The Combined Maze Part 35

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.

"Was.h.i.+ng 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sured him that she hadn't turned a hair. And after it she bloomed as she had never bloomed before; she bloomed to excess; she coa.r.s.ened 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sageway 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 sh.e.l.l, a mere framework for its golden incandescence.