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 irresistibly and drawn
eastward in the direction of the door.
There was nothing furtive and secret in his haunting. 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 Polytechnic together, on the
night of the Grand Display. Winny, preoccupied with her own performance
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, respected the conventions where women were
concerned. 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 sometimes 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
because 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 Oxford 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.
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 venturesome, 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?"
"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."
He looked at her, and for a moment it revived, it stirred in his heart,
that odd mingled sense of absurdity 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 danger, 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 obsession 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 Wandsworth 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 sending 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 admirable 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 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 entrance 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 Hurdle Race. For all
of them, expectant, concentrated 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 revealed 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 observing her for some time
with sidelong appreciation), "some people have a way with them."
"Some people have impudence," said Mrs. Randall.
"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 nowhere.
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, 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 gloriously 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, unevenly, 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 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 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.