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 passed 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 Saturday, 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 circumstances, 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."
He lured her in. She came over the threshold as if on some delicious yet
perilous adventure, with eyes that shone and with two little teeth that
bit down her lower lip; a way she had when she attempted anything
difficult and at the same time exciting. He showed her everything except
the room she had seen already, the room with the love knots and the
rosebuds where Violet and the Baby were. Winny admired everything with
joy and yet with reverence, from the splendid overmantel in the front
sitting-room to the hot-water tap in the bathroom.
"My word," Winny said, "what I'd give to have a bath like that!"
"I say," said Ransome, suddenly moved, "you take a lot more interest in
it all than Virelet does."
"She's used to it," said Winny. "Besides, I always take an interest in
other people's houses."
She pondered. They were both leaning out of the back bedroom window now,
looking down into the garden.
"Think of all those little empty houses, Ranny, and the people that'll
come and live in them. It seems somehow so beautiful their coming and
finding them and getting things for them; and at the same time it seems
somehow sad." She paused.
"I don't mean that _you're_ sad, Ranny. You know what I mean."
He did. He had felt it too, the beauty and the sadness, but he couldn't
have put it into words. It was the sadness and the beauty of life.
It was queer, he thought, how Winny felt as he did about most things in
life.
But Winny's joy over the house was nothing to her joy over the garden,
the garden that Ranny had made, and over the little tree that he had
planted. It was the most beautiful and wonderful tree in the whole
world. For in her eyes everything that Ranny did and that he made was
beautiful and wonderful. It could not be otherwise: because she loved
him.
And oh! she had the most intense appreciation of Granville, of the name
and of the personality. She took it all in. Trust Winny.
And as they stood in the gateway at parting, he told her of the system
by which in twenty, no, in not much more than nineteen years' time
Granville would be his own.
"Why, Ranny, it sounds almost too good to be true!"
"I know it does. That's why sometimes I think I'll be had over it yet. I
say to myself Granville looks jolly innocent, but he'll score off me,
you bet, before he's done."
"He _does_ look innocent," said Winny.
He did. (And how Winny took it in!)
"_That's_ what tickles me," said Ranny. "Sometimes, when I come home of
a evening and find him still sittin' there, cockin' his little eyes as
if he was goin' to have a game with me, it comes over me that he's up to
something, and--what do you think I do?"
"I don't know, Ranny." She almost whispered it.
"I burst out laughin' in his face."
"How _can_ you?" She was treating Granville as he did, exactly as if it
was alive.
"Well--you see how comical he is."
"Yes. I see it." (Of course she saw it.) "Still--there's something about
him all the same."
There was something about everything that was Ranny's, something that
touched her, something that made her love it, because she loved him.
Winny couldn't have burst out laughing in its face.
"I'm glad I came," she said. "Because now I can see you."
He misunderstood. "I hope you will, Winky--very often."
"I mean--see you when you're not there."
He looked away. Something in her voice moved him unspeakably. For one
moment he saw into the heart of her--placid, profound, and pure.
He was going down the Avenue with her now. For in that moment he had
felt the beauty of her and the sadness. He couldn't bear to think of her
"seeing herself home," going back alone to that little room in St. Ann's
Terrace, where some day, when Maudie married, she would be left alone.
The least he could do was to walk with her a little way.
"I say, Win," he said, presently, "why ever haven't you come before?" He
really wondered.
There was a long silence. Then, "I don't know, Ranny," she said, simply.
They had come to the end of Acacia Avenue before either of them spoke
again. Then Ranny conceived something brilliant.
"What did you think of the Baby?" he said.
She fairly shone at him, and at the same time she was earnest and very
grave.
"Oh, Ranny," she said, "it's the most beautiful baby that ever
was--Isn't it?"
Ranny smiled superbly.
"They tell me so; but I dunno. _Is_ it?"
"Of course it is."
She had turned, parting from him at last, and she flung that at him as
she walked backward, smiling in his face.
"Well--I must be going back to Vi," he said.
And he went back.