It was about nine o'clock of another Sunday evening 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 be 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 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 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'll 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."
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 cannot 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 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, somehow, 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 somehow. She had
got round Winny last year when she had come imploring her to take her to
the Grand 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.
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.