The Combined Maze Part 56

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. n.o.body 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, G.o.d 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 G.o.d! 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. n.o.body 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.