The Combined Maze Part 31

"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 pa.s.s. 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s. 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 embarra.s.sment; 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?"