The Combined Maze Part 65

"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 n.o.body'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 pa.s.sion of all menace. Pa.s.sion 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 x.x.xII

"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 n.o.body 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 d.a.m.ned 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."