The Combined Maze Part 30

Up till now she had never been unkind to the Baby. She had neglected it; she had been indifferent 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 pa.s.sion for her husband. It was thus that his mother had explained the mystery, and at moments it looked as if she might be right.

But now that the little thing was on its feet, padding about with a pathetic and ridiculous uncertainty, 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 nuisance, 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 clothing, 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.

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 moment. All his life was narrowed suddenly into the circle of one terror and one care. It was like a nightmare while it lasted. And it tethered him tight. He couldn't get off by himself now on Sat.u.r.days 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 gra.s.s 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-gla.s.s were blurred as if the breath of dissolution had pa.s.sed 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 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 encounter 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 Granville, as if it had pa.s.sed 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 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 n.o.body about; not, at any rate, at the back; and overhead there was no sound of footsteps.

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 p.r.o.ne 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.

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 fascinating.

"It must be Mother, bless her," he said to himself.

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 adorable with her Little Rose face half unfolded, and the Honeypot smell of her silken skin.

Violet stood beside him, looking at the two, sullenly, 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."