The Combined Maze Part 50

"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.

"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 everything 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 crystal 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.

"_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 turquoise 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."

Ever so far down into the earth they went, with London, and then Camden Town, and then Hampstead 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 carried 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 gla.s.s 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 himself 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."

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 s.p.a.ce 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'll 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 implied 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.