers that +clung, branch and bud, like carved latticework, flat to the garden wall. + +Neither could he well have sulked in the great space outside, where the +green lawns unrolled and flung themselves generously, joyously to the +sun, or where, on the light slope of the field beyond, the trees hung +out their drooping vans, lifted up green roof above green roof, +sheltering a happy crowd. + +And even if these things, in their benignant, admonishing, reminding +beauty, had not restored his decency, he was bound to soften and unbend, +when, as they were going over the rustic bridge, Stanny tried to turn +himself upside down among the water lilies. And as he captured Stanny by +a miracle of dexterity, just in time, he realized, as if it had been +some new and remarkable discovery, that his little son was dear to him. + +By slow stages, after many adventures and delays, they reached the +managerie on the south side. + +"Oh, Daddy, Daddy, look at that funny bird!" + +Dossie tugged and shouted. + +In a corner of his yard, round and round, with inconceivable rapidity +and an astounding innocence, as if he imagined himself alone and +unobserved, the Emu danced like a bird demented. On tiptoe, absurdly +elongated, round and round, ecstatically, deliriously, he danced. He +danced till his legs and his neck were as one high perpendicular pole +and his body a mere whorl of feathers spinning round it, driven by the +flapping of his wings. + +"He _is_ making an almighty fool of himself," said Ranny. + +"What does he do it for, Daddy?" + +"Let's ask the keeper." + +And they asked him. + +"'E's a Emu, that's what 'e is," said the keeper. "That's what he does +when he goes courtin'. Only there won't be no courtin' for him this +time. 'Is mate died yesterday." + +"And yet he dances," Winny said. + +"And yet he dances. Heartless bird!" said Ranny. + +They looked at the Emu, who went on dancing as if unobserved. + +"Scandalous, I call it," Ranny said. "Unfeelin'." + +"Perhaps," said Winny, "the poor thing doesn't know." + +"Per'aps he does know, and that's why he's dancin'." + +Winny gazed, fascinated, at the uplifted and ecstatic head. + +"_I_ know," she said. "It's his grief. It's affected his brain." + +"It's Nacher," said the keeper, "that's what it is. Nacher's wound 'im +up to go, and he goes, you see, whether or no. It's the instint in 'im +and the time of year. 'E don't know no more than that." + +"But that," said Winny, "makes it all the sadder." + +She was sorry for the Emu, so bereaved and so deluded, dancing his +fruitless, lamentable dance. + +"He _is_ funny, isn't he?" said Stanny. + +And they went slowly, spinning out their pleasure, back to that part of +the lawn where there were innumerable little tables covered with pink +cloths, set out under the trees, and seated at the tables innumerable +family parties, innumerable pairs of lovers, pairs of married people, +pairs of working women and of working girls on holiday; all happy for +their hour, all whispering, laughing, chattering, and drinking tea. + +On the terrace in front of the big red house were other tables with +white covers under awnings like huge sunshades, where people who could +afford the terrace sat in splendor and in isolation and listened to the +music, played on the veranda, of violins and cello and piano. + +Ransome and Winny and the children chose a pink-covered table on the +lawn under a holly tree in a place all by themselves. And they had tea +there, such a tea as stands out forever in memory, beautiful and +solitary. What the children didn't have for tea, Ranny said, was not +worth mentioning. + +And after tea they sat in luxurious folding-chairs under the terrace and +listened to the violins, the cello, and piano. Other people were doing +the same thing as if they had been invited to do it, as if they were all +one party, with somewhere a friendly host and hostess imploring them to +be seated, to be happy and to make themselves at home. + +And down the slope of the lawn, Stanny and Dossie rolled over and over +in the joy of life. And up the slope they toiled, laughing, to roll +interminably down. + +And the moments while they rolled were golden, priceless to Ranny. +Winny, seated beside him on her chair, watched them rolling. + +"It's Stanny's knickers," she said, "that I can't get over!" + +"I don't want to hear of them again" (the golden moments were so few). +"You make me wish I hadn't brought those kids." + +"Oh, Ranny!" Her eyes were serious and reproachful. + +"Well--I can't get you to myself one minute." + +"But aren't we having quite a happy day?" she said. "What with the +beautiful flowers and the music and the Emu--" + +"You were sorry, Winky, for that disgraceful bird, and you're not a bit +sorry for me." + +"Why should I be?" + +"My case is similar." + +Her eyes were serious still, but round the corners of her mouth a little +smile was playing in secret by itself. She didn't know it was there, or +she never would have let it play. + +"Don't you know that I want to say things to you?" + +She looked at him and was frightened by the hunger in his eyes. + +"Not now, Ranny," she said. "Not yet." + +"Why not?" + +"I want"--she was desperate--"I want to listen to the music." + +At that moment the violins and the cello were struggling together in a +cry of anguish and of passion. + +"You _don't_," he said, savagely. + +He was right. She didn't. The music, yearning and struggling, tore at +her heart, set her nerves vibrating, her breast heaving. It was as if it +drew her to Ranny, urgently, irresistibly, against her will. + +"Not now, Ranny," she said, "not now." And it was as if she asked him to +take pity on her. + +"No," he said. "Not now. But presently, when I see you home." + +"No. Not even then. Not at all. You mustn't, dear," she whispered. + +"I shall." + +They sat silent and let the music do with them as it would. + +And the sun dropped to the fields and flooded them and sank far away, +behind Harrow on the Hill. And they called the children, the tired +children, to them and went home. + +Stanny had to be carried all the way. He hung on his father's shoulder, +utterly limp, utterly helpless, utterly pathetic. + +"He's nothing but a baby after all," said Winny. + +They were going over Wandsworth Bridge. + +"Do you remember, Ranny, the first time you ever saw me home, going over +this bridge? What a moon there was!" + +"I do. That _was_ a moon," said Ranny. + + * * * * * + +There was no moon for them to-night. + +It was in a clear twilight, an hour later, that he saw her home. + +They went half the way without speaking, till they came to the little +three-cornered grove beside the public footpath. It was deserted. He +proposed that they should sit there for a while. + +"It's the only chance I'll ever get," he said to himself. + +She consented. The plane trees sheltered them and made darkness for them +where they sat. + +"Winky," he said, after an agonizing pause, "you must have thought it +queer that I've never thanked you for all you've done for me." + +"Why should you? It's so little. It's nothing." + +"Do you suppose I don't know what it is and what you've done it for?" + +"Yes, Ranny, you know what I did it for, and you see, it's been no +good." + +"How d'you mean, no good?" + +"It didn't do what I thought it would." + +"What was that?" + +"It didn't keep poor Vi and you together." + +"Reelly"--She went on as if she were delivering her soul at last of the +burden that had been too heavy for it--"I can see it all now. It did +more harm than good." + +"How do you make that out?" + +"D'you mind talking about it?" + +"Not a bit." + +"Well, don't you see--it made it easier for her. It gave her the time +and everything she wanted. If I hadn't been there that night she +couldn't have gone, Ranny. She wouldn't have left the children. She +wouldn't, reelly. And I hadn't the sense to see it then." + +"I'm glad you hadn't." + +"Oh, why?" + +"Because then you wouldn't have been there. I knew you were trying to +keep it all together. But it was bound to go. It couldn't have lasted. +_She'd_ have gone anyhow. You don't worry about that now, do you?" + +"Sometimes I can't help thinking of it." + +"Don't think of it." + +"I won't so long as you know what I did it for." + +He meditated. + +"I know what you did it for in the beginning. But--Winks--you were there +_afterward_." + +"Afterward--?" + +"After Virelet went you were doing things." + +"Well--and didn't you want me?" + +"Of course I wanted you. Did you never wonder why I let you do things? +Why I can bear to take it from you? Don't you know I couldn't let any +other woman do what you do for me?" + +"I'm glad if you feel like that about it." + +"I don't believe you've any idea how I feel about it. I don't believe +you understand it yet." His voice thickened. + +"I couldn't have let you, Winny, if I hadn't cared for you. I should +have been a low animal, a mean swine to let you if I hadn't cared. I'm +not talking as if my caring paid you back in any way. I couldn't pay you +back if I worked for you for the rest of my life. But that's what I'm +going to do if I can get the chance." + +She could feel him trembling beside her and she was afraid. + +"Would you let me?" he said. "Would you have me, Winny? Do you care for +me enough to have me?" + +"You know I've always cared for you." + +"Would you marry me if I was free?" + +"Don't talk about it, dear. You mustn't." + +"And why mustn't I?" + +"It's no good. You're not free. You married Vi, dear, and whatever she's +done you can't un-marry her." + +"Can't I? That's precisely what I can do; and it's what I'm going to +do." + +"You're not. You couldn't." + +It seemed to him that she shrank from him in horror. + +"You don't understand. You're talking as if she and I cared for each +other. That's at an end. It's done for. She's asked me to divorce her." + +"Asked you? When?" + +"More than two years ago, and I promised. She wants to marry Mercier, +and she'd better. I'd have been free two years ago if I'd had the money. +But I've got it now. I've been saving for it. I've been doing nothing +else, thinking of nothing else from morning till night for more than two +years, because I meant to ask you to marry me." + +"All that time?" + +"All that time." + +"But Ranny, you know you _needn't_. I'm quite happy." + +"Are you?" + +"Yes. You mustn't think I'm not and that you've got to make anything up +to me, because that would make me feel as if I'd--there's a word for it, +I know, but I can't think of it. It's what horrid girls do to men when +they're trying to get hold of them--as if I'd comp--comprised--" + +"D'you mean compromised?" + +"Yes." + +"I make you feel as if you'd compromised me?" + +"That's right." + +"Well, I _am_ jiggered! If that doesn't about take the biscuit! Winky, +you're a blessing, you're a treasure, you're a treat; I could live for a +fortnight on the things you find to say." + +He would have drawn her to him, but she held herself rigid. + +"Well, but--I haven't--have I?" + +"If you mean, have you made me want to marry you, you _have_. Haven't I +told you I've thought of nothing else for more than two years?" + +"D'you want it so badly, Ranny?" + +"I want _you_ so badly. Didn't you know I did? Of course you knew." + +"No, Ranny, I didn't. I thought all the time perhaps some day poor +Virelet would come back." + +"She'll never come back." + +"But, if she did? If she changed her mind? Perhaps she's changed it now +and wants to come back and be good." + +"If she did I wouldn't take her." + +He felt her eyes turn on him through the dark in wonder. + +"But you'd have to. You couldn't not." + +"I could, and I would." + +"No, Ranny, you wouldn't. You'd never be cruel to poor Vi." + +"Don't talk about her. Don't think about her." + +"But we must. There she is. There she's always been--" + +"And here we are. And here we've always been. Have you ever thought for +a minute of _yourself_? Have you ever thought of _me_? I'm sick of +hearing you say 'poor Vi.' Poor Vi! D'you know why I won't take her +back? Why I can't forgive her? It's not for what you know she's done. +It's for something you never knew about. I've a good mind to tell you." + +"No--don't. I'd rather not know. Whatever it was, she couldn't help it." + +"You ought to know. It was something she did to you." + +"She never did anything to me, Ranny." + +"Didn't she? She did something to me that came to the same thing. I +suppose you think I cared for her before I cared for you?" + +"Well--yes." + +"I didn't then. It was the other way about. And she knew it. And she +lied to me about you. She told me you didn't care for me." + +"She told you--?" + +"She told me." + +"I didn't think that Virelet would have done that." + +"Nor I." + +She paused, considering it. + +"How did you find out it was a lie, Ranny? Oh--oh--I suppose I showed +you--" + +"Not you. She owned up herself." + +"When?" + +"That night she went off. She wrote it in that letter. She told me why +she did it, too. It was because she knew I cared for you and was afraid +I'd marry you. She wasn't going to have that. Now you know what she is." + +"Why did you believe her?" + +"Why, Winky, you, you little wretch, you took care of that all right." + +"But, Ranny, if you cared for me, why did you marry her?" + +"Because I was mad and she was mad, and we neither of us knew what we +were doing. It was something that got hold of us." + +"Aren't you mad now, Ranny?" + +"Rather! But I know what I'm doing all the same. I didn't know when I +married Violet." + +"Don't talk as if you didn't care for her. You _did_ care." + +"Of course I cared for her. But even that was different somehow. _She_ +was different. Why do you bother about her?" + +"I'm only wondering how you'd feel if you was to see her again." + +"I shouldn't feel anything--anything at all. Seeing her would have no +more effect on me than if she was a piece of clockwork." He paused. + +"I say--you're not afraid of her?" he said. + +"No. I've been through all that and got over it. I'm not afraid of +anything." + +"You mean you're not afraid to marry me?" + +"No. I'm not afraid." + +He felt her smile flicker in the darkness. + +It was then that in the darkness he drew her to him, and she let herself +be drawn, her breast to his breast and her head against his shoulder. +And as she rested there she trembled, she shivered with delight and +fear. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +He had seen her home. At her door in the quiet Avenue he had held her in +his arms again and kissed her. Her eyes shone at his under the +lamplight. + +He went back slowly, reviving the sweet sense of her. + +A great calm had followed his excitement. He was sustained by an +absolute certainty of happiness. It was in his grasp, nothing could take +it from him. He would raise the rest of the money on Monday. He would +see that lawyer on Wednesday. Then he would take proceedings. Once he +had set the machinery going it couldn't be stopped. The law simply took +the thing over, took it out of his hands, and he ceased to be +responsible. + +So he argued; for at the back of his mind he saw more clearly than ever +(he could not help seeing) something that might stop it all, disaster so +great, so overwhelming that when it came his affairs would be swallowed +up in it. In the face of that disaster it would be indecent of him to +have any affairs of his own, or at any rate to insist on them. But he +refused to dwell on this possibility. He persuaded himself that his +father was better, that he would even recover, and that the business +would recover too. For the last six months Ponting had been running it +with an assistant under him, and between them they had done wonders with +it, considering. + +And on the Sunday something occurred that confirmed him in his rosy +optimism. + +His father was having another good day, and they had wheeled him into +the front sitting-room. Upstairs in the small back room Ransome was +getting the children ready for their Sunday walk, when his mother came +to him. + +"Ranny," she said, "take off their hats and coats, dear. Your Father +wants them." + +"What does he want them for?" + +"It's his fancy. He's gettin' better, I think. I don't know when I've +seen him so bright and contented as he's been these last two days. And +so pleased with everything you do for him--There, take them down, dear, +quick." + +He took them down and led them into the room. But they refused to look +at their grandfather; they turned from him at once; they hid their faces +behind Ranny's legs. + +"They're afraid of me, I suppose," said Mr. Ransome. + +"No," said Ranny, "they're not." But he had to take Stanny in his arms +and comfort him lest he should cry. + +"You're not afraid of Gran, are you? Show Gran your pretty pinny, Doss." + +He gave her a gentle push, and the child stood there holding out her +pinafore and gazing over it at her grandfather with large, frightened +eyes. Mr. Ransome's eyes looked back at her. They were sunken, somber, +wistful, unutterably sad. He did not speak. He did not smile. It was +impossible to say what he was thinking. + +This mutual inspection lasted for a moment so intense that it seemed +immeasurable. Then Mr. Ransome closed his eyes as if pained and +exhausted. + +And Ranny stooped and whispered, "Kiss him, Dossie, kiss poor Gran." + +The child, perceiving pity somewhere and awed into submission, did her +best, but her kiss barely brushed the sallow, waxen face. And as he felt +her there Mr. Ransome opened his eyes suddenly and looked at her again, +and Dossie, terrified, turned away and burst out crying. + +"She's shy. She's a silly little girl," said Ranny, as he led her away. +He knew that, in the moment when the child had turned from him, his +father had felt outcast from life and utterly alone. + +Mr. Ransome stirred and looked after him. "You come back here," he said. +"I've something to say to you." + +Ranny took the children to his mother and went back. Mr. Ransome was +sitting up in his chair. He had roused himself. He looked strangely +intelligent and alert. + +He signed to his son to sit near him. + +"How old are those children?" he said. + +"Dossie was five in March, and Stanny was three in April." + +"And they've been--how long without their mother?" + +"It'll be three years next October." + +"Why don't you get rid of that woman?" said Mr. Ransome. It was as if +with effort and with pain and out of the secret, ultimate sources of his +being that he drew the energy to say it. They would never know what he +was thinking, never know (as Ranny had once said) what was going on +inside him. And of all impossible things, _this_ was what he had come +out with now! + +"Do you mean that, Father?" + +"Of course I mean it." + +"Well, then--as it happens--it's what I'm going to do." + +"You should have done it before." + +"I couldn't." + +"Why not?" + +"I hadn't the money." + +Mr. Ransome closed his eyes again as if in pain. + +"I'd have given it you, Randall," he said, presently. He had opened his +eyes, but they wandered uneasily, avoiding his son's gaze. "If I'd had +it. But I hadn't. I've been doing badly." + +And again his eyelids dropped and lifted. + +"Things have gone wrong that hadn't ought to if I'd been what I should +be." + +There was anguish in Ranny's father's eyes now. They turned to him for +reassurance. As if in some final act of humility and contrition, he +unbared and abased himself, he laid down the pretension of integrity. + +His shawl had slipped from his knees. His hands moved over it as if, +having unbared, he now sought to cover himself. Ransome stooped over him +and drew the shawl up higher and wrapped it closer with careful, tender +touches. + +"Don't worry about that," he said. + +"Your Mother'll be all right, Randall. She's got a bit of her own. It's +all there, except what she put into the business. You won't have to +trouble about her." He paused. "Have you got the money now?" he said. + +"I shall have. To-morrow, probably." + +"Then don't you wait." + +"It'll be beastly work, you know, Father. Are you sure you don't mind?" + +"What _I_ mind is your being married to that woman. I never liked it, +Randall." + +He closed his eyes. His face became more than ever drawn and peaked. His +mouth opened. With short, hard gasps he fought for the breath he had so +spent. + +Ransome's heart reproached him because he had not cared enough about his +father. And he said to himself, "He must have cared a lot more than he +ever let on." + +The way to the Divorce Court had been made marvelously smooth for him. +His mother couldn't say now that it would kill his father. + +But on Monday morning things did not go with Ransome entirely as he had +expected. Shaftesbury Avenue refused to lend him more than ten pounds on +the security of his furniture. Still, that was a trifling hitch. Now +that the proceedings had been consecrated by his father's sanction, +there could be no doubt that his mother would be glad to lend him the +five pounds. He would ask her for it that evening as soon as he got +home. + + * * * * * + +But he did not ask her that evening, nor yet the next. He did not ask +her for it at all. For as soon as he got home she came to him out of his +father's room. She stood at the head of the stairs by the door of the +room, leaning against the banisters. And she was crying. + +"Is Father worse?" he said. + +"He's going, my dear. There's a trained nurse just come. She's in there +with the doctor. But they can't do anything." + +He drew her into the front room, and she told him what had happened. + +"He was sittin' in his chair there like he was yesterday--so bright--and +I thought he was better, and I made him a drop of chicken broth and sat +with him while he took it. Then I left him there for a bit and went +upstairs to the children--Dossie was sick this morning--" + +"Dossie--?" + +"It's nothing--she's upset with something she's eaten--and I was there +with her ten minutes per'aps, and when I came back I found your Father +in a fit. A convulsion, the doctor says it was; he said all along he +might have them, but I thought he was better. And he's had another this +evening, and he hasn't come round out of it right. He doesn't know me, +Ranny." + +He had nothing to say to her. It was as if he had known that it would +happen, and that it would happen like this, that he would come home at +this hour and find his mother standing at the head of the stairs, and +that she would tell him these things in these words. He even had the +feeling that he ought to have told _her_, to have warned her that it +would be so. + +On Wednesday evening, at eight o'clock, when Ransome should have been in +the lawyer's room at the Polytechnic, he was standing by his father's +bed. Mr. Ransome had partially recovered consciousness, and he lay +supported by his son's arms in preference to his own bed. For his bed +had become odious to him, sinking under him, falling from him +treacherously as he sank and fell, whereas Ranny's muscles adjusted +themselves to all his sinkings and fallings. They remained and could be +felt in the disintegration that presently separated them from the rest +of Ranny, Ranny's arms being there, close under him, and Ranny's face a +long way off at the other end of the room. + +The process of dissolution had nothing to do with Mr. Ransome. It went +on, not in him but outside him, in the room. He was almost unaware of +it, it was so inconceivably gradual, so immeasurably slow. First of all +the room began to fill with gray fog, and for ages and ages Ranny's face +and his wife's face hung over him, bodiless, like pale lumps in the fog. +Then for ages and for ages they were blurred, and then withdrawn from +him, then blotted out. + +This dying, which was so eternally tedious to Mr. Ransome, lasted about +twenty minutes, so that at half past eight, when Ranny should have been +listening to his legal adviser, he was trying to understand what the +doctor was trying to tell him about the causes, the very complicated +causes of his father's death. + + * * * * * + +And with Mr. Ransome's death there came again on Ranny and his mother, +and on all of them, the innocence and the immense delusion in which they +had lived, in which they had kept it up, in the days before Ranny's wife +had run away from him and before Ranny's enlightenment and his awful +outburst. Only the innocence was ten times more persistent, the delusion +ten times more solemn and more unutterably sacred now. Mr. Ransome's +death made it impossible for them to speak or think or feel about him +otherwise than if he had been a good man. If Ranny could have doubted it +he would have stood reproved. From the doctor's manner, from his Uncle +Randall's manner and his Aunt Randall's, from Mr. Ponting's and the +assistant's manner, and from the manner, the swollen grief, uncontrolled +and uncontrollable, of the servant Mabel, he would have gathered that +his father was a good man. + +But Ransome never doubted it. He spoke, he thought, he felt as if his +father's death had left him inconsolable. It was the death of a man who +had made them all ashamed and miserable; who had tried to take the joy +out of Ranny's life as he had already taken it out of Ranny's mother's +face; who had hardly ever spoken a kind word to him; who, if it came to +that, had never done anything for him beyond contributing, +infinitesimally, to his existence. And even this Mr. Ransome had done by +accident and inadvertence, thinking (if he could be said to have been +thinking at all) of his own pleasure and not of his son's interests; for +Ranny, if he had been consulted, would probably have preferred to owe +his existence to some other parent. + +And even in his last act, his dying, in his choice of that hour, of all +hours open to him to die in, Mr. Ransome had inflicted an incurable +injury upon his son. He had timed it to a minute. And Ranny knew it. He +had had the idea firmly fixed in his head that if he did not go to the +Polytechnic and find out how to set about filing his petition that +Wednesday night, he would never get his divorce. Things would happen, +they were bound to happen if he gave them time. + +And yet that death, so ill-timed, so disastrous for Ranny in its +consequences, Ranny mourned as if it had been in itself an affliction, +an irreparable loss. He felt with the most entire sincerity that now +that the Humming-bird was dead he would never be happy again. + +On the Sunday after the funeral, which was on the Saturday, he sat in +the front parlor with his mother and Mr. and Mrs. Randall, listening +with a dumb but poignant acquiescence to all that they were saying about +his father. Their idea now was that Mr. Ransome was not only a good man, +a man of indissoluble integrity, but a man of unimaginably profound +emotions, of passionate affections concealed under the appearance of +austerity. + +"No one knows," Mrs. Ransome was saying, "what 'E was thinking and what +'E was feeling--what went on inside him no one ever knew. For all he +said about it you'd have thought he didn't take much notice of what +happened--Ranny's trouble--and yet I know he felt it something awful. It +preyed on 'is mind, poor Ranny being left like that. Why, it was after +that, if you remember, that he began to break up. I put all his illness +down to that. + +"And then the children--you might say he didn't take much notice of +them, but 'E was thinking about them all the time, you may depend upon +it. 'E sent for them the Sunday before he died. I'm glad he did, too. +Aren't you, Ranny?" + +"Yes, Mother," Ranny said, and choked. + +"It'll be something for them to remember him by when they grow up. But +they'll never know what was in his heart. None of us ever knew nor ever +will know, now." + +"He was a good man, Emmy, and a kind man--and just. I never knew any one +more just than Fulleymore. We were saying so only last night, weren't +we?" + +"Yes, John," said Mrs. Randall. "We were saying you could always depend +upon his word. And, as _you_ say, there were things in him we never +knew--and never shall know." + +And so it went on, with tearful breaks and long, oppressive silences, +until some one would think of some as yet unmentioned quality of Mr. +Ransome's. Every now and then, in the silences, one of them would be +visited by some involuntary memory of his unpleasantness and of the +furtive vice that had destroyed him, and would thrust the thought back +with horror, as outrageous, indecent, and impossible. They all spoke in +voices of profound emotion and with absolute, unfaltering conviction. + +"We shall never know what was in him." Always they came back to that, +they dwelt on it, they clung to it. Under all the innocence and the +delusion it was as if, through their grief, they touched reality, they +felt the unaltered, unapparent splendor, and testified to the mystery, +to the ultimate and secret sanctity of man's soul. + + * * * * * + +Of all that Ransome was aware obscurely, he shared their sense of that +hidden and incalculable and enduring life. But his own grief was +different from theirs. It was something unique, peculiar to himself and +incommunicable. + +Even he had not realized what was at the bottom of his grief until he +found himself alone with it, walking with it on the road to Southfields. +He had left the Randalls with his mother and had escaped, with an +irritable longing for the darkness and the open air. He knew that the +reason why he wanted to get away from them was that his grief was so +different from theirs. + +For they were innocent; they had nothing to reproach themselves with. If +they had not loved his father quite so much as they thought they did, +they had done the next best thing; they had never let him know it. They +had behaved to him, they had thought of him, in consequence, more +kindly, more tenderly than if they _had_ loved him; in which case they +would not have felt the same obligation to be careful. They had never +hurt him. Whereas he-- + +That was why he would give anything to have his father back again. It +was all right for them. He couldn't think what they were making such a +fuss about. They had carried their behavior to such a pitch of +perfection that they could perfectly well afford to let him go. There +was no reason why they should want him back again, to show him-- + +All this Ranny felt obscurely. And the more he thought about it the more +it seemed to him horrible that anybody should have lived as his father +had lived and die as he had died, without anybody having really loved +him. It was horrible that he, Ranny, should not have loved him. For that +was what it came to; that was what he knew about himself; that and +nothing else was at the bottom of his grief, and it was what made it so +different from theirs. It was as if he realized for the first time in +his life what pity was. He had never known what a terrible, what an +intolerable thing was this feeling that was so like love, that should +have been love and yet was not. For he didn't deceive himself about it +as his mother (mercifully for her) was deceiving herself at this moment. +This intolerable and terrible feeling was not love. In love there would +have been some happiness. + +Walking slowly, thinking these things, or rather feeling them, vaguely +and incoherently, he had come to the grove by the public footpath. It +was there that he had sat with his mother more than six years ago, when +she had as good as confessed to him that she had not loved her husband; +not, that was to say, as she had loved her child. + +And it was there, only the other night, that he had sat with Winny. One +time seemed as long ago as the other. + +And it was there that Winny was sitting now, on their seat, alone, +facing the way he came, as if positively she had known that he would +come. + +He realized then that it was Winny that he wanted, and that the grief he +found so terrible and intolerable was driving him to her, though when he +started he had not meant to go to her, he had not known that he would +go. + +She rose when she saw him and came forward. + +"Ranny! Were you coming to me?" + +"Yes." (He knew it now.) "Let's stay here a bit. I've left Uncle and +Aunt with Mother." + +"How is she?" + +"Oh--well, it's pretty awful for her." + +"It must be." + +He was sitting near her but a little apart, staring at the lamplit road. +She felt him utterly removed from her. Yet he was there. He had come to +her. + +"I don't think," he said, presently, "Mother'll ever be happy again. _I_ +sha'n't, either." + +She put her hand on his hand that lay palm downward between them on the +seat and that was stretched toward her, not as if it sought her +consciously, but in utter helplessness. There was no response in it +beyond a nervous quivering that struck through her fingers to her heart. + +He went on. "It's not as if _he_ had been happy. He wasn't. Couldn't +have been." + +She fell to stroking gently that hand under her own. Its nervous +quivering ceased. + +"You know that funny way he had--the way he used to go poppin' in and +out as if he was lookin' for somebody? That's what I can't bear to think +of. Like as if he'd wanted something badly and wouldn't let on to +anybody about it. Nobody knew what was going on inside him all these +years. That's the horrible thing. We ought to have known and we didn't. +There he was, poppin' in and out, and he might have been a mile off for +all we could get at him. We didn't know anything about him--not reelly." + +He mused. + +"That's it. We don't know anything about anybody--ever. I didn't know +anything about Virelet--don't know now. I never shall know. Come to +that, I don't know anything about you. Nor you about me--reelly." + +"Oh, Ranny," she whispered. It was her one protest against the agony he +was making her share with him. + +"What do we know about anything? What does it all mean? The whole +bloomin' show? The Combined Maze? They shove us into it without our +leave. They make us do things we don't want to do and never meant to do. +I didn't want to care for Virelet. I wanted to care for you. I didn't +want to marry her, nor she me. I didn't mean to. I meant to marry you. +But I did care for her, and I did marry her. I don't suppose _he_ wanted +to do like he did or ever meant to. And look how he was treated--shoved +in--livin' his horrible little life down there--doin' the things he +didn't mean--lookin' for things he never got--and then shunted like +this, all anyhow, God knows where--before he could put a hand on +anything. There's no sense in it. + +"I wouldn't mind so much if I'd only cared for him. But I didn't. I +wanted to--I meant to--but I didn't. There you are again. It's all like +that and there's no sense in it." + +"But you _did_ care, Ran, dear. You're caring now. You couldn't talk +like this about him if you didn't care." + +"No. I'm talkin' like this--because I didn't care. Not a rap. My God! If +I thought Stanny would ever feel to me as I felt to my father, I'd go +and kill myself." + +"But he won't, dear. You haven't behaved to him like your father behaved +to you," said Winny, calmly. + +"What do you mean?" + +"You know what I mean. At any rate, you will know presently when you can +look at it as it reelly is. Nobody could have done more for your father +than you did. If he'd been the best father in the world you couldn't +have done more." + +"Doin' things is nothing. Besides, I didn't. D'you know, I wouldn't go +into his business when he wanted me to? I wouldn't do it, just because I +couldn't bear bein' with him all the time. And he knew it." + +"I don't care if he did know it, Ranny. You'd a perfect right to live +your own life. You'd a right to choose what you'd do and where you'd be. +As it was, you never had any life of your own where your father was +about. I can remember how it was, dear, if you don't. If you'd given in +because he wanted you to; if you'd been boxed up with him down there +from morning till night, you'd never have had any life at all. Not as +much as _that_! And then, instead of caring for him as you did, you'd +have got to hate him, and then he'd have hated you; and your mother +would have been torn between you. That's how it would have been, and you +knew it. Else you'd never have left him." + +"I say--fancy your knowin' all that!" + +"Of course I know it. I knew it all the time." + +"Who told you?" + +"You don't have to be told things like that, Ranny." + +The hand she was stroking moved from under her hand and caught it and +grasped it tight. + +"Didn't I always know you were a dear?" she went on. "You said I didn't +know anything about you. But I knew that much." + +"Yes--but--how did you know I cared for him?" + +"Oh, why--because--you couldn't have called him the Humming-bird and +all those funny names you did if you hadn't cared. And, of course, he +knew that too. That's what he wouldn't let on, dear--the lot he knew. It +must have made him feel so nice and comfortable inside him to know that +whatever he was to do you'd go on calling him a Humming-bird." + +"D'you think it did--reelly?" + +"Why--don't you remember how it used to make your mother smile? Well, +then." + +Well, then, she seemed to say, it was all right. + +That was how she brought him round, to sanity when he thought his brain +was going and to happiness when he felt it so improbable, not to say +impossible, that he should ever be happy again. + + * * * * * + +A fortnight passed. + +In the three days following the death he had not thought once about his +own concerns. He simply hadn't time to think of them. Every minute he +could spare was taken up with the arrangements for his father's funeral. +Sunday had been given over to mourning and remorse. It was Monday +morning and the weeks following it that brought back the thought of his +divorce. They brought it back, first, in all its urgency, as a thing +vehemently and terribly desired, then as a thing, urgent indeed, but +private and personal and, therefore, of secondary importance, a thing +that must perforce stand over until the settlement of his father's +affairs, till finally (emerging from the inextricable tangle in which it +had become involved) it presented itself as it was, a thing hopeless and +unattainable. + +His father's affairs were worse than anything he had believed. For, +except for that terror born of his own private superstition, he had not +really looked forward to disaster on an overwhelming scale.... He had +imagined his father's business as surviving him only for a little while, +and his father's debts as entailing perhaps strict economy for years. +But for the actual figures he was not prepared. + +And how his father, limited as he was in his resources and destitute, +you would have thought, of all opportunity for wild expenditure, how he +could have contrived to owe the amount he did owe passed Ranny's +understanding. + +Into that pit of insolvency there went all that was fetched by the sale +of the stock and the goodwill of the business and all that Mrs. Ransome +had put into the business, including what she had saved out of her tiny +income. As for Ranny's savings and the sum he had borrowed--the whole +thirty pounds--they went to pay for the funeral and the grave and the +monumental stone. + +There could be no divorce. Divorce was not to be thought of for more +than two years, when he would have got his rise. + +He broke the news to Winny, sitting with her in their little halfway +grove, the place consecrated to Ranny's confidences. + +"I can't do different," he said, summing it all up. + +"Of course, you can't. Never mind, dear. Let's go on as we are." + +It was what Violet had said to him, but with how different a meaning! + +"But Winky--it means waiting years. It'll be more than two before I can +get a divorce--and we can't marry till six months after. That's three +years. I can't bear to ask you to wait so long." + +"Don't worry about me. I'm quite happy." + +"You don't know how much happier you would be. Me too." + +She pressed her face against his shoulder. + +"I don't think I could be any happier than I am." + +"You don't know," he repeated. "You don't know anything at all." + +"I know I love you and you me, and that's enough." + +"Oh--_is_ it?" + +"It's the great thing." + +"Winny, d'you know, that if poor Father hadn't died when he did--we +missed it by a day. To think it could happen like that!" + +He clinched it with, "This Combined Maze has been a bit too much for you +and me." + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +Mrs. Ransome for the first time in her life was thinking. She called it +thinking, although that was no word for it, for its richness, its +amplitude, its peculiar secret certainty. You might say that for the +first time in her life Mrs. Ransome was fully conscious; that, with an +extraordinary vividness and clarity she saw things, not as she believed +and desired them to be, but as they were. + +She saw, for the first time since Mr. Ransome's death, that she was +happy; or rather, that she had been happy for more than two years, that +is to say, ever since Mr. Ransome's death. And this vision of her +happiness, of her iniquitous and disgraceful satisfaction, was shocking +to Mrs. Ransome. She would have preferred to think that ever since Mr. +Ransome's death she had been heartbroken. + +But it was not so. Never in all her life had she been so at peace; never +since her girlhood had she been so gay. This state of hers had lasted +exactly two years and four months, thus clearly dating from her +bereavement. For it was in May of nineteen-ten that he had died, and she +was now in September nineteen-twelve. + +She might not have been aware of it but that it, her happiness, had only +six months more to run. + +For two years and four months she had had her son Ranny to herself. She +had been the mistress of his house, the little house that she loved, +and the mother of his children whom (next to her son Ranny) she adored. +For two years and four months she had made him comfortable with a +comfort he had never dreamed of, which most certainly he had never +known. With tenderness and care and vigilance unabridged and unremitted, +she had brought Granville and Stanley and Dossie to perfection. It had +not been so hard. Stanley and Dossie she had found almost perfect from +the first, more perfect than Ranny she had found them, because they were +not so near to her own flesh, and not loved so passionately as he. + +And Granville, once far from perfect, had responded to treatment like a +living thing. Maudie and Fred Booty had cherished it, they handed it on +to Mrs. Ransome spotless and intact. Spotless and intact she had kept +it. Spotless and intact no doubt it would be kept when, in six months' +time, she in turn would hand it over to Winny Dymond, to Ranny's second +wife. + +He had only just told her. + +That was what hurt her most, that she had only just been told, when for +more than two years he had been thinking of it. It was no use saying +that he couldn't have told her before, because he wasn't free. He wasn't +free now; not properly, like a widower. + +That he would, after all, get rid of poor Violet, who hadn't, in all +those years, troubled him or done him any harm, _that_ had been a blow +to her. She hadn't believed it possible. She had thought the question of +divorce had been settled once for all, five years ago, by his Uncle +Randall. And John Randall in the meanwhile had justified his claim to +be heard, and his right to settle things. He had canceled the debt that +poor Fulleymore had owed him. To be sure, he could afford it. He was +more prosperous and prominent than ever. He was, therefore, less than +ever likely to approve of the divorce. + +If the idea of divorce had been appalling five years ago, it was still +more appalling now. Since, after all, poor Violet had removed herself so +far and kept so quiet, the scandal of her original disappearance had +somehow diminished with every year, while, proportionately, with every +year, the scandal, the indecency, the horror of the Divorce Court had +increased, until now it seemed to be a monstrous thing. + +And that Ranny should have chosen this time of all times! When they'd +paid off all the creditors and got clear, and stood respected and +respectable again. As if his poor father's insolvency, which, after all, +he couldn't help (since it was the Drug Stores that had ruined him), as +if that wasn't enough disgrace for one family, he must needs go and rake +up all that awful shame and trouble, after all these years, when +everybody had forgotten that there _had_ been any trouble and any shame. + +That was what Mrs. Ransome found so hard to bear. And that she had been +deceived; that he should have let her go on thinking that it wasn't +possible, up to the last minute (it was Saturday and he was going to the +lawyer on Monday), she who had the first right to be told. + +All these years he had deceived her. All these years he had meant to do +it the very minute he had got his rise. + +For Ransome had attained the summit of his ambition. He was now a petty +cashier with a pen all to himself at the top of the counting-house, and +an income of two hundred a year. Short of making him assistant secretary +(which was ridiculous) Woolridge's could do no more for him. + +And Winny Dymond (Mrs. Ransome reflected bitterly), though he hadn't +been free to speak to her, though he was practically (it didn't occur to +Mrs. Ransome that what she meant was theoretically) a married man, Winny +had known it all the time. + +It was extraordinary, but Mrs. Ransome, who was really fond of Winny, +felt toward her more acute and concentrated bitterness than she had felt +toward Violet, whom she hated. She was able to think of Ranny's first +wife as poor Violet, though Violet had made him miserable and destroyed +his home and had left him and his children. And the thought of his +marrying Winny Dymond was intolerable to Mrs. Ransome, though she had +recognized her as the one woman Ranny ought to have married, the one +woman worthy of him, and she would have continued to welcome her in that +capacity as long as Ranny had refrained from marrying her. + +For Ranny's mother knew that in Violet her motherhood had had no rival. +Violet's passion for Ranny, Ranny's passion for Violet, had not robbed +her of her son. Violet, not having in her one atom of natural feeling, +and caring only for her husband's manhood and his physical perfection, +had left to Mrs. Ransome all that was most dear to her in Ranny. Married +to Violet, he was still dependent on his mother. He clung to her, he +deferred to her judgment, he came to her for comfort. If he had been +ill it was she and not Violet who would have nursed him. Whereas Winny +would take all that away from her. She would take--she could not help +taking--Ranny utterly away; not from malice, not from selfishness, not +because she wanted to take him, but because she could not help it. She +was so made as to be all in all to him, so made as to draw him to her +all in all. There would be absolutely nothing of Ranny left over for his +mother, except the affection he had always felt for her, which, for a +woman of Mrs. Ransome's temperament, was the least thing that she +claimed. Her instinct had divined Winny infallibly, not only as a wife +to Ranny, but as a mother. A mother Winny was and would be to him far +more than if she had used her womanhood to bear him children. + +So that, without the smallest preparation, she saw herself required at +six months' notice to give up her son. And while she blamed him for not +having told her, she overlooked the fact that if she had been told she +could not have borne the knowledge. It would have poisoned for her every +day of the eight hundred and forty-five days for which in her ignorance +she had been so happy. + +She did not attempt to deny that she had been happy. But what she had +_said_ to Ranny when he told her was, "It's a mercy your poor father +doesn't know." + +And in that moment she thought of her happiness with a sharp pang as if +it had been unfaithfulness to her dead husband. + +It was at half past seven on a Saturday evening in the last week of +September, nineteen-twelve, that Mrs. Randall sat alone in the back +sitting-room at Granville and meditated miserably on those things. + +Upstairs in his bedroom overhead she could hear Ranny moving very +softly, for fear of waking Stanley. She knew what he was doing. He was +changing, making himself smart enough to take Winny Dymond to the Earl's +Court Exhibition. + + * * * * * + +Upstairs in his bedroom overhead, Ranny moved very softly, for fear of +waking Stanley. He was changing into a new gray suit, making himself +more smart than he had been for years to take Winny to the Earl's Court +Exhibition. + +In that shirt, glistening, high-collared, in a gray-blue tie, in +gray-blue socks and brown boots, Ranny looked very smart indeed. And the +suit, the suit looked splendid, the fold down the legs of the trousers +being as yet unimpaired. + +And Ranny looked young, ever so young still, though he was thirty-two. +The faint lines at the corner of his eyes and of his mouth accentuated +agreeably their upward tilt. He had gained distinction by the increasing +firmness of his face. Virile in its adolescence, it had kept its youth +in its maturity. Ranny's face expressed him. It was fine and clean; it +had not one mean or faltering line in it. And his figure had not, after +all, deteriorated. Flabbiness was as far from him as it had been in his +youth. + +With infinite precautions, Ranny opened a drawer where he found a small +japanned tin box, very new. This he unlocked softly, and from a little +canvas bag that lay in the compartment specially reserved for it he took +a sovereign, one of four, that represented rather more than a week's +proportion of his new salary. + +He had made up his mind that when the day came he would spend no less a +sum. So great a rise could not be celebrated on less. If a cashier of +Woolridge's could have been capable of saving, say, one and ninepence +out of that sovereign, the man who was engaged to Winny Dymond would +have died rather. + +Of course, it was a thundering lot to spend. But then Ranny desired, he +was determined to spend a thundering lot. It was extravagant, but he +wished to be extravagant. It was reckless, irresponsible, but reckless +and irresponsible was what he felt. He meant to go it. He meant to have +his fling just for once. And he meant that Winny, who had never had +hers, nor any share in anybody else's, should taste, just for once, the +rapture of a fling. She should have it for three solid hours of that +delicious night, in one mad, flaming, stupendous orgy at the Earl's +Court Exhibition. + +For it wasn't really his rise that called for it. That was only a means +to his divorce and marriage. It was his engagement that he proposed to +celebrate. + +The engagement, though he could hardly believe it, was a fact. True, it +could not be made public until a decent interval after the divorce; but +it had been acknowledged and settled between him and Winny as soon as +ever he knew that he had got his rise. They would never celebrate it at +all if they didn't celebrate it now before all the beastliness began. + +For he knew perfectly well that it would be beastly. Winny would feel it +even more than he did. She would feel it for him. Things that they had +both forgotten would be raked up again, all the misery and all the +shame. Now that it was imminent he dreaded the Divorce Court. His Uncle +Randall could not have shrunk more painfully from this public washing of +his dirty linen. He would come out of the Great Washhouse feeling +almost, but not quite as unclean as if his linen had been kept at home +and never washed at all. + +And the trail of all that nastiness would spread over the six months of +their engagement; it would poison everything. + +He didn't mean to think about it or let Winny think. They were going to +enjoy themselves to-night while they could, while they still felt +innocent and clean and jolly. + + * * * * * + +He stooped for a moment over the crib where his little son lay curled +and snuggling, his face hidden, his head, with its crop of dark hair, +showing like the fur of some soft burrowing animal. He freed the little +mouth muffled in bedclothes, and tucked the blankets closer. He picked +up Stanny's Teddy bear that had fallen lamentably to the floor, and laid +it where Stanny would find it beside him when he woke. + +Treading softly, he went into the next room where Dossie lay in her own +little bed beside his mother's, her little seven-year-old girl body +stretched out in all its dainty slenderness (so unlike Stanny's. He saw +with a pang of sudden passion the sweet difference). Her face, laid +sideways in her golden-brown hair, showed already a fine edge, nose, and +mouth and chin turned subtly, and carved out of their baby softness to +the likeness of his own. He stooped and kissed Dossie's hair, and took +without touching the sweetness of her mouth. Then he ran softly down the +stairs. + +His mother heard him running and came to the door of the room. "You're +not going out like that," she said, "without an overcoat? It'll rain +before you're back, I know, and that new suit'll be ruined." + +"Rot! It _can't_ rain on a night like this. Good night, Mother. Don't go +sittin' up. I don't know when I'll be in." + +"I'll hot some cocoa for you last thing and leave it on the trivet." + +"Sha'n't want cocoa." + +"What shall you want then?" + +"Oh, Lord!" His nerves were all on edge. He couldn't bear it. +"_Nothing!_" he cried, as he rushed out. + +At the gate it struck him that he had been a brute to her. He turned. He +rushed back to her. He put his arm round her and kissed her. + +"You're all right now, aren't you?" + +"Yes, Ran, dear, I'm all right." She smiled. "Run away and don't keep +Winny waiting." + +(Heaven only knew what it cost her.) + +And Ranny looked back, laughing, through the doorway. "You know, Mother, +it reelly _is_ all right. And you're an angel." + +And she said, "There! Go along with you." + +He went. + + * * * * * + +"Ranny, how nice you look!" + +Winny herself was looking nice and knew it. She wore a green cotton +gown trimmed with white pipings, and a thing she called a Peggy hat that +was half a bell and half a bonnet and had diminutive roses sewn on it +here and there like buttons. + +They were going down the long entrance to the Exhibition, between +painted walls, in brilliant illumination, and in publicity that might +have been trying if they had had eyes for anything except each other. + +Winny's eyes were brimming with joy and tenderness as she looked at him. +If she loved the new gray suit, the brown boots, and the Trilby hat, she +did not love them more than the shabby blue serge with the place she +knew in the lining where she had mended it. All the same, it was +impossible to see him in such things without that little breathless +thrill of wonder and excitement. There wasn't one man at Earl's Court +that night who could compare with Ranny. He made them all look weedy, +flabby; pitiful, uninteresting things. + +And then, all of a sudden (they were at the paygate), as she looked, +astonishment, grief, and anxiety appeared on Winny's face. Something had +dismayed her tenderness, dashed her joy. She had seen Ranny take out of +his waistcoat pocket gold--not ten shillings, but a whole sovereign. And +a dreadful fear awoke in her. + +He was going to spend it all. + +She knew it, something told her; she could see by the way he smacked it +down, careless like. And Winny couldn't bear it; she couldn't bear to +think that Ranny, who had pinched and scraped and done without things +for years, should go and throw away all that on her! + +But anybody could see that he was going to do it, by the strange +excitement and abstraction in his eyes, by the way he gathered up the +change and took Winny by the arm and walked off with her. His eyes and +the close crook of his arm drawing her along with him in his course, the +slight leaning of his body toward hers as they went, his stride and the +set of his head proclaimed that he had got her, that she couldn't +escape, that he meant to go it, that he had the right to spend on her +more than he could possibly afford. + +She could see what he was thinking. In one tremendous burst he was going +to make up to her now for all that she had missed. What was more, he was +going to rub it into her that he had the right to. She couldn't realize +their happiness as he did. They had been cheated out of it so long that +she couldn't believe in it, couldn't believe that it was actually in +their grasp, the shining, palpitating joy that for five years had been +dangled before them only to be jerked out of their hands. He wanted to +make her feel it; to make her taste and touch and handle the thing that +seemed impossible and yet was certain. + +Ranny was intoxicated, he was reckless with certainty. + +And Winny couldn't bear it. All the way up between the painted walls she +was trying to think what she could do to prevent his spending a whole +sovereign. She knew that it was no use fighting Ranny. The more she hung +on to him to stop him, the more Ranny would struggle and break loose. +Persuasion was no good. The more she reasoned, the more determined he +would be to spend that sovereign, and the more ways he would find to +spend it. + +It was to be one of those mortal combats between man's will and woman's +wit. Winny meant to circumvent Ranny and to defeat him by guile. + +And at first it looked as if it could be done easily. For at first the +Exhibition seemed to be on Winny's side. + +They had emerged from between the painted walls into Shakespeare's +England, into the narrow, crooked streets under the queer old +overhanging houses with the swinging signs--hundreds of years old Ranny +said they were. And in the streets there were strange crowds, young men +and young women who went shouting and singing and were marvelously and +fantastically dressed. And they had glimpses through lattice windows of +marvelous and fantastic merchandise. Marvelous and fantastic it seemed +to Winny at first sight. But when she saw that it was just what they +were selling in the shops to-day the delicious confusion in her mind +heightened the effect of fantasy and of enchantment. + +"I didn't think it would be like this," she said. + +But why it was like that and why it was called Shakespeare's England, +what on earth Shakespeare had to do with it, Winny couldn't think. + +"Shakespeare? Why, he wrote books, didn't he?" + +"Plays, Winky, plays." + +"Plays then." + +And when Ranny told her that it meant that England was like this in +Shakespeare's time, hundreds of years ago, and reminded her that they +had a scene from one of his plays on at the Coliseum the other day, +Winny thought that only made it more marvelous and more like a dream +than ever. + +And she thought Ranny was more marvelous than ever, with the things he +knew. + +And then, having lured him into this tangled side issue, she began, as +cool and offhand as you please. He gave her the opening when he asked +her what she'd like to do next. + +"This is good enough for me," she said. + +For the most marvelous thing about Shakespeare's England was that you +could walk about in it free of charge. + +He looked at her almost as if he knew what she was up to. + +"But you've seen it, Winky. You've seen all there is of it. You don't +want to stay here all night, do you?" + +He had her there, with his reminder of the hours they had to put in. + +"Well"--she was lingering in the most natural manner, as if fascinated +by the exterior of the Globe Theater. For she wished to spin out the +time. + +She saw Ranny's hand sliding toward his pocket. + +"Would you like to go inside it?" he said. + +"No, Ranny, dear, I wouldn't. At least, I'd rather not if you've no +objection." + +She spoke firmly, seriously, as if she knew something against the Globe +Theater, as if the Globe Theater were disreputable or improper. + +Then (it was wonderful how she contrived the little air of excited +inspiration), "Tell you what," she said, "let's go and sit down +somewhere and listen to the band. There's nothing I love so much as +listening to a band." + +She knew that they charged nothing for listening to the band. + +It was a prompting from the Exhibition itself, proving, here again, that +it was on her side, an entirely friendly and benignant power. + +"All right," said Ranny. "_That's_ in the Western Garden." + +He took her by the arm and drew her, not to the Western Garden, but to a +street (he seemed to know it by instinct) through which Shakespeare's +England, iniquitously, treacherously, led them to their doom, the Water +Chute. + +For there the Exhibition threw off her mask and revealed herself as the +dangerous Enchantress that she was. Hung with millions of electric +bulbs, crowned and diademed, and laced with jewels of white flame, she +signaled to them out of the mystery and immensity of the night. For a +moment they were dumb, they stood still, as if they paused on the brink +and struggled, protesting against this ravishing of their souls by the +Exhibition. Straight in front of them, monstrous yet fragile, its +substance withdrawn into the darkness, its form outlined delicately in +beads of light, in brilliants, in crystals strung on invisible threads, +the Water Chute reared itself like a stairway to the sky, arch above +arch, peak above peak, diadem above diadem, tilted at a frightful pitch. +Chains of light, slung like garlands from tall standards, ringed the +long lake that stretched from their feet to the bottom of the stair. The +water, dark as the sky, showed mystic and enchanted, bordered with +trembling reeds of light. + +From somewhere up in the sky, under the topmost diamonded arch, there +came a rumbling and a rushing-- + +It thrilled them, agitated them. + +And their youth rose up in them. They looked at each other, and their +eyes, the eyes of their youth, shone with the same excitement and the +same desire. + +She knew that he had deceived her, that this was not the Western Garden, +where the band played; she was aware that the Exhibition was not to be +trusted either; that it was in league with him against her; that if she +yielded to it they were lost. And yet she yielded. The deep and high +enchantment was upon her. The Exhibition had her by the hair. She was +borne on, breathless, unprotesting, to the white palings where the +paygate was. + +It was worth it. She had to own it. Never before had either of them +tasted such ecstasy; from the precipitous climb in the truck that hauled +them, up and up, to the head of the high diamonded stair; the brief, +exciting passage along the gangway to the boat that waited for them, its +prow positively overhanging the topmost edge, the sliding lip of danger, +where the rails plunged shining to the blackness below; the race they +had for the front seat where, Ranny said, they would get the best of it; +and then--the downrush! + +It was as if they had been shot, exulting, from the sky to the water, +sitting close, sitting tight, linked together, each with an arm round +the other's waist, and the hand that was free grasping the rail, their +bodies bowed to the hurricane of their speed, with the rapture in their +throats mounting and mounting, a towering, toppling climax of delight +and fear, as the boat shot from the rails into the water and rose like +a winged thing and leaped, urging to the heights that had sent it forth, +and dropped, perilously again, with a shudder and a smack, once, twice; +so tremendous was the impetus. + +They heard young girls behind them scream for joy; but they were dumb, +they were motionless; they drank rapture through set teeth; it went +throbbing through them and thrilling, prolonging its brief life in +exquisite reverberations. + +And as if that wasn't enough, they went and did it all over again. + +And Winny struggled; she tried to hold him back; she put forth all her +innocent guile; she pitted her fragile charm against the stupendous +magic of the Exhibition. She loitered, spellbound to all appearance, in +the bazaar, before the streaming, shining booths that poured out their +strange merchandise, Italian, French, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese. + +"I don't want to do anything but walk about and look at things," she +said. "Why, we might have traveled for years and not seen as much." + +Winny seemed to be scoring points in the bazaar. + +Then, before she knew where she was, Ranny, with all the power of the +Exhibition at his back, had bought her a present, a little heart-shaped +brooch made of Florentine turquoises. + +That came of looking at things. She might have known it would. + +"I'm tired of these shops," said Winny. "We shall be too late to hear +anything of the band." + +Thus she drew him to the Western Garden, so that for the moment she +seemed to have it all in her own hands. For here there were more +lights, and even more extravagant and fantastic display of electric +jewelry, more garlands of diamond and crystal, illuminating, decorating +everything. And there were rubies hanging in strange trees, and at their +feet the glamour of light dissolved, half of it perished, gone from the +world, drunk up by the earth, half living on where gray walks wound like +paths in a dream, between rings of spectral green, islands of dimmed, +mysterious red, so transformed, so unclothed and clothed again by +glamour, as to be hardly discernible as beds of geraniums in grass. + +Here they wandered for what seemed an eternity of bliss. + +"What more do you want?" said Winny. "Isn't this beautiful enough for +anybody?" Neither of them had any idea that the beauty and the glamour +of it was in their own souls as they drank each other's mystery. + +"Let's just sit and listen to the band," she said. And they sat and +listened to it for another eternity, till Ranny became restless. For +thirteen and eleven pence halfpenny was burning in his pocket. + +The thought of it made him take her to a restaurant where they sat for +quite a long time and drank coffee and ate ices. Winny submitted to the +ices. They were delicious, and she enjoyed them without a shadow of +misgiving. She was, in fact, triumphant, for she looked on ices as the +close and crown of everything, and she calculated that out of that +sovereign there would be exactly eleven and twopence halfpenny left. + +"Well--it's been lovely. And now we must go home," she said. + +"Go home? Not much. Why, we've only just begun." He looked at her. +"D'you suppose I don't know what _you're_ up to? You're jolly clever, +but you can't take _me_ in, Winky. Not for a single minute." + +"Well, then, Ranny, let me pay for _something_." And she took out her +little purse. + +After that it was sheer headlong, shameful defeat for Winky. He had +found her out, he had seen through her man[oe]uvers, and he and the +Exhibition, the destructive and terrible Enchantress, had been laughing +at her all the time. A delirious devil had entered into Ranny with the +coffee and the ices, urging him to spend. And Winny ceased to struggle. +He knew at what point she would yield, he knew what temptations would be +irresistible. He got round her with the Alpine Ride; the Joy Wheel +fairly undermined her moral being; and on the Crazy Bridge Ranny's +delirious devil seized her and carried her away, reckless, into the +Dragon's Gorge. + +Emerging as it were from the very jaws of the Dragon, they careered arm +in arm through the rest of the Exhibition, two rushing portents of youth +and extravagance and laughter; till, as if the Enchantress had twisted +her wand and whisked them there, they found themselves inside the +palisades of the Igorrote Village. + +A swarm of half-naked savages leaped at them. + +It was Ranny who recovered first. + +"It's all right, Winky. They're the Philippine Islanders." + +"Well, I never--" + +"Nor I. Talk of travelin'--" + +But it was all very well to talk. The sight had sobered them. Gravely +and silently they went through that village. At last, Ranny paused +outside a hut no bigger than a dog-kennel. It bore the label: "Beda And +His Fiancee Kodpat Undergoing Trial Marriage." + +Ranny laughed. "By Jove, that tickles _me_!" he said. + +"What does it mean, Ranny?" + +"Why, I suppose it means they try it first and if they don't like it +they can chuck it." + +"What an idea!" + +"It's a rippin' good idea, Winky. Shows what a thunderin' lot of sense +these simple savages have got. You bet they're not quite so simple as +they seem. They know a thing or two. Why, they must be hundreds of years +ahead of us in civilization, to have thought it all out like that. Think +of it, that fellow Beda's had a better chance than me." + +They turned away from Beda and Kodpat, and presently Winny stood +entranced before the little house that contained Baby Francis (born in +the Exhibition) and his mother. She looked so long at Baby Francis that +Ranny couldn't bear it. + +"Oh, look at him, Ranny! Isn't he a little lamb?" Winny's eyes were +tender, and her face quivered with a little dreamy smile. + +"D'you want to take him home and play with him? Shall I ask if he's for +sale?" + +"Oh, Ranny!" + +She turned away. And he drew her arm in his. "You won't be happy till +you've got him, Winky." + +She said nothing to that; only her mouth, without her knowing it, kept +for him its little dreamy smile. + +"I believe," said Ranny, "you've never reelly got over Stanley's goin' +into knickers." + +"I _love_ his knickers," she protested. + +"Yes, but you'd love _him_ better if he was that size, wouldn't you?" + +"I couldn't love him better than I do, Ranny. You know I couldn't. And I +wouldn't like him to be any different to what he is." + +She was very serious, very earnest, almost as if she thought he'd really +meant it. + +Silent in the grip of an emotion too thick and close for utterance, they +wandered back again to the enchanted garden where the band had played +for them. The garden was silent, too. The bandstand was empty, black, +unearthly as if haunted by some thin ghost of passionate sound; and +empty, row after row of seats in the great parterre, except for a few +couples who sat leaning to each other, hand in hand, finding a happy +solitude in that twilight desolation. + +Like worshipers strayed into some church, they joined this enraptured, +oblivious company of devotees, choosing seats as far as possible from +any other pair. + + * * * * * + +"Hadn't we better be going?" + +They had sat there in silence, holding each other's hands. The +excitement, the delirious devil in them, had spent itself, and under it +they felt the heaving, dragging groundswell of their passion. + +To Winny it had never come before like this. Up till now it had been +enough simply to be with Ranny. Merely to look at him gave her profound +and poignant pleasure. To touch him in those rare accidental contacts +the adventure brought them, to feel the firm muscles of his arm under +his coat sleeve, stopped her breath with a kind of awe and wonder, as if +in Ranny's body thus discerned she came unaware upon some transcendent +mystery. + +Yet Winny knew now why, in what way, and with what terrible strength she +loved him and he her. She loved him, primarily and supremely, for +himself, for the simple fact that he was Ranny. She loved him also for +his body, for his slenderness, and for his strong-clipping limbs, and +she loved him for his face because it could not by any possibility be +anybody else's. + +And in her joy and tenderness, in their engagement and in the whole +adventure, this going out with him and all the rare, shy contacts it +occasioned, instalments of delight, windfalls of bliss that Heaven sent +her to be going on with, in the very secrecy and mystery of it all, +Winny felt that disturbing yet delicious sense of something iniquitous, +something perilous, something, at any rate, unlawful. It was the same +sense that she had known and enjoyed in the days when she went into the +scullery at Granville to make beefsteak pies for Ranny; the same sense, +but far more exquisite, far more exciting. + +She did not connect it in any way with Violet. Violet had ceased to +exist for them. Violet had of her own act annihilated herself. But Winny +knew that until Ranny was divorced from his wife the law continued to +regard him as married to her. So that, while firm land held and would +always hold her, she was aware that he and she were walking on the +brink, and that by the rule of the road Ranny went, so to speak, upon +the outer edge where it was far more dangerous. She knew that he had +more than once looked over; and she knew (though nothing would induce +_her_ to look) that the gulf was there, not far from her adventurous +feet. + +Still, it was wonderful how all these years they had kept their heads. + +So she said: "Hadn't we better be going? I think we ought to." + +She had unlaced her hand from his, and had turned in her seat to face +him with her decision. + +"Not yet." + +"Well--soon. It's getting rather chilly, don't you think?" + +At that he jumped up. "Are you cold, Winky?" + +"My feet are, sitting." + +"I forgot your little feet." + +He raised her. + +"It isn't late," he said. "We can walk about a bit." + +They walked about, for he was very restless again. + +"Wherever does that music come from?" Winny said. + +Sounds came to them of violins and 'cellos, of trombones and clarinets, +playing a gay measure, a dance, insistent, luring, irresistible. + +They followed it. + +In a vast room fronted by a latticed screen, all green and white, roofed +by a green and white awning, and having a pattern of latticework, green +and white, upon its inner walls, on a vast polished floor was a crowd of +couples dancing to the music they had heard. It came loud through the +open lattices, the insistent, luring, irresistible measure, violent now +in solicitation, in appeal; and over it and under went the trailing, +shuffling slur of the feet of the dancers and the delicate swish of +women's gowns as they whirled. + +Standing close outside, they could see into the hall through the +lattices of the screen. They saw forty or fifty couples whirling slowly +round and round to the irresistible measure; some were stiff and +awkward, palpably shy; some with invincible propriety whirled upright +and rigid, like toys wound up to whirl; some were abandoned to the +measure with madness, with passion, with a corybantic joy. Here and +there a girl leaned as if swooning in her lover's arms; her head hung +back; her lower lip drooped; her face showed the looseness and blankness +of a sensuous stupor. Other faces, staring, upraised, wore a look of +exaltation and of ecstasy. All were superbly unaware. + +Winny's face pressed closer and closer to the lattice. One of her little +feet went tap-tapping on the gravel, beating the measure of the waltz. +For at the sound of the music, at the sight of the locked and whirling +couples, her memory revived; she heard again the beating of the measure +old as time; she felt in her limbs the start and strain of the wild +energy; and instinct, savage and shy, moved in the rhythm of her blood, +and desire for the joy of the swift running, of the lacing arms and +flying feet. + +In her body she was standing outside the Dancing Saloon at the Earl's +Court Exhibition, with her face pressed to the lattice; she was +twenty-seven last birthday in her body; but in her soul she was +seventeen, and she stood on the floor of the Polytechnic Gymnasium, +beating time to the thud of the barbell. She was Winny of the short +tunic and the knickers, and the long black stockings, and had her hair +(tied by a great bow of ribbon) in a door-knocker plat. + +"Oh, Ranny--" She looked at him with her shining eyes, half tender and +half wild. "If we only _could_--" + +Something gave way in him and dissolved, and he was weak as water when +he looked at her. + +The violins gave forth a penetrating, excruciating cry. And he felt in +him the tumult evoked, long ago, one Sunday evening by the music in the +Mission Church of St. Matthias's. + +Only he knew now what it meant. + +His voice went thick in his throat. + +"I mustn't, Winky. I daren't. Some day--you and I--" + +It was the supreme temptation of the great Enchantress; and they fled +from it. The violins shrieked out and cried their yearning as they went. + + * * * * * + +A scud of rain lashed the carriage windows as their train shot out of +the Underground at Walham Green. When they stepped out onto the platform +at Southfields, the big drops leaped up at them. + +"Well, I never," said Winny. "Who'd have thought it would have done +that?" + +They scuttled into shelter. + +"It'll be a score for Mother. She said it would come, and I said it +wouldn't." + +"It'll ruin your new suit." + +"And there won't be much left of your dress." + +"My dress'll iron out again. It's me poor hat." + +(The Peggy hat was not made for rain.) + +"I'll take it off and pin it up in me skirt. It's you I'm thinking of." + +She felt his coat to see what resistance it would offer to the rain. It +offered none. It made no pretense about it. + +"It'll be soaked, and it 'll never be the same again," she wailed. + +But Ranny remained godlike in his calm. There was still one and sixpence +of his sovereign left. + +"You can keep your hat on. We're going to take a cab." + +If he had said he was going to take an aeroplane she couldn't have been +more amazed. It was only seven minutes' walk to Acacia Avenue. And it +was not a common cab, it was Parker's fly that he was taking. + +She surrendered because of the new suit. + +"I can count the times I've ridden in a cab," she said. "This is the +third. First time it was going to Father's funeral. Second time it was +poor Mother's funeral. I've never been happy in a cab till now." + +"Poor little girl! Next time it'll be coming from our wedding. Will you +be happy then?" + +"I'm so happy now, Ranny, that I can't believe it." + +"It'll only be six months, or seven at the outside." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Certain." + +The worst of the cab was that it cut short their moments. + +It had been standing a whole minute before Johnson's side door. He sent +it away. + +For fifteen seconds, measured by hammer strokes of their hearts, they +were alone. On the streaming doorstep, under the dripping eaves, he held +her. He kissed her sweet face all wet with rain. + +"Little Winky--little darling Winky." He pushed back her Peggy hat, and +his voice lost itself in her hair. + +"They're coming," she whispered. + +There was a sound of footsteps and of a bolt drawn back. Somebody behind +the door opened it just wide enough to let Winny through, then shut it +on him. + +It was intolerable, unthinkable, that she should disappear like that. +Through a foot of space, in a hair's breadth of time, she had slipped +from him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +Nobody had seen them, for at this hour Acacia Avenue was deserted. The +long monotonous pattern of it stretched before him, splendidly blurred, +rich with lamplight and rain, bordered with streaming stars, striped +with watered light and darkness, glowing, from lamp to lamp, with dim +reds and purples that the daylight never sees, and with the strange +gas-lit green of its tree tufts shivering under the rain. + +Otherwise the Avenue was depressing in its desolation. The more so +because it was not quite deserted. At the far end of it the lamplight +showed a woman's figure, indistinct and diminished. This figure, visibly +unsheltered, moved obliquely as if it were driven by the slanting rain +and shrank from its whipping. + +He could not tell whether it were approaching or going from him. It +seemed somehow to recede, to have got almost to the end of the road, +past all the turnings; in which case, he reflected, the poor thing could +not be far from her own door. + +There was no mistaking his. Among all those monotonous diminutive houses +it was distinct because of its lamp-post and its luxuriantly tufted +tree. The gas was still turned on in the passage, so that above the door +the white letters of its name, Granville, could be seen. There was no +other light in the windows. Entering, he closed the door noiselessly, +locked it, slipped the chain, and turned the gas out in the passage. The +lamplight from outside came in a turbid dusk through the thick glass of +the front door. A small bead of gas made twilight in the sitting-room at +the back. + +The house was very still. + +His mother had evidently gone to bed; but she had left a fire burning in +the sitting-room, and she had set a kettle all ready for boiling on the +gas ring, and on the table a cup and saucer, a tin of cocoa, and a plate +of bread and cheese. + +He turned up the gas, put the tin of cocoa back into its cupboard, and +carried the bread and cheese to the larder in the scullery. He tried the +back door to make sure that it was locked, and paused for a moment on +the mat. He was thinking whether he had better not undress in there by +the fire and spread his damp things round the hearth to dry. + +And as he stood there at the end of the passage he was aware of +something odd about the window of the front door. Properly speaking, +when the passage was dark, the window should have shown clear against +the light of the lamp outside, with its broad framework marking upon +this transparency the four arms of a cross. Now it showed a darkness, a +queer shadowy patch on the pane under the left arm of the cross. + +The patch moved sideways to and fro along the lower panes; then suddenly +it rose, it shot up and broadened out, darkening half the window, its +form indiscernible under the covering cross. + +And as it stood still there came a light tapping on the pane. He thought +that it was Winny, that she had run after him with some message, or +that perhaps somebody else had run to tell him that something was +wrong. + +He went to the door; and as he went the tapping began again, louder, +faster, a nervous, desperate appeal. + +He opened the door, and the lamplight showed them to each other. + +"Good God!" He muttered it. "What are you doing here?" + +It was his instinct, not his eyes that knew her. + +She had not come forward as the door opened; she had swerved and stepped +back rather, gripping her skirts tighter round her as she cowered. +Sleeked by the rain, supple, sinuous, and shivering, she cowered like a +beaten bitch. + +Yet she faced him. Shrinking from him, cowering like a bitch, backing to +the edge of the porch where the rain beat her, she faced him for a +moment. + +Then she crept to him cowering; and as she cowered, her hands, as if in +helplessness and fear, let fall the skirts they had gathered from the +rain. Her eyes, as she came, gazed strangely at him; eyes that cowered, +bitchlike, imploring, agonized, desirous. + +She crept to the very threshold. + +"Let me in," she said. "You will, won't you?" + +"I can't," he whispered. "You know that as well as I do." + +Her eyes looked up sideways from their cowering. They were surprised, +bewildered, incredulous. + +"But I'm soaked through. I'm wet to me skin." + +She was on the threshold. She had her hand to the door. + +He could see her leaning forward a little, ready to fling her body upon +the door if he tried, brutally, to shut it in her face. It was as if +she actually thought that he would try. + +He knew then that he was not going to shut the door. + +"Come in out of the rain. And for God's sake don't make a noise." + +"I'm not making a noise. I didn't even ring the bell." + +He drew back before her as she came in, creeping softly in a pitiful +submission. Though the passage was lighted from the street through the +wide-open door, she went as if feeling her way along it, with a hand on +the wall. + +Ransome turned. He had no desire to look at her. + +He struck a match and lit the gas, raised it to the full flame, and +then, though he had no desire to look at her, he looked. He stared +rather. + +Outside in the half darkness he had known her, as if she stirred in him +some sense, subtler or grosser than mere sight. Now, in the full light +of the hanging lamp, he did not know her. He might have passed her in +the street a score of times without recognizing this woman who had been +his wife; though he would have stared at her, as indeed he would have +been bound to stare. It was not only that her body was different, that +her figure was taller, slenderer, and more sinuous than he had ever seen +it, or that her face was different, fined down to the last expression of +its beauty, changed, physically, with a difference that seemed to him +absolute and supreme. It was that this strange dissimilarity, if he +could have analyzed it, would have struck him as amounting to a +difference of soul. Or rather, it was as if Violet's face had never +given up her soul's secret until now; never until now had it so much as +hinted that Violet had any soul at all. The comparative fineness and +sharpness of outline might have reminded him of his wife as she had +looked when she came out of her torture after the birth of her first +child, but that no implacable resentment and no revolt was there. It was +plainly to be seen (nor did Ransome altogether miss it) that here were a +body and a soul that had suffered to extremity, and were now utterly +beaten, utterly submissive. + +This suggestion of frightful things endured was more lamentable by +contrast with the shining sleekness, the drenched splendor of her +attire. Ransome saw that her clothes helped to build up the impression +of her strangeness. Violet was dressed as his wife, at the most frenzied +height of her extravagance, had never dressed, as even Mercier's wife +could not have dressed, nor yet his mistress. The black satin coat and +gown that clung to her body like a sheath showed flawless, though they +streamed with rain; the lace at her throat, the black velvet hat with +the raking plume that had once been yellow, the design and quality of +the flat bag slung on her arm were details that belonged (and Ransome +knew it) to a world that was not his nor Mercier's either. And as he +took them in he conceived from them an abominable suspicion. + +His eyes must have conveyed his repulsion, for she spoke as if answering +them. + +"You mustn't mind my clothes. They're done for." + +She looked down, self-pitying, at her poor slippered feet standing in a +pool of rain. + +"I'm making such a mess of your nice hall." + +A little laugh shook in her throat and turned into a fit of coughing. He +saw how instantly one hand went to her mouth and pressed there while the +other struggled blindly, frantically, with the opening of her bag. + +"What is it?" + +"My hanky--" She coughed the words out. It, the childish word, moved him +to a momentary compassion. + +"Here you are." + +She stepped back from him as she stretched out her arm; then she turned +and leaned against the wall, hiding her face and muffling her cough in +Ransome's pocket handkerchief. + +Each gesture, each surreptitious and yet frantic effort at suppression, +showed her a creature that some brute had beaten, had terrified and +cowed. The old Violet would have come swinging up the path; she would +have pushed past him into the warm and lighted room; this one had come +creeping to his door. She took no step to which he did not himself +invite her. + +"Come in here a minute," he said. + +He put his hand upon her arm to guide her. He led her into the warm room +and drew up a chair for her before the fire. + +"Sit down and get warm." + +She shook her head; and by that sign he conceived the hope that she +would soon be gone. She looked after him as he went to the door of the +room to close it. When she heard the click of the latch her cough burst +out violently and ceased. + +She crouched down by the hearth, holding out her hands to the blaze. He +stood against the chimney-piece, looking down at her, silent, not +knowing what he might be required to say. + +She peeled off the wet gloves that were plastered to her skin; she drew +out the long pins from her hat, took it off, and gazed ruefully at the +lean plume lashed to its raking stem. With the coquetry of pathos, she +held it out to him. + +"Look at me poor feather, Ranny," she said. + +He shuddered as she spoke his name. + +"You'd better take your shoes off, and that coat," he said. + +She took them off. He set the shoes in the fender. He hung the coat over +the back of the chair to dry. As she stood upright the damp streamed +from her skirts and drifted toward the fire. + +"How about that skirt?" + +"I could slip it off, and me stockings, too, if you didn't mind." + +"All right," he muttered, and turned from her. He could hear the +delicate silken swish of her draperies as they slid from her to the +floor. + +She was slenderer than ever in the short satin petticoat that was her +inner sheath. Her naked feet, spread to the floor, showed white but +unshapely. She stood there like some beautiful flower rising superbly +from two ugly, livid, and distorted roots. + +But neither her beauty nor her ugliness could touch him now. + +"Look here," he said, "I'll get you some dry things." + +His mind was dulled by the shock of seeing her, so that it was unable to +attach any real importance or significance to her return. He knew her to +be both callous and capricious; therefore, he told himself that there +was no need to take her seriously now. The thing was to get rid of her +as soon as possible. He smothered the instinct that had warned him of +his danger, and persuaded himself that dry things would meet the +triviality of her case. + +He went upstairs very softly to his room. In a jar on the chimney-piece +he found a small key. Still going softly, he let himself into the little +unfurnished room over the porch where boxes were stored. Among them was +the trunk which contained Violet's long-abandoned clothes. He unlocked +it, rummaged, deliberated, selected finally a serge skirt, draggled but +warm; a pair of woolen stockings, and shoes, stout for all their +shabbiness. + +And as he knelt over the trunk his mind cleared suddenly, and he knew +what he was going to do. He was going to fetch a cab, if he could get +one, and take her away in it. If she was staying in London he would take +her straight back to whatever place she had come from. If she came from +a distance he would see her started on her journey home. He was +prepared, if necessary, to hang about for hours in any station, waiting +for any train that would remove her. If the worst came to the worst he +would take a room for her in some hotel and leave her there. But he +would not have her sitting with him till past midnight in his house. It +was too risky. He knew what he was about. He knew that there was danger +in any course that could give rise to the suspicion of cohabitation. He +knew, not only that cohabitation in itself was fatal, but that the +injured husband who invoked the law must refrain from the very +appearance of that evil. + +Of course, he knew what Violet had come for. She was beginning to get +uneasy about her divorce. And, personally, he couldn't see where the +risk came in unless the suit was defended. And it wasn't going to be +defended. It couldn't be. The suspicion of collusion would in his case +be a far more dangerous thing. It was what he had been specially warned +against. + +These two ideas, collusion and cohabitation, struggled for supremacy in +Ranny's brain. They seemed to him mutually exclusive; and all it came to +was that, with his suit so imminent, he couldn't be too careful. He must +not, even for the sake of decency, show Violet any consideration that +would be prejudicial to his case. + +Whereupon it struck him that the most perilous, most embarrassing detail +of the situation was the disgusting accident of the weather. In common +decency he couldn't have turned her out of doors in that rain. + +And under all the confused working of his intelligence his instinct told +him that what happened was not an accident at all. His inmost prescience +hinted at foredoomed, irremediable suffering; profound, irreparable +disaster. + + * * * * * + +But with his mind set upon its purpose he gathered up the shabby skirt, +the stockings, and the shoes, he took his own thick overcoat from its +peg in the passage; he warmed them well before the sitting-room fire. + +Violet watched him with an air of detachment, of innocent +incomprehension, as if these preparations in no way concerned herself. +She was sitting in the chair now, with her bare feet in the fender. + +He then put the kettle on the fire, and her eyes kindled and looked up +at him. + +"What are you going to do?" she asked. + +"I'm going to make you a cup of hot tea before you go." + +"I _can't_ go," she whispered. + +He was firm. + +"I'm awfully sorry, Violet. But you've got to." + +"But, Ranny--you couldn't turn a cat out on a night like this." + +"Don't talk nonsense about turning out. You know you can't stay here. I +can't think what on earth possessed you to come. You haven't told me +yet." + +She did not tell him now. She did not look at him. She sat bowed +forward, her elbows on her knees, and her chin propped on her hands, +while she cried, quietly, with slow tears that rolled down her bare, +undefended face. + +He made the tea and poured it out for her, and she took the cup from him +and drank, without looking at him, without speaking. And still she cried +quietly. Now and then a soft sob came from her in the pauses of her +drinking. + +Ransome sat on the table and delivered himself of what he had to say. + +"I don't know what's upsetting you," he said. "And you don't seem +inclined to tell me. But if you're worrying about that divorce, you +needn't. You'll get it all right. The--the thing'll be sent you in a +week or a fortnight." + +"Ranny," she said, "are you really doin' it?" + +"Of course I'm doing it." + +"I didn't know." + +"Well--you might have known." + +He was deaf to the terror in her voice. + +"I'd have done it years ago if I'd had the money. It isn't my fault +we've had to wait for it. It was hard luck on both of us." + +He stopped to look at her, still, like some sick animal, meekly +drinking, and still crying. + +He waited till her cup was empty and took it from her. + +"More?" + +"No, thank you." + +He put down the cup, turned, and went toward the door. There was a +savage misery in his heart and in all his movements an awful gentleness. + +She started up. + +"Don't go, Ranny. Don't leave me." + +Her voice was dreadful to his instinct. + +"I must." + +"You're going to do something. What are you going to do?" + +"I'm going to leave you to change into those things. I'm going to look +for a cab, and I'm going to take you back to wherever you came from." + +"You don't know where I came from. You don't know why I've come." + +There was the throb of all disaster in her voice. His instinct heard it. +But his intelligence refused to hear. It went on reasoning with her who +was unreasonable. + +"I don't know," it said, "why you want to stick here. It won't do either +of us any good." + +"Has it began?" she said. "Can't anything stop it?" + +"Yes. You can stop it if you stay here all night. If you want it to go +right you must keep away. It's madness your coming here at this time of +night. I can't think why you--I should have thought you'd have known--" + +"Oh, Ranny, don't be hard on me." + +"I'm not hard on you. You're hard on yourself. You want a divorce and I +want it. Don't you know we sha'n't get it--if--" + +"But I _don't_ want it--I don't indeed." + +"What's that?" + +"I don't want it. I didn't know you were divorcing me. I never thought +you'd go and do it after all these years." + +"Rot! You knew I was going to do it the minute I had the money." + +"You don't understand. I've come to ask you if you'll forgive me--and +take me back." + +"I forgave you long ago. But I can't take you back. You know _that_ well +enough." + +She made as if she had not heard him. + +"I'll be good, Ranny. I _want_ to be good." + +He also made as if he had not heard. + +"Why do you want me to take you back?" + +"That's why. So as I can be good. Father's turned me out, Ranny." + +"Your father?" + +"I went to him first. I didn't think I'd any right to come to you--after +I'd served you like I did." + +"Oh, never mind how you served me. What's Mercier been doing?" + +"He's got married." + +"Just like him. I thought he was going to marry _you_?" + +"He wouldn't wait for me. He couldn't. He thought you were never going +to get your divorce. He _had_ to settle down so as to get on in his +business. He wanted a Frenchwoman who could help him, and he daren't so +much as look at me--after, for fear she'd divorce him." + +"I told you he was a swine." + +"He wasn't. It wasn't _his_ fault. He'd have married me two years ago if +you could have divorced me then." + +Her mouth was loose to the passage of her sigh, as if for a moment she +felt a sensuous pleasure in her own self-pity. She did not see how his +mouth tightened to the torture as she turned the screw. + +She went on. "Lenny was all right. He was good to me as long as I was +with him. _He_ wouldn't have turned me into the street to starve." + +"Who _has_ turned you into the street?" He could not disguise his +exasperation. + +Then he remembered. "Oh--your father." + +"I don't mean Father. I mean the other one." + +"There _was_ another one? And you expect me to take you back?" + +"I'm only _asking_ you," she said. "Don't be so hard on me. I _had_ to +have some one when Lenny left me. He's been the only one since Lenny. +And he was all right until he tired of me." + +"Who's the brute you're talking about?" + +"He's a gentleman. That's all I can tell you." + +"Sounds pretty high class. And where does this gentleman hang out?" + +"I oughtn't to tell you. He's a painter, and he's awfully well known. +Well--it's somewhere in the West End, and we had a flat in Bloomsbury." + +She answered his wonder. "I met him in Paris. He took me away from +there, and I've been with him all the time. There wasn't anybody else. I +swear there wasn't--I swear." + +"Oh, you needn't." + +He got up and walked away. + +"Ranny--don't go for the cab until I've told you everything." + +"I'm _not_ going. What more have you got to say?" + +"Don't look at me like that, as if you could murder me. You wouldn't if +you knew how he's served me. He beat me, Ranny. He beat me with his +hands and with his stick." + +She rolled up the sleeves of her thin blouse. + +"Look here--and here. That's what he was always doing to me. And I've +got worse--bigger ones--on me breast and on me body." + +"Good God--" The words came from him under his breath, and not even his +instinct knew what he would say next. + +He said--or rather some unknown power took hold of him and said it--"Why +didn't you come to me before?" + +She hesitated. + +"He never turned me out until last night." + +Her pause gave him time to measure the significance of what she said. + +"He didn't really tire of me till I got ill. I had pneumonia last +spring. I nearly died of it, and I've not been right since. That's how I +got me cough. He couldn't stand it." + +She paused. + +"I ought to have gone when he told me to. But I didn't. I was awfully +gone on him. + +"And--last night--we were to have gone to the theater together; but he'd +been drinkin' and I said I wouldn't go with him. Then he swore at me and +struck me, and said I might go by myself. And I went. And when I came +home he shut the door on me and turned me into the street with nothing +but the clothes on me back and what I had in me purse. And he said if I +came back he'd do for me." + +She got it out, the abominable history, in a succession of jerks, in a +voice dulled to utter apathy. + +And an intolerable pity held him silent before this beaten thing, +although with every word she dragged him nearer to the ultimate, +foreseen disaster. + +She went on. + +"I was scared to walk about the streets all night in these things. I +always was more afraid of that than anything. Though _he_ never would +believe me when I said so. You don't know the names he called me. So I +took a taxi and I went to the first hotel I could think of--the +Thackeray. But I hadn't enough money with me, and they wouldn't take me +in. Then I went and sat in the waiting-room at Euston Station till they +closed. Then I sat outside on the platform and pretended to be waitin' +for a train. _He_ wouldn't believe me if I told him I'd spent the night +in that station. But I did. And I got me death of cold. And in the +morning me cough started, and they wouldn't take me in any of the shops +because of it. + +"I tried all morning. Starker's first. Then in the afternoon I went to +Father, and he wouldn't have me. He won't believe I haven't been bad, +because of me things and me cough. I suppose he thinks I've got +consumption or something. He saw me coming in at the gate and he turned +me out straight. I didn't even get to the door." + +"He couldn't--" + +"He did--reelly, Ranny, he did. He said he'd washed his hands of me and +I could go back to you. He said--No, I can't tell you what he said." + +There was no need to tell. He knew. + +She looked at him now, straight, for the first time. + +"Ranny--he knows. He knows what we did." + +"Did you tell him?" + +"Not me! He'd guessed it. He'd guessed it all the time. Trust _him_. And +he taxed me with it. And I lied. I wasn't goin' to have him thinkin' +_that_ of you." + +"Of _me_?" + +"Yes--_you_." It was her first flash of feeling since she began her +tale. "It doesn't matter what he thinks of me. I told him so." + +"Well? Then?" + +"Then I started lookin' for work again. Couldn't get any. Then I came +here. If you turn me out there'll be nothing but the streets. If I was +to get work nobody'll keep me. I haven't properly got over that illness. +I'm so weak I couldn't stand to do anything long. There are times when I +can hardly hold myself together." + +And still there was no feeling in her voice, and barely the suggestion +of appeal; only the flat tones of the last extremity. + +"I've come here because I'm afraid of going to the bad. I don't want to +be bad--not reelly bad. But I'll be driven to it if you turn me out." + +It might have been a threat she held out to him but that her voice +lacked the passion of all menace. Passion could not have served her +better than her dull, unvibrating statement of the fact. + +"If you won't take me back--" + +Her spent voice dropped dead on the last word and her cough broke out +again. + +Ransome's next movement averted it. She revived suddenly. + +"Ranny--are you going for that cab?" + +He turned. + +"No," he said. "You know I'm not." + +"Then, what are you thinking of?" + + * * * * * + +He was thinking: "I won't have Dossie and Stanny sleeping with her. And +I can't turn Mother out. So there's no room for her. Yes, there is. I +can get a camp bed and put it in the box room. I shall be all right in +there, and she can have my room to herself." + +No other arrangement seemed endurable or possible to him. + +And yet, while his flesh cried out in the agony of its repulsion, it +knew that in the years, the terrible, interminable years before them, it +could not be as he had planned. There would be a will stronger than his +own will that would not be frustrated. + +And he told himself that he could have borne it if it had not been for +that. + +There was a knocking at the door. The handle turned, and through the +slender opening which was all she dared make, Mrs. Ransome spoke to her +son. + +"Ranny, do you know you've left the front door open? Who's that +coughing?" she said. + +Neither of them answered. + +"Hasn't Winny gone yet? You shouldn't keep her out so late, dear. It's +time both of you were in bed." + +At that he rose and went to her. + + * * * * * + +Presently they could be heard moving Stanny's little cot into his +grandmother's room. + +That night Violet slept in Ransome's bed. + +Ransome lay on the sofa in the front sitting-room. He did not sleep, and +at dawn he got up and looked out. The rain had ceased. It was the +beginning of a perfect day. + +He remembered then that he had promised Winny to walk with her to +Wimbledon Common. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +"She's ill. Fair gone to pieces. But the doctor says she'll soon be all +right again if we take care of her." + +It was early evening of Sunday. They were going slowly up the steep hill +that winds, westward and southward, toward the heights of Wimbledon. + +He had just told her that Violet had come back. + +"I couldn't in common decency turn her out." + +In a long silence he struggled to find words for what he had to say +next. She saw him struggling and came to his help. + +"Ranny, you're going to take her back," she said. + +"What must you think of me?" + +"Think of you? I wouldn't have you different." The whole spirit of her +love for him was in those words. + +She continued. "You see, dear, it comes to the same thing. If you didn't +take her back I couldn't marry you, for it wouldn't be you. You'll have +to take her." + +"You talk as if I'd nobody but her to think of. Look what she's making +me do to you--" + +"I'm strong enough to bear it and she isn't. She'll go straight to the +bad if we don't look after her." + +"That's it. She said there was nothing but the streets for her." He +brooded. "If I was a rich man I could divorce her and give her an +allowance to live away. I can't stand it, Winny, when I think of you." + +"You needn't think of me, dear. It isn't as if I hadn't known." + +"How _could_ you know?" + +"I knew all the time she'd come back--some day." + +"Yes. But if Father hadn't died when he did we should have been safe +married. We missed it by a day. Mercier'd have married her two years +ago. If I'd had thirty pounds then it couldn't have happened. But I was +a damned fool. I should have thought of you _then_--I should have let +everything else go and married you." + +Slowly, drop by drop, he drank his misery. But she had savored sorrow so +far off that now that the cup was brought to her it had lost half its +bitterness. + +"You couldn't have done different, even then, dear. Don't worry about +me. It's not as if I hadn't been happy with you. I've had +you--reelly--Ranny, all these years." + +But the happiness that by way of comfort she held out to him was the +very dregs of Ranny's cup. + +"That's it," he said. "I don't know how it's going to be now. She's the +same, somehow, and yet different." + +It was his way of expressing the fact that Violet's suffering had given +her a soul, and that this soul, this subtler and more inscrutable +essence of her, would not necessarily be good. It might even be +malignant. Most certainly it would be hostile. It would come between +them. + +"It's a good thing the children'll be at school now--out of her way." + +"P'raps she's better--kinder, p'raps." + +"I don't know about that, Winny. I'm afraid. Anyhow, it'll never be the +same for you and me." + +He paused, and then seeing suddenly the full extent of their calamity, +he broke out. + +"What'll you _do_, Winny?" + +"I'll ask Mr. Randall if he'll take me on." + +"You won't stay here?" + +"No. Better not. I mustn't be too near, this time. That was the mistake +I made before. And you've got your mother." + +"And what have _you_ got?" he cried, fiercely. + +"I've got plenty--all I've ever had. These things don't go away, dear." + +They stood still, looking before them, with their unspoken misery in +their eyes. + +At their feet, down there, creeping low on the ground, spreading its +packed roofs for miles over the land that had once been green fields, +its red and purple smoldering and smoking in the autumn mist and sunset, +there lay the Paradise of Little Clerks. + +They turned and went slowly toward it down the hill. + +THE END + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Combined Maze, by May Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMBINED MAZE *** + +***** This file should be named 28461.txt or 28461.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/4/6/28461/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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