The Combined Maze Part 21

"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 compa.s.sion 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 p.r.i.c.king pang went through his breast, as if a thin blood vessel had suddenly burst there.

"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 rea.s.sured 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 significantly, 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 adorable 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."

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 monumental 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 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 serious eyes, fixed upon the Baby. But when he looked for her afterward as the christening party pa.s.sed 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 improbable 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 retreat.

Her scare (for plainly she was scared) lasted only for a second; only till he spoke again and came forward.

"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.

"I _do_ love looking at houses."