A I 
 
 MAY SINCLAIR
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 [See p. 114 
 SHE CLOSED HER EYES, AND HIS HOLD TIGHTENED
 
 THE 
 
 COMBINED MAZE 
 
 BY 
 
 MAY SINCLAIR 
 
 AtTTHOR OF 
 
 "THE DIVINE FIRE- 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MACAULAY COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT 1613, BY HARPER ft BROTHERS
 
 V* 
 
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 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 Ran- 
 some, a little, middle-aged chemist, weedy, parched, 
 furtively inebriate, and his wife Emma, the daugh- 
 ter of John Randall, a draper. 
 
 They called him John Randall Fulleymore Ran- 
 some, and Ranny for short. 
 
 Ranny should have been born in lands of adven- 
 ture, 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, splen- 
 didly 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
 
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 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 disas- 
 trous 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 un- 
 accountable. 
 
 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 man- 
 ner of furniture. You would never have known, to 
 see him sitting there, that John Randall Fulley- 
 more Ransome was a leader in Section I of the Lon- 
 don 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 splen- 
 dor 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 as-
 
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 sociated them, absurdly but inveterately, with a 
 pharmaceutical chemist's occupation; of Weediness 
 his father being the prime example ; while for Flabbi- 
 ness, 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 im- 
 passioned 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 
 
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 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 saluta- 
 tions 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 develop- 
 ment 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, discern- 
 ing in him a fine original genius for adventure. 
 
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 For when Ranny's mother said he was that ven- 
 turesome, 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 con- 
 ceived 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. 
 
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 "The Poly.," said Booty, "really was a Club, 
 'where,' " he underlined it, " 'every reasonable fa- 
 cil'ty shall bee offered fer the formation of a stead- 
 fast 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 prepara- 
 tion 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 experi- 
 enced 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, 
 
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 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 abound- 
 ing 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 
 
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 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 at- 
 titude as eminently anti-social — uppish, he called it.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ALL that winter Ransome's nights and days were 
 i\ regulated in a perfect order — making state- 
 ments 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 re- 
 laxation after the violence of Rugger. One (Sun- 
 day) 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, indis- 
 tinguishably, 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 unintel- 
 ligible motif it ran ringing and sounding through the 
 vast rhythmic tumult of physical energy. 
 
 Not for a moment did he connect it with the increas- 
 ing interest that he took in the appearance of the 
 
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 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." 
 
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 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 wind- 
 ings 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 quan- 
 tities 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 moun- 
 tains; 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 
 
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 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 de- 
 liciously 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 her- 
 self 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 stock- 
 ings 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 admira- 
 tion 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 
 
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 was because of Maudie, and at Booty's irresistible re- 
 quest, 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 sy," 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 
 
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 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 £he 
 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 in- 
 evitability 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 reemarks 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 Poly- 
 technic, so terrible to Booty, and so palpable a sign 
 of his madness, he gave in. He said it was all right,
 
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 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, un- 
 catchable 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 sud- 
 denly addressed him. 
 
 "You know," she said, "you needn't trouble 
 about m<?." 
 
 "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 accom- 
 panying herself, at eleven o'clock at night, too — the 
 
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 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 
 
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 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 un- 
 governably, 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. 
 
 i7
 
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 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 uncatch- 
 able 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 determina- 
 tion 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 allure- 
 ment 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 
 
 18
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Wands- 
 worth 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 
 20
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 appear- 
 ance 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, wear- 
 
 21
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 ing 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 Mer- 
 cier caught Ranny doing a sprint he smiled atro- 
 ciously. 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 
 
 22
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Ran- 
 some 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 ex- 
 plain 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
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 ought to be. He liked young ladies. Among them 
 (he intimated) his flabbiness might not excite re- 
 mark. 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 re- 
 moved 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 
 
 24
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 vacil- 
 lation. 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 her- 
 self 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 sur- 
 prise 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. 
 
 25
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Gymna- 
 sium. They ran them — the parallel bars, the horses, 
 the mattresses — in under the galleries; they up- 
 rooted 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 in- 
 strument of unspeakably mysterious forces) to pre- 
 
 26
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 tend 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 bar-bell 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 
 3 27
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 pat- 
 tern 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 estrange- 
 ment, 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 
 
 28
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 per- 
 fect 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 
 
 29
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. 
 
 f So wise and powerful was the London Poly- 
 technic. 
 
 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 
 
 30
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, mysteri- 
 ously, 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, re- 
 calling something. Low and square-towered, couch- 
 ant 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 
 
 32
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 and gleams, lamplit and moonlit; and all impressed 
 upon Ransome's brain with an extraordinary vivid- 
 ness 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 mer- 
 chant'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 
 
 33
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 dis- 
 connected patches. The darkness effaced every ob- 
 ject 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 be- 
 tween 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 
 
 34
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, in- 
 credible, 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 out- 
 lines 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 nojnean- 
 ing 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 some- 
 thing 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 
 
 35
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 tooth- 
 brushes, patent medicines, babies' comforters, that 
 Ranny's father with a Headache, or Ranny himself 
 or his mother could be trusted to dispense at a mo- 
 ment's notice. But the drug strophanthus, pre- 
 scribed 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." 
 
 36
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 (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 reprehen- 
 sible. 
 
 "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 Mer- 
 cier.) 
 
 "Him? Goodness knows when he'll be in. And 
 it's not likely that y'r father '11 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 
 
 37
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. Every- 
 where 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 deli- 
 cate colors of the place gave a more frightful gross- 
 ness 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 
 
 38
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 measuring-glasses, and a smaller bottle half full of 
 a pale-amber liquid. He had been standing motion- 
 less, staring at these objects with a peculiar and in- 
 tent solemnity. Now, as if challenged and challeng- 
 ing, 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 manceuver.) 
 "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.
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 '11 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 smil- 
 ing, 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 mon- 
 strous as it was absurd. She had married Mr. Ran- 
 some, 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 un- 
 dying 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. Fulle3 T more 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 un- 
 seen outside the sacred circle of his home. Even 
 there he had contrived to create around it an atmos- 
 phere of mystery. So that it was open to Mrs. Ran- 
 some 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 
 
 4i
 
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 position enabled him to order the best spirit whole- 
 sale, and with a professional impunity. So invio- 
 late 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. Ran- 
 some'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 wear- 
 ing 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. 
 
 42
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, success- 
 fully, 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 it- 
 self a ritual, a high religious ceremony. Hitherto he 
 had kept himself pure for it, abstaining from all 
 Headache overnight. It was this habitual conse- 
 cration 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 sides- 
 man 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 prepara- 
 tions: 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. Ran- 
 some 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 irre- 
 proachable 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. 
 
 "7 say he ought to be layin' down," she said. 
 4 43
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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, reckless- 
 ly, 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 some- 
 thing 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 
 
 44
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 Humming-bird was a regular toff," and had dis- 
 missed 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 de- 
 light. And in his own vivid phrase, he "let her rip." 
 
 Of course he was a prodigal, a wastrel, a spend- 
 thrift. 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 "bik- 
 ing." 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 sus- 
 tained, 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 any- 
 thing 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. 
 
 45
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 evo- 
 cation 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 be- 
 lieved 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 con- 
 jecture, on perpetual suggestion conveyed by Mrs. 
 Ransome, and on the grounds — absolutely incon- 
 trovertible — 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 hold- 
 ing 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 
 
 46
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 any- 
 thing. 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 pompa- 
 dour, and her figure curbed by the tightness of her 
 Sunday gown. Under her polished hair Mrs. Ran- 
 dall'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 
 
 47
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 be- 
 tween 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 
 
 48
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. Ran- 
 some 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. Dis- 
 honest, 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. Ran- 
 
 49
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 some, 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 sub- 
 ject 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 danger- 
 ously 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. 
 
 50
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 laugh- 
 ter 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, deter- 
 mined, 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 doc- 
 tors 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 
 
 5i
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 im- 
 pudent 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 
 
 52
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 dis- 
 approval. 
 
 For, as the Headache worked in Mr. Ransome, all 
 young and gay and innocent things became abomin- 
 able 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 cheer- 
 fulness 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 
 
 53
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 ex- 
 pression 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 leap- 
 in' and jumpin' over the shop on a Sunday after- 
 noon. Pandemonium it is. 'Aven't you got all 
 
 54
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, imperturb- 
 ably, as if there had been no interruption, "eight- 
 thirty to eleven, at his residence, High Street, Wands- 
 worth, Mr. Fulleymore Ransome will give an Enter- 
 tainment. Humorous Impersonations : Mr. F. Ran- 
 some. 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." 
 
 55
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 < t- 
 
 '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 him- 
 self 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 '11 come to you, goin' on so reckless." 
 
 "It's because I love you," said Ranny, half 
 
 56
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 your- 
 self," 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 rath- 
 er than reluctant under his embrace; and at the 
 thought he blushed, suddenly, all over. 
 
 His mother was unaware that his kisses had be- 
 come dreamy, tentative, foreboding. She said to 
 herself: "When his time comes there '11 be no hold- 
 ing him. But he isn't one that '11 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? 
 
 58
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 sup- 
 posed 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 
 5 59
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 bed- 
 stead, 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, per- 
 haps, 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, to- 
 gether 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 
 
 60
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 ten- 
 derly 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, im- 
 pregnated 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 enlighten- 
 ment 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 en- 
 counter and no more. A matter too trivial for remark. 
 
 61
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 The counting-house at Woolridge's was an im- 
 mense long room under the roof, lit by a row of win- 
 dows 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, drift- 
 ing, 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, 
 
 62
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 state- 
 
 63
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 ments 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 v and to set 
 up house. Woolridge's offered a shameless en- 
 couragement 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 win- 
 dows. 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 won- 
 dered 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 bed- 
 room. 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 punc- 
 tual at the Poly. Gym. 
 
 And sometimes, on a Sunday afternoon, he would 
 take Winny for a bicycle ride into the country. He 
 
 64
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 fileds. 
 
 Thus on a Sunday afternoon in June they found 
 themselves alone in a corner of a meadow in South- 
 fields. 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, Ran- 
 some 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 Wool- 
 ridge'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 tne." 
 
 "Oh, well, I suppose it's all right if you like it. 
 But I thought — perhaps — you didn't." 
 
 65
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 be- 
 cause of the buttercups. "But me hat's a bit 
 rocky." 
 
 "Quite a good hat," said Winny, looking at it 
 
 66
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 understand- 
 ing of his case. 
 
 Ranny sat up, stared about him, and sighed pro- 
 foundly. 
 
 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 im- 
 plied 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 straight- 
 ness 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 ter- 
 rible 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 
 
 68
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 dra- 
 peries 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 Stark- 
 er'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 sudd2n 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. 
 
 69
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. 
 
 70
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 dark- 
 est 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 in- 
 articulate, 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 "stun- 
 ners, ' ' and they were ' ' queer ' ' ; they were the ' ' queer- 
 est" thing about her. That was his word for their 
 half-fascinating, half-stupefying quality. 
 
 "Are you waiting for her?" he asked. 
 
 7i
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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, 
 
 72
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 al- 
 ready 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 tall- 
 ness 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 soft- 
 ness 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 beauti- 
 ful, 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. 
 
 73
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 look- 
 ing down at him ; she seemed, with all her youth, to 
 be older than he, to be no longer childlike and inno- 
 cent 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 im- 
 plored now and pleaded. 
 
 74
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 da, 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. Some- 
 thing rather wonderful." 
 
 "Something — rather — wonderful — " she repeated, 
 drowsily. 
 
 "Strikes me so — that's all." 
 6 75
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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." 
 
 76
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 in- 
 cision. 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 estab- 
 lished intimacy. 
 
 For only intimacy could have excused her inter- 
 ference 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 — 
 
 78
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 sensible words — his own misgivings, his own pro- 
 found distrust of the event. 
 
 What was extraordinary, if he could have analyzed 
 it, was the calmness that mingled with his disturb- 
 ance. 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, in- 
 explicable 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 Dis- 
 play at the Polytechnic Gymnasium, the grandest 
 
 79
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 he had yet known. As if it had been some great 
 civic function, it was attended by the Mayor oi, 
 Marylebone in his robes. To be sure, the Mayor, 
 who was "going on" that night, left some time be- 
 fore 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 appear- 
 ance 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 ; be- 
 yond 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 up- 
 ward, and the sliding of its taut muscles on the bar, 
 to the frenzy of his revolving, triumphal, glorious to 
 
 80
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 
 81
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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?" 
 
 82
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 them- 
 selves 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 move- 
 ment 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 J 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. 
 
 83
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. ' ' 
 
 84
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 perform- 
 ance 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 be- 
 gan 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. 
 
 85
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. 
 
 86
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 accord- 
 in' 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 sud- 
 denly in a single night. 
 
 He ran, perfunctorily, through all the foolish turn- 
 
 S7
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 ings 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 ir- 
 resistibly and drawn eastward in the direction of the 
 door. 
 
 There was nothing furtive and secret in his haunt- 
 ing. 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 Poly- 
 technic together, on the night of the Grand Dis- 
 play. Winny, preoccupied with her own perform- 
 ance 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, re- 
 spected the conventions where women were con- 
 cerned. 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 some- 
 
 89
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 times 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 be- 
 cause 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 Ox- 
 ford 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. 
 
 90
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 venture- 
 some, 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?" 
 
 7 9i
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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." 
 
 92
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 He looked at her, and for a moment it revived, it 
 stirred in his heart, that odd mingled sense of ab- 
 surdity 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 dan- 
 ger, 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 obses- 
 sion 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 Wands- 
 worth 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 send- 
 ing 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 ad- 
 mirable 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 
 
 93
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 en- 
 trance 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 
 
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 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 Hurdle Race. For all of them, expectant, concen- 
 trated 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 re- 
 vealed 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 observ- 
 ing her for some time with sidelong appreciation), 
 "some people have a way with them." 
 
 "Some people have impudence," said Mrs. Ran- 
 dall. 
 
 95
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 no- 
 where. 
 
 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, 
 
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 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 glorious- 
 ly 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, un- 
 evenly, 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 
 
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 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 
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 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 Des- 
 tiny). Thus it had its root and rise in the extraor- 
 dinary 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, 
 
 ioo
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 but fancied himself as a featherweight, in a skipping, 
 dodging, dance - all - round - you , land - you - one - pres- 
 ently 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 Satur- 
 day 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 
 
 IOI
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 him- 
 self 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. 
 
 102
 
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 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 en- 
 gaged another joker for the Address. What he, 
 Wauchope, funked, personally, more than anything 
 was the Address. And Ransome, generously, de- 
 clared 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 sten- 
 cilings ; 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. 
 i Up and down the aisles between the open pews of 
 pitch pine went the workers of the Mission, marshal- 
 ing the men into their seats. By the west door, 
 Wauchope's friend, the cumbrous curate, who fan- 
 cied himself as a featherweight, stood smiling and 
 shaking hands with each man as he came, and thank- 
 ing 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 ob- 
 served the curate critically, and without committing 
 
 103
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 ex- 
 tremely 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 din- 
 ner 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 
 
 104
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, ac- 
 celerated the vibration of his inner tumult. 
 
 Then the obvious safety-valve was closed to him. 
 A sense of strangeness and of sudden shyness pre- 
 vented 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 vi- 
 brant 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 Wau- 
 chope at his right ear thundering in a tremendous 
 barytone. 
 
 First of all it was a trumpet call that shook him. 
 
 " Sold-ier-ers o-of Christ! a-arise, 
 And put your armor on," 
 
 sang Wauchope. The sound of that singing made 
 Ransome feel noble; and there is nothing more in- 
 sidiously destructive than feeling noble. 
 
 105
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. 
 
 "Jesu, Lover o-of my soul," 
 sang the young man with the tenor. 
 
 " Let me to Thy bosom fly, 
 While the gathering wa-ters roll. 
 While the tempest sti-ill is high." 
 
 (Ranny felt them about him, the waters and the 
 tempest.) 
 
 "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." 
 
 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. 
 
 " Thou of Life the fountain art, 
 Freely let me take of Thee; 
 Spring Thou up with-in my heart;" 
 
 sang Ranny. 
 
 "Rise to all eternity." 
 
 There was something about that hymn, and his 
 own sudden crying out in it, that made him peculiar- 
 ly susceptible to the influences of the Address. When 
 the preacher rose in the pulpit, when he looked about 
 
 1 06
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Even- 
 ing Service, and by the singing of certain hymns. 
 There were layers upon layers of emotion sunk be- 
 yond memory in Ranny 's soul. So that what hap- 
 pened 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 un- 
 spiritual 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. 
 
 8 107
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 ha- 
 bitually expressed by Wauchope's broad and some- 
 what flattened features was intensified to stupe- 
 faction. 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 suf- 
 fered on the surface. But Ranny was disturbed pro- 
 foundly, shaken, excited, and most curiously uplifted. 
 
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 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 over- 
 doing 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 se- 
 crecies of Ranny's being. 
 
 In the Mission Church of St. Matthias's Ranny un- 
 derwent 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 inner- 
 most sanction and recognition it had the seal out- 
 side 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 compo- 
 sition, 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 in- 
 credible 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 un- 
 speakable to meet her at the elm tree by the Cause- 
 way 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 Wands- 
 worth Plain its lonely and deserted air as of a 
 little riverside hamlet overlooked by time and the 
 Borough Council. On a Sunday evening in sum- 
 mer they stand as if in perpetual peace, without 
 
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 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 hem- 
 lock 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 im- 
 possible 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 detach- 
 ment, 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 Ran- 
 some 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." 
 
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 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 And they stayed there. (Some instinct had im- 
 pelled 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 
 
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 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. 
 
 113
 
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 And then she came to him with her eyes all shin- 
 ing 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 over- 
 taken 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 even- 
 ing 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 
 he 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 
 
 us
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 
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 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 '11 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." 
 
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 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 can- 
 not 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 
 
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 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, some- 
 how, 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 some- 
 how. She had got round Winny last year when she 
 had come imploring her to take her to the Grand 
 
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 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, 
 
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 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 
 
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 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 re- 
 fused 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 
 
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 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 mar- 
 ry 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. 
 
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 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 rea- 
 sons, 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 
 
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 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 Sun- 
 day 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 su- 
 premely 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. 
 
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 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 cer- 
 tain, 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 par- 
 taking 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 amaze- 
 ment, the old Humming-bird bore himself in those 
 days of stress, not with that peculiar savage obdu- 
 racy that distinguished his more insignificant hos- 
 tilities, 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 set- 
 tled, all he said was, "I don't like it, Mother, I don't 
 like it." 
 
 How profoundly it had disturbed him was shown 
 
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 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 cau- 
 tion 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 consider- 
 able margin. (In the first rough draft — even in 
 
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 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 any- 
 thing cruel. They could have a char once a fort- 
 night 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 allow- 
 ing 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, ac- 
 companied by Violet, Ranny fell into the hands of 
 the Speculative Builder. 
 
 Not very far from Wandsworth, in the green pas- 
 
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 turelands 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 diminu- 
 tive 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 
 
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 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 capi- 
 tal in freestone, the outline of each porch being 
 picked out and made clear and decisive with wood- 
 work 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 ad- 
 venture, 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 in- 
 formation that he craved for, now that the passion 
 of the house hunt was upon him. 
 
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 "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 pre- 
 occupied 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 be- 
 cause 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 con- 
 ceived 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 shil- 
 lings." 
 
 132
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 That took Ranny's breath away. As for Vio- 
 let, 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 bal- 
 ance 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 
 
 *33
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 suppos- 
 ing — 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. Ordi- 
 narily you paid your rent out of income or invest- 
 ments. 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 Pros- 
 pectus with a beautiful picture of the house on it. 
 
 i34
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Southflelds 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. 
 
 i35
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 Because, on any scheme, on the lowest scale of ex- 
 penditure, 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 
 
 136
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 work. The love knots, blue with little pink rose- 
 buds, 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 pres- 
 ently 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 earmarked, for a 
 beginning, and subject always to the approval of a 
 Lady, three distinct suites of furniture which he pro- 
 posed, most certainly, to purchase outright. None 
 of your hire-purchase systems for Mr. Ransome. 
 
 i37
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 low- 
 ered eyelids made it impossible for him to forget 
 that she was the Lady whose approval was the ulti- 
 mate-condition of the deal. 
 
 After an immensity of time, in which Mr. Ran- 
 some '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. Ran- 
 some 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, com- 
 muned 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 
 
 138
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Wool- 
 ridge's men, by every kind of physical persuasion, 
 and by coaxing, by strategy and guile, all that furni- 
 ture 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 sur- 
 veyed 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 under- 
 stand it. He couldn't understand how she could 
 10 139
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 have chosen their first hour of solitude for finding 
 fault with the arrangement of the room. He him- 
 self had been distinctly pleased; proud, too, of hav- 
 ing 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 under- 
 standing 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 Gran- 
 ville is too small for the drawing-room suite?" 
 
 "It's too small for anything. And I think you 
 
 might have waited." 
 
 140
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 mar- 
 riage bed. 
 
 "Why shouldn't we?" Violet's voice insisted. 
 
 "Because we couldn't." 
 
 He drew her to him. Her eyes alosed and their 
 faces met, flame to flame. 
 
 "Poor little thing," he said. "Is its headjiot? 
 And is it tired?" 
 
 "Ranny," she said, "is your mother still up- 
 stairs?" 
 
 "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 attend- 
 ance 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. 
 
 142
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "Look at him," he would say, "sittin' there be- 
 hind 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 
 
 i43
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 e very-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 im- 
 maculate, 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. 
 
 144
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 He had not agreed with Mrs. Usher. If he couldn't 
 keep a servant, he could, and did, engage a char- 
 woman 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 out- 
 lines 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 sul- 
 lenness 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, 
 
 145
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 architec- 
 tural 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 '11 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 bal- 
 cony. 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 
 
 146
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 per- 
 fect 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 after- 
 noon, 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 Gran- 
 ville. 
 After six weeks of it she began to long secretly 
 
 147
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 adven- 
 turous stepping out of the little door in Starker's 
 shutter into the amorously hovering crowd, for the 
 
 148
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 some- 
 where 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 him- 
 self, that's what he had been; a selfish, low brute. 
 
 150
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 re- 
 sented 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 re- 
 flection but that a whole fortnight had passed and 
 
 151
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 Violet had not died. Ranny's fatherhood was per- 
 turbed 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." 
 
 152
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "That's all the trouble there's been," the doctor 
 said. And he entered on a brief and popular ex- 
 position of the subject, from which Ranny gathered 
 that Violet was flying in the face of that Providence 
 that Nature was. Superbly and exceptionally en- 
 dowed 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 rea- 
 sons 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, "y° u 
 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?" 
 
 iS3
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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. 
 
 i54
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 sig- 
 nificantly, 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 ador- 
 able 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." 
 
 11
 
 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 monu- 
 mental 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 
 
 156
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 seri- 
 ous 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 improb- 
 able 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 re- 
 treat. 
 
 Her scare (for plainly she was scared) lasted only 
 for a second; only till he spoke again and came 
 forward, 
 
 iS7
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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. 
 
 158
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 at- 
 tempted 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 '11 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 
 
 i59
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Ran- 
 ny did and that he made was beautiful and wonder- 
 ful. 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. "Some- 
 times, 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." 
 
 1 60
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 have- 
 n'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. 
 
 161
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 
 
 TN April Ransome looked confidently for Violet to 
 1 "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 irrita- 
 tion 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 
 
 163
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 tempera- 
 ment. 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 deteriora- 
 tion. 
 
 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. 
 
 164
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 com- 
 ment 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 Hert- 
 fordshire. To be sure, in common decency, it could 
 
 165
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 only be regarded as a lucky windfall, but provi- 
 dentially the windfall was beginning to occur at fre- 
 quent 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 him- 
 self. 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. 
 
 1 66
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 out- 
 burst, 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 
 
 167
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 imperish- 
 able. 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 
 
 16S
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 out- 
 look, 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 resent- 
 ment and in Ransome a tender yet austere respon- 
 sibility. For he blamed himself for it. 
 
 Violet blamed the Baby. 
 
 169
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Com- 
 mon. 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 some- 
 thing. 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. 
 
 170
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. 
 
 12 171
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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." 
 
 172
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Ju- 
 jubes 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 di- 
 rections (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," 
 
 *73 
 
 « < 
 
 < <
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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." 
 
 "Few 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 every- 
 thing about them as clean as clean. Tell her any- 
 thing 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 
 
 i74
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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!" 
 
 i75
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 
 176
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 ac- 
 cusing and witnessing, it was, as Ranny said, a for- 
 giving 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, nine- 
 teen-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 ter- 
 rified 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 him- 
 
 178
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 self 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 inde- 
 structible 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 ser- 
 vants for her if he could afford it. As it was, a char- 
 woman every week was more than he could manage, 
 and she knew it. And she said, looking at him very 
 
 179
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 some- 
 thing in it. He would think it over. 
 
 Thinking it over, he saw more than ever how im- 
 possible 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 
 
 180
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. Look- 
 ing 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 
 
 181
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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." 
 
 182
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "Before she was married?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Something in his manner made her pause, pon- 
 dering. 
 
 "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 
 
 183
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Tor- 
 pichen Badger?" 
 
 She shook her head at him in the old way; keep- 
 ing 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 mo- 
 ment 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." 
 
 184
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 gentle- 
 man 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 gar- 
 den. 
 
 'T 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 
 
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 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 dis- 
 gusting, too. Ranny had thought that Violet would 
 find Jujubes and his conversation every bit as dis- 
 agreeable as he did. 
 
 Even now, while some instinct warned him of im- 
 pending crisis, he still regarded Leonard Mercier as 
 13 187
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. 
 
 188
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 Leonard Mercier greeted him with immense ur- 
 banity. 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 dis- 
 guised and restrained his increasing flabbiness, where- 
 as, though Ranny's figure was firm and slender, his 
 suit was shabby. Leonard Mercier had the prosper- 
 ous 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 dis- 
 tinction; and these were rendered even more em- 
 phatic 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 cosmet- 
 ics that lay so ready to his hand. 
 
 The duologue was brief. 
 
 1 ' 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 7 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— ' ' 
 
 189
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 
 
 190
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 re- 
 vealed the rich red curve of his upper lip. And as he 
 caught the pleasing reflection of himself in the look- 
 ing-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, an- 
 other 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 Gran- 
 ville. 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, 
 
 191
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, incompre- 
 hensible to Ranny. He only remembered after- 
 ward, 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." 
 
 192
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 col- 
 lapse. Foreshortened, flattened by its backward 
 tilt, its full jowl strained back, its chin thrust tow- 
 ard him and sharpened to a V by the pressure of her 
 
 i93
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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: 
 1 ' 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 win- 
 dow." 
 
 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 helpless- 
 ness. 
 
 194
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 any- 
 thing 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 in- 
 wardly, which was terrible to see. 
 
 And as he looked at her he remembered yet again 
 how in the beginning he had wronged her. That 
 
 i9S
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 fore- 
 head 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 ac- 
 cording 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 Sun- 
 days; 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 hap- 
 pened. 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 
 
 197
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Im- 
 provement had begun. 
 
 He meant the improvement in Violet's appear- 
 ance. He had accepted the fact that, in all house- 
 hold 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 mysteri- 
 ous elegance, of beauty charged with magical reminis- 
 cence, 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 morn- 
 ing 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 fra- 
 grance of violets that invariably turned his head. 
 
 And she had bought new stockings and new shoes; 
 
 198
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 i 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 
 
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 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 con- 
 nection between Violet's inward state and that re- 
 generated 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 Mer- 
 rier was at large. And having gone thus far in ob- 
 servation, he must have seen that it was on and 
 after Thursday, the twenty-seventh (early-closing 
 day again) that she became intolerable. 
 
 200
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 Intolerable. There was no other word for it. 
 The li joie de veeve" was so intense that it was not 
 to be borne. She had days of stupor now that fol- 
 lowed 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 si- 
 lence by addressing her affectionately as "Vikey." 
 
 "What I want," said Ranny then, "is a change. 
 I want bracing; and bright surroundings, and enter- 
 taining 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 indiffer- 
 ent 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. 
 
 201
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 But now that the little thing was on its feet, pad- 
 ding about with a pathetic and ridiculous uncer- 
 tainty, 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 nui- 
 sance, 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 cloth- 
 ing, 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. 
 
 202
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 mo- 
 ment. All his life was narrowed suddenly into the 
 circle of one terror and one care. It was like a night- 
 mare 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 
 14 203
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 en- 
 counter 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 Gran- 
 ville, 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 
 
 204
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 foot- 
 steps. 
 
 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. 
 
 205
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 fascinat- 
 ing. 
 
 "It must be Mother, bless her," he said to him- 
 self. 
 
 8 06
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 ador- 
 able with her Little Rose face half unfolded, and 
 the Honeypot smell of her silken skin. 
 
 Violet stood beside him, looking at the two, sul- 
 lenly, 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?" 
 
 207
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 inno- 
 cent dismay. Johnson's operations and his prem- 
 ises 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 
 
 208
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 differ- 
 ence, 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 inno- 
 cent 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. 
 
 209
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 door- 
 step. 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. 
 
 210
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 
 
 211
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 some- 
 thing 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." 
 
 212
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 i\ 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 de- 
 fiance 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 some- 
 thing 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 South- 
 fields. She must have had a puncture, Winny said. 
 
 214
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 But they did not meet her. 
 
 And there was no sign of her downstairs at Gran- 
 ville. 
 
 "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 some- 
 where 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 
 
 8 Ig
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Ran- 
 some'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." 
 
 216
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 surround- 
 ing 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 — youknow,"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?" 
 
 217
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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?" 
 
 218
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 si- 
 lence 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 star- 
 ing 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 fore- 
 head 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 Ran- 
 some hung about the house and garden, unable to 
 think, unable to work, or take an interest in any- 
 thing. He was oppressed by a sense of irremediable 
 calamity. 
 
 At four o'clock he made tea and took it to Violet 
 in her room. 
 
 15 219
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 She sat up, weak and submissive, and drank, cry- 
 ing 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 impres- 
 sive 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 be- 
 yond all comparison inferior. They lacked vehe- 
 mence, vividness, intensity. After that first passion 
 of resentment and revolt Violet declined upon sul- 
 lenness 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 con- 
 trary, 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. 
 
 221
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Com- 
 bined 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 cloth- 
 ing and their weekly bills. There had been no mar- 
 gin 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 sor- 
 did 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. Gran- 
 ville 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 
 
 32a
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 mar- 
 ried 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 
 
 223
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 exaltation and of rapt brooding, days when she went 
 as if sustained by some mysterious and secret satis- 
 faction, some agreeable reminiscence or anticipa- 
 tion. 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 home- 
 coming 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 
 
 224
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 heaven- 
 ly 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 her- 
 self), 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 
 
 225
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 John- 
 son'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. 
 
 226
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, 
 
 227
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 be- 
 fore; 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?" 
 
 228
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Vio- 
 let 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 pos- 
 sible. 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 
 
 229
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 in- 
 tolerable. 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. In- 
 stead of sleeping he cried. He cried piteously, in- 
 veterately; 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 ever- 
 lasting, 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." 
 
 230
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 cry- 
 ing 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 Septem- 
 ber 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, 
 
 331
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 hur- 
 ried 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 hap- 
 pened 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 
 
 232
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 
 233
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 over- 
 head, 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 cat 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." 
 
 234
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 hand- 
 writing: 
 
 Dear Randall, — 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. 
 16 235
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 valedic- 
 tions] 
 
 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 car- 
 ing 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 
 
 236
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 un- 
 speakable. 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 dark- 
 ness 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 per- 
 sistent and abominable life, they were borne per- 
 petually 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 mar- 
 ried 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 noth- 
 
 237
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 ing 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 hap- 
 pened 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 sug- 
 gested 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 walk- 
 ed, hushing the crying baby. Presently the crying 
 ceased and the footsteps, and he heard the low hum- 
 ming 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. 
 
 239
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 slight- 
 ly 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 un- 
 certain sound. 
 
 "But you had an idea?" 
 
 "No," she said, taking courage from his in- 
 credible calmness. "I was afraid; that was all." 
 And then, as one utterly beaten by him and de- 
 fenseless, 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, 
 
 240
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 sud- 
 denly 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 rilled 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 diffi- 
 cult, broken speech as mourners use. They be- 
 haved 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 irre- 
 parable, supreme. Each was convinced with an in- 
 assailable and immutable conviction that the thing 
 that had happened was, for each of them, the worst 
 
 that could happen. 
 
 241
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 Half through the meal he got up suddenly and left 
 her. He was seized with violent sickness, such sick- 
 ness 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 down- 
 stairs 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 deter- 
 mined. 
 
 242
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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. 
 
 243
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 '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." 
 
 244
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 docu- 
 ment 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 
 
 245
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 sub- 
 conscious 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 bereave- 
 ment. This oppression, this morbid sense, amounted 
 almost to hallucination ; it prevented him from think- 
 ing 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 con- 
 tact 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 
 
 246
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 
 247
 
 >> 
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 docu- 
 ment, 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 
 
 248
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. 
 
 250
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 informa- 
 tion. 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, evi- 
 dently, 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. 
 17 251
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 
 252
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 sup- 
 port. True, it had been the chief agent in the proc- 
 ess 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 com- 
 parison 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 
 
 253
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 contrition had visited her in that last hour, and that 
 she had meant to remind him that he was not ut- 
 terly abandoned, that there was something left. 
 
 That brought him to the lines, almost indecipher- 
 able, 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 pro- 
 vided 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 capa- 
 city. 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* 
 
 »S4
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 be- 
 ginning 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 es- 
 tablishing 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 
 
 255
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 fascinat- 
 ing 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 wel- 
 come, 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 con- 
 torted. 
 
 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. 
 
 256
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 chil- 
 dren, so that he could go to Wandsworth unen- 
 cumbered. 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 Wands- 
 worth. 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 
 
 258
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 was not a thing that could be hushed up, or mini- 
 mized, 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 en- 
 tirely 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 keep- 
 ing with his habitual levity. It was the first in- 
 timation 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. 
 
 259
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 sup- 
 pression 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. 
 
 260
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "She went with Mercier." 
 
 "With 'im—f 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, Rarmy?" 
 
 "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. 
 
 261
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 pene- 
 trating 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 sanc- 
 tuary. He felt obscurely that he had become im- 
 portant 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 per- 
 
 262
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 fection, steadfast in its shining Sunday state, ap- 
 peared 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 in- 
 terest; 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 in- 
 timately 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 
 vStreet. It wasn't as if he hadn't been well knowm 
 As a member of the Borough Council he stuck in the 
 
 9, 63
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 fol- 
 low, 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 be- 
 come, 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 con- 
 
 26^
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 tinued, 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 con- 
 cerned. 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. 
 
 265
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 Dy- 
 
 mond." 
 
 "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." 
 
 266
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 in- 
 nocent 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 bring- 
 ing his nephew round, that he was getting the case 
 into his own hands, the hands that were most com- 
 petent 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 lim- 
 its 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. 
 
 is 267
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 move- 
 ment 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 car- 
 ried 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 mis- 
 conceived. 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 im- 
 minent explosion. "Yes, yes, I know all you've got 
 
 268
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 appear- 
 ances — 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." 
 
 269
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 ■ 
 
 "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?" 
 
 f "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 chil- 
 dren. 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 
 
 270
 
 t" 
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 sup- 
 pose, 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 your- 
 self, 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 chil- 
 dren. 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 '11 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 pre- 
 tend 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 
 
 271
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Hum- 
 ming-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 
 
 272
 
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 honesty and honor, the solid, steadfast tradition by 
 which he lived, had been first outraged, then de- 
 stroyed in sheer brutality. He didn't know him- 
 self. He had been charged with untruthfulness and 
 dishonesty; he, who had been held the soul of hon- 
 esty 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 im- 
 moral — 
 
 "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 apolo- 
 gize 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 Fulley- 
 more does drink. Like a fish he does." 
 
 (It was his sacrifice to honesty.) 
 
 273
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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, pre- 
 tendin' to stick up for Virelet, knowin' perfectly 
 well what she is, and cussin' and swearin' at her for 
 
 274
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 think- 
 in' 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, respect- 
 able 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 accept- 
 ance of the fact. 
 
 "Talk of helpin'! Strikes me poor Vi's helpin' 
 
 275
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 bio win' 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. 
 
 1 ' 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 her- 
 self, "he doesn't mean it. It '11 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 sl 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 
 
 276
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Dy- 
 mond." 
 
 "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 unpleas- 
 antness, and of plunging, when she did plunge, only 
 into the vague, the void. 
 
 277
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, piece- 
 meal, first Baby, then Dossie, with every circum- 
 stance 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 inter- 
 missions and shattering recoveries of anguish — it 
 was as if their innocence had insight, had premoni- 
 tion 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 mother- 
 hood, to the one (one and threefold) perfection that 
 they could stand for, he and she. 
 
 278
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 re- 
 turned 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 barbar- 
 ous tearing of the children from Winny, of Winny 
 from Ransome, and of Ransome from his home, in 
 that hurried, surreptitious flight through the dark- 
 ness, that he most felt the pressure and the malig- 
 nant pinch of poverty. Owing to his straitened cir- 
 cumstances, with all his mother's forethought and 
 good will, with all the combined resources of their in- 
 genuity, they could do no better to meet his lament- 
 able case than this. "This," indeed, was impera- 
 tive, inevitable. He reflected bitterly that, if he 
 had been a rich man, like the manager or the secre- 
 tary 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 impera- 
 tive. 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 house- 
 maid 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, 
 
 28Q
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 any- 
 thing 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, incom- 
 parably, was the going back on Monday evening to 
 settle up. There was a man coming from Wands- 
 worth 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 chim- 
 ney 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, loath- 
 some and limp, bent like a hanged corpse; and on 
 her very nightgown of the other night, dreadfully 
 familiar, shrinking, poor ghost of an abomination, 
 
 281
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 be- 
 yond redemption, almost beyond recognition, the 
 sachet, smelling of violets and with the word "Vio- 
 let" 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 handker- 
 chiefs 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 
 
 2S2
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 else — the beast had been in the house and had left 
 it there. 
 
 That finished him. 
 
 Finished as he was in every sense, thoroughly in- 
 structed, 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 neces- 
 sary. 
 
 "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 Wool- 
 ridge'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 al- 
 lowed 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. 
 19 283
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 some- 
 thing queer about his father-in-law, something ut- 
 terly unlike the bluff and genial presence he had 
 known. Mr. Usher seemed to have shrunk some- 
 how 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 Ran- 
 some 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 terri- 
 tory. 
 
 "What say to a bit of supper, my boy, before 
 we begin business?" 
 
 It was a false and feeble imitation of his old hearti- 
 ness. 
 
 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 re- 
 turned 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 
 
 284
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 " B aid-Faced Stag " for the ex- 
 press 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 under- 
 standing 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 
 
 285
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 dis- 
 closed 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 blam- 
 ing 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 
 
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 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 wantV 
 
 "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 
 
 2S7
 
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 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 for- 
 get she was a woman." 
 
 1 ' 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 under- 
 stood how you two came together." 
 
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 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 — how- 
 ever it was" — He was all solemn now — "you 
 made yourself responsible for that girl. And re- 
 sponsible 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 im- 
 possible for Randall to hit back effectively; impos- 
 sible 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, de- 
 ceived 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 him- 
 self: " Poor old thing. It's funk— pure funk. He's 
 
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 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 Vio- 
 let'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 
 
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 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 ex- 
 pressed 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 pres- 
 ence 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 multi- 
 plication 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 Ran- 
 some 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 
 
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 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 calam- 
 ity, 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 bal- 
 cony. He had left it to itself. 
 
 He asked himself what it would look like in 
 
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 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 neces- 
 sary repairs, the estimate for which soared to the 
 gay tune of ten pounds eight shillings and eight- 
 pence. It was the state of the roof, of the south- 
 west 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 responsi- 
 bility toward Granville, and the Estate Company, 
 and the agent. 
 
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 Finally, owing to Violet's reckless management, 
 his debts to the grocer, the butcher, and the milk- 
 man 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, Ran- 
 some 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 recent- 
 ly 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 ap- 
 pearance 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 re- 
 
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 fused 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. 
 
 it 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 break- 
 fast 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 
 
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 take advantage of his mother's offer to let him have 
 the rooms rent free. 
 
 And underneath Ranny's rooms, between the bed- 
 room at the back and the back parlor, between the 
 parlor and the shop, between the shop and the dis- 
 pensing-room, Fulleymore Ransome dragged him- 
 self to and fro, more than ever weedy, more than 
 ever morose, more than ever sublime in his appear- 
 ance 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 
 
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 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 her- 
 self 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. 
 
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 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 appar- 
 ently absorbed in tying the strings of his sleeping-suit 
 into loops of absolutely even length. "But he al- 
 ways 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- 
 
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 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 over- 
 hauling 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: 
 
 Sodae Bicarb., one dram. 
 
 Tinct. Strophanthi, two drams — 
 
 He remembered. That was the stuff he'd meas- 
 ured for old Mr. Beasley's heart mixture. It was 
 the stuff that Ponting said his father was taking 
 now. 
 
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 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 i\ 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 mar- 
 ried 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 re- 
 
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 lease 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 weak- 
 ened state. 
 
 On a Wednesday evening in November, he pre- 
 sented 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 
 
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 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 ex- 
 ceeded the amount of his income ; but gradually, by 
 pinching and scraping, it might be done perhaps in 
 two or three years' time. 
 
 3°3
 
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 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 re- 
 quired 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 her- 
 self 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 stro- 
 phanthus, he now became depressed, listless, easily 
 fatigued. 
 
 Up till now there had been something not alto- 
 gether disagreeable to Mrs. Ransome in the mis- 
 fortunes 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, 
 
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 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 him- 
 self 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 quiver- 
 ing and shaking, and this disturbance of his re- 
 verberated. 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 be- 
 came 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. Ran- 
 some down. 
 
 3°5
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "Ranny," she said, "I wish you'd get away some- 
 where for Christmas. Me and Mabel '11 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 
 
 306
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 her- 
 self) who remembered most. For he gave her for 
 a Christmas present, not only a beautiful white satin 
 "sashy," scented with lavender (lavender, not vio- 
 lets, 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 Wands- 
 worth than with Violet at Granville. He knew 
 exactly where he was, he had not to allow so con- 
 siderably 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 after- 
 noon cup of tea and reduced the necessary dinner at 
 his ABC 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 per- 
 sisted in regarding as iniquitous. Even if he had 
 
 308
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 '11 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 ap- 
 parently unconscious. She was not only allowed to 
 come and go at Wandsworth as she had come and 
 
 309
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 gone at Granville, by right of her enduring com- 
 petence; 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 even- 
 ings 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, Ran- 
 some 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, un- 
 troubled 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 meas- 
 ured his resources with such accuracy that by June, 
 
 310
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 if all went well, he could set about filing his pe- 
 tition. 
 
 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 some- 
 thing 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 alto- 
 gether. 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 worry- 
 ing 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 
 
 311
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 like enormous weights attached to his pitifully weedy- 
 body. His skin had the sallow smoothness, the 
 waxen substance that marked the deadly, unmis- 
 takable 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 contempla- 
 tion. 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 pre- 
 served 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 
 
 312
 
 THE COMBINED MAZ.E 
 
 stay for tea. He now suggested that, as this Satur- 
 day 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 some- 
 where 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 some- 
 thing 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. 
 
 3i3
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 every- 
 thing 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 crys- 
 tal 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. 
 
 3i4
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 tur- 
 quoise 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." 
 21 3i5
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 Ever so far down into the earth they went, with 
 London, and then Camden Town, and then Hamp- 
 stead 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 car- 
 ried 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 him- 
 self 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." 
 
 316
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 '11 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 im- 
 plied 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 in- 
 timated 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 ab- 
 surdly 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, be- 
 hind his set teeth. But he smiled all the same; and 
 
 3 J 7
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, ad- 
 monishing, 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 
 
 318
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 in- 
 conceivable 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. "UnfeelinV 
 
 "Perhaps," said Winny, "the poor thing doesn't 
 know." 
 
 "Per'aps he does know, and that's why he's 
 dancin'." 
 
 319
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 Winny gazed, fascinated, at the uplifted and ec- 
 static 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 sad- 
 der." 
 
 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 in- 
 numerable little tables covered with pink cloths, set 
 out under the trees, and seated at the tables innu- 
 merable 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, beauti- 
 ful and solitary. What the children didn't have for 
 tea, Ranny said, was not worth mentioning. 
 
 320
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Dos- 
 sie 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 re- 
 proachful. 
 
 " Well — I can't get you to myself one min- 
 ute." 
 
 "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. 
 
 321
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 help- 
 less, utterly pathetic. 
 
 "He's nothing but a baby after all," said Winny. 
 
 They were going over Wandsworth Bridge. 
 
 322
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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?" 
 
 323
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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, 
 
 3 2 4
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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?" 
 
 325
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 Vireletwould come back." 
 
 "She'll never come back." 
 But, if she did ? If she changed her mind ? Per- 
 haps she's changed it now and wants to come back 
 and be good." 
 
 "If she did I wouldn't take her." 
 
 326
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 met 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." 
 
 1 ' 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." 
 
 327
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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." 
 
 328
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 lamp- 
 light. 
 
 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 ma- 
 chinery 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 run- 
 ning it with an assistant under him, and between 
 them they had done wonders with it, considering. 
 
 33o
 
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 And on the Sunday something occurred that con- 
 firmed him in his rosy optimism. 
 
 His father was having another good day, and they 
 had wheeled him into the front sitting-room. Up- 
 stairs 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 con- 
 tented 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 
 22 33 x
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 in- 
 telligent 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 '11 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. 
 
 332
 
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 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, pres- 
 ently. 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 '11 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. 
 
 333
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 < < 
 
 : I shall have. To-morrow, probably." 
 
 "Then don't you wait." 
 
 "It '11 be beastly work, you know, Father. Are 
 you sure you don't mind?" 
 
 "What / 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. 
 
 334
 
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 "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 hirn 
 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 hap- 
 pen 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 
 
 335
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 to his own bed. For his bed had become odious to 
 him, sinking under him, falling from him treacher- 
 ously 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 disintegra- 
 tion 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 lis- 
 tening to his legal adviser, he was trying to under- 
 stand 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 out- 
 
 336
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 burst. Only the innocence was ten times more per- 
 sistent, 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 Ran- 
 dall's, from Mr. Ponting's and the assistant's man- 
 ner, and from the manner, the swollen grief, uncon- 
 trolled 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 exist- 
 ence. 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 
 
 337
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 find out how to set about filing his petition that Wed- 
 nesday 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 con- 
 cealed 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?" 
 
 338
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 'Yes, Mother," Ranny said, and choked. 
 
 "It '11 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 say- 
 ing 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 
 
 339
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 re- 
 proach 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; 
 
 34o
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 feel- 
 ing 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 is was Winny that he wanted, 
 and that the grief he found so terrible and intoler- 
 able 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?" 
 
 34i
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "Oh — well, it's pretty awful for her." 
 
 "It must be." 
 
 He was sitting near her but a little apart, staring 
 at the lamp-lit 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 '11 
 ever be happy again. I sha'n't, either." 
 
 She put her hand on his hand that lay palm down- 
 ward 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 hor- 
 rible 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 any- 
 body — 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 
 
 342
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 Com- 
 bined 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 
 
 343
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 
 
 344
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 happi- 
 ness when he felt it so improbable, not to say im- 
 possible, 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 impor- 
 tance, a thing that must perforce stand over until 
 the settlement of his father's affairs, till finally 
 (emerging from the inextricable tangle in w T hich it 
 had become involved) it presented itself as it was, 
 a thing hopeless and unattainable. 
 
 345
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 re- 
 sources 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 '11 be 
 more than two before I can get a divorce — and we 
 
 346
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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." 
 
 23
 
 M 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 RS. 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 de- 
 sired 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 
 
 348
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 un- 
 abridged and unremitted, she had brought Gran- 
 ville 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 passion- 
 ately as he. 
 
 And Granville, once far from perfect, had re- 
 sponded 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 
 
 349
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 in- 
 creased, 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. 
 
 35o
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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) Wool- 
 ridge's could do no more for him. 
 
 And Winny Dymond (Mrs. Ransome reflected bit- 
 terly), 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 wel- 
 come her in that capacity as long as Ranny had re- 
 frained 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 
 
 35i
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 affec- 
 tion 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 
 
 352
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 agree- 
 ably 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 repre- 
 
 353
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 sented 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 Wool- 
 ridge'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 
 
 354
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 differ- 
 ence). 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 
 
 355
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 '11 rain before 
 you're back, I know, and that new suit '11 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 
 
 356
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 il- 
 lumination, 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 tender- 
 ness 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 pay- 
 gate), 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! 
 
 357
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 cer- 
 tain. 
 
 Ranny was intoxicated, he was reckless with cer- 
 tainty. 
 
 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 
 
 353
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 cir- 
 cumvent 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 marvelous- 
 ly 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 
 
 359
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 day, Winny thought that only made it more marvel- 
 ous 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 some- 
 thing against the Globe Theater, as if the Globe 
 Theater were disreputable or improper. 
 
 Then (it was wonderful how she contrived the lit- 
 tle air of excited inspiration), "Tell you what," 
 she said, "let's go and sit down somewhere and 
 
 360
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 en- 
 tirely 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 Eng- 
 land, 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 with- 
 drawn 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, bor- 
 dered with trembling reeds of light. 
 
 361
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 From somewhere up in the sky, under the top- 
 most 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 
 w r as 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 be- 
 fore 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 over- 
 hanging 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 
 
 362
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 tre- 
 mendous 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 throb- 
 bing 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 mer- 
 chandise, Italian, French, Indian, Chinese, and 
 Japanese. 
 
 "I don't want to do anything but walk about and 
 look at things," she said. "Why, w r e 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 
 
 24 363
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 mysteiy. 
 
 "Let's just sit and listen to the band," she said. 
 And they sat and listened to it for another eter- 
 nity, 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 restau- 
 rant 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 every- 
 thing, and she calculated that out of that sovereign 
 there would be exactly eleven and twopence half- 
 penny left. 
 
 "Well — it's been lovely. And now we must go 
 home," she said. 
 
 364
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 manceuvers, 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 
 
 365
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 sobered them. Gravely and silently they went 
 through that village. At last, Ranny paused out- 
 side 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, with- 
 out her knowing it, kept for him its little dreamy 
 Bmile-
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 en- 
 chanted 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 de- 
 votees, 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 poig- 
 nant pleasure. To touch him in those rare accidental 
 
 367
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 any- 
 body else's. 
 
 And in her joy and tenderness, in their engage- 
 ment 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 de- 
 licious sense of something iniquitous, something peril- 
 ous, 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 
 
 368
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 far more dangerous. She knew that he had more 
 than once looked over; and she knew (though noth- 
 ing 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 
 
 369
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 awk- 
 ward, 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 lat- 
 tice. 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 Poly- 
 technic Gymnasium, beating time to the thud of the 
 barbell. She was Winny of the short tunic and the 
 
 37o
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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. 
 
 'T 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 '11 be a score for Mother. She said it would 
 come, and I said it wouldn't." 
 
 "It '11 ruin your new suit." 
 
 "And there won't be much left of your dress." 
 
 "My dress '11 iron out again. It's me poor hat." 
 
 (The Peggy hat was not made for rain.) 
 
 37 1
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 '11 be coming from 
 our wedding. Will you be happy then?" 
 
 "I'm so happy now, Ranny, that I can't believe 
 it." 
 
 "It '11 only be six months, or seven at the out- 
 side." 
 
 "Are you sure?" 
 
 "Certain." 
 
 The worst of the cab was that it cut short their 
 moments. 
 
 It had been standing a whole minute before John- 
 son's side door. He sent it away. 
 
 For fifteen seconds, measured by hammer strokes 
 
 372
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 of their hearts, they were alone. On the streaming 
 doorstep, under the dripping eaves, he held her. Pie 
 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, glow- 
 ing, 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 deso- 
 lation. The more so because it was not quite de- 
 serted. 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 be- 
 cause 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, Gran- 
 ville, could be seen. There was no other light in the 
 windows. Entering, he closed the door noiselessly, 
 
 374
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 pass- 
 age 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 
 
 375
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 cow- 
 ered 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 cow- 
 ered, 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, 
 
 376
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 hang- 
 ing 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 
 
 377
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 compara- 
 tive 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 sleek- 
 ness, the drenched splendor of her attire. Ransome 
 saw that her clothes helped to build up the im- 
 pression of her strangeness. Violet was dressed as 
 his wife, at the most frenzied height of her extrava- 
 gance, 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 de- 
 sign 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. 
 
 378
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 Ran- 
 some'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 
 25 379
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 her hands to the blaze. He stood against the chim- 
 ney-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. 
 j 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 
 
 380
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 both callous and capricious; therefore, he told him- 
 self 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 cohabita- 
 tion in itself was fatal, but that the injured husband 
 who invoked the law must refrain from the very 
 appearance of that evil. 
 
 381
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, strug- 
 gled 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 prej- 
 udicial 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 intelli- 
 gence his instinct told him that what happened was 
 not an accident at all. His inmost prescience hinted 
 at foredoomed, irremediable suffering; profound, ir- 
 reparable 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 
 
 383
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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, Virelet. 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 look- 
 ing 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 '11 be sent 
 you in a week or a fortnight." 
 
 "Ranny," she said, "are you really doin' it?" 
 
 383 "
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 ?" 
 
 384
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 divorc- 
 ing 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?" 
 
 385
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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." 
 
 386
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 mur- 
 der 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 al- 
 ways 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 signifi- 
 cance 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. 
 
 387
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "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 suc- 
 cession 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, be- 
 cause of me things and me cough. I suppose he 
 thinks I've got consumption or something. He saw 
 
 388
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 '11 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 
 
 389
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 re- 
 vived 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 pos- 
 sible 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. 
 
 390
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 doc- 
 tor 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 
 
 392
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 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 hap- 
 pened. 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 '11 be at school 
 now — out of her way." 
 
 393
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 "P'raps she's better — kinder, p'raps." 
 
 "I don't know about that, Winny. I'm afraid. 
 Anyhow, it '11 never be the same for you and me." 
 
 He paused, and then seeing suddenly the full ex- 
 tent of their calamity, he broke out. 
 
 "What 11 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 yon 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
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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