And, after all, Monday, that is to say the day at Richmond, never came.
On Monday morning when Violet got up she was seized with a slight
dizziness and sickness. It passed off. She declared that earthquakes
shouldn't stop her going to Richmond, and dressed herself in defiance of
all possible disturbance. Ransome took the Baby over to Wandsworth, to
his mother, to be looked after. At ten o'clock he joined Winny and
Maudie and Fred Booty at St. Ann's Terrace, where they had arranged that
Violet was to meet them. Following on her bicycle, she would be there at
ten sharp, when the five would go on to Richmond by the tram that passed
Winny's door.
Ransome had no sooner left Granville than Violet slipped out to the
chemist's at the corner.
Ten o'clock struck, and the quarter and the half hour, and Violet had
not appeared at St. Ann's Terrace.
Ransome proposed that the others should go on without him; he said he
thought there must be something wrong, and that he had better go and see
what had happened. They argued about it for a while, and finally Maudie
and Fred Booty started. Winny refused flatly to go with them. She was
convinced that they would meet Violet on the road to Southfields. She
must have had a puncture, Winny said.
But they did not meet her.
And there was no sign of her downstairs at Granville.
"Hark! What's that?" said Winny, listening at the foot of the stair.
"Oh, Ranny!"
From the room above there came a low, half-stifled sound of sobbing and
groaning.
He dashed upstairs.
In a few minutes he returned to Winny in the front sitting-room.
"What's the matter? Is she ill?" she said.
"No, I don't think so. She won't tell me. She's horribly upset about
something."
"Shall I go to her?"
"No; better not, Winny. Look here, she won't come to Richmond. She says
we're to go without her."
"We can't, Ranny."
"I don't know. Upon my word, I think we may as well. She'll be more
upset if we don't go. She says she wants to be left to herself for _one_
day."
A sort of tremor passed over her eyes. They did not look at him; they
looked beyond him, as if somewhere they saw something that frightened
her.
"You mustn't leave her, Ranny," she said.
He laughed. "She doesn't want me. She's just told me so."
"Whether she wants you or not you've got to stay with her."
She said it sternly.
"I say, you needn't talk like that. To hear you any one would think I
fair neglected her."
She bit her lip. Her eyes wandered in their troubled way. She looked
like a thing held there under his eyes against its will and seeking
some way of escape.
"I don't think you neglect her, Ranny," she said at last.
"Well, then, what _do_ you think?"
She turned. "I think I'm going for a little spin somewhere by myself. I
shall come back in time for dinner. Then I shall go down to Wandsworth
and fetch Baby."
"I'll do that."
"No, you won't. You'll stay with Violet," she said.
"And what about your holiday?"
"My holiday's all right. Don't you worry."
She was out of the house and in the garden. Mechanically he wheeled her
bicycle out into the road. He was utterly submissive to her will.
She mounted, and he ran by her side; she pressed on her pedals,
compelling him to run fast and faster; she set her mouth hard, grinning,
and forced the pace, and he ran at the top of his speed and laughed. At
the end of the Avenue she turned, waved to him gaily and was gone.
Upstairs on her bed, in the room of the love knots, Violet lay and
writhed. She lay on her face. She had wetted her pillow with her tears;
she had flung it aside and was digging her hands into Ransome's pillow
with a tearing, disemboweling motion. Every now and then, with the
regularity of a machine, she gave out a sob and a groan that shook her.
He found her so.
She turned on her side as he entered, and showed him her face scarlet
and swollen with crying.
"What have you come for?" she said. "I _told_ you to go."
"I haven't gone. I'm not going."
"But you've got to go. You shall go. D'you hear? I won't have you
hanging about, watching and tormenting me. What are you afraid of? What
d'you think I'm going to do?"
She turned and raised herself on her elbow and stared about her as if at
a host of enemies surrounding her, then she sank back helpless.
"Won't you tell me what it is, Vi?" he said, tenderly.
He sat beside her, leaning over into her hot lair, and made as though he
would have put his hand on her shoulder. She writhed from him.
"Why can't you let me be," she cried, "when I don't want you? I don't
want you, I tell you, and I wish you'd go away. You've done enough harm
as it is."
He rose and went to the foot of the bed and stood there, regarding her
somberly.
"What did you mean by that? What harm have I done you?"
She had flung herself down again.
"You _know_--you _know_," she moaned into the pillow.
"My God, I wish I did!"
Then he remembered.
"Unless--you mean--"
"You ought to know what I mean without my telling you."
"Well, if I do, you needn't cast it up to me. I married you right
enough, Vi."
"Yes, that's what you did. And that's why I hate you."
"It seems to me a queer reason. But, come to that, what else could we
do?"
She sat up, pulling herself together like a woman who had things to say
and meant to say them now.
"We could have done as I wanted. We could have gone on as we were."
"That's what you wanted, was it?"
"You know it was. I never asked you to marry me. I asked you not to. And
you _would_--you _would_. I didn't _want_ to marry you."
"And why didn't you want? That's what I'd like to get at?"
"Because I knew what it would be."
"Has it been so very bad then?"
She sat up straighter, wringing her hands as if she wrung her words out.
"It's been awful--something awful. All the things I don't like--all the
time. And it's made me hate the sight of you. It's made me wish I'd died
before I'd seen you. And I want to get away. I want to get out of this
horrid, hateful little house. I knew I would. I knew--I knew----"
"My God--if _I_'d known----"
"_You_? If _you_'d known! I wish to God you had. I wish you had just! If
that would have stopped you marrying me. Oh, you _knew_ all right; only
you didn't care. You never have cared. I suppose you think it's what I'm
made for."
"I don't follow. It may be all wrong. I'll allow it _is_ all wrong, all
the time. What I want to know is what's up now?"
"Can't you see what's up? Can't you think?"
He thought. And presently he saw.
"You don't mean to say it's--it's another?"
"Of course it is. What else have I been talking about?"
"Are you sure, Vi?"
He was very grave, very gentle.
"Sure? D'you think I wouldn't make sure, when it's what I'm afraid of
all the time?"
"Don't you want it? Have you never wanted it?"
"Want it? Want it? I'll hate it if it comes. But it won't come. It
sha'n't come. I won't have it. I won't live and have it. I shall die
anyway."
"Oh no, you won't," he said.
But she flung herself back and writhed and sobbed again. He sat down and
watched with her. In silence and utter hopelessness he watched.
Presently she lay motionless, worn out.
* * * * *
At one o'clock Winny knocked at the door and said dinner was ready.
Violet stirred. "What's the good of sitting staring there like a stuck
ox?" She raised herself. "Since you _are_ there you can get me that
eau-de-Cologne."
He brought it. He bathed her hands and forehead and wiped them with his
handkerchief.
She dragged herself downstairs and sat red-eyed through the dinner, the
materials for the picnic which Winny had unpacked and spread.
The day wore on. Violet dragged herself to her bed again, and lay there
all afternoon while Ransome hung about the house and garden, unable to
think, unable to work, or take an interest in anything. He was oppressed
by a sense of irremediable calamity.
At four o'clock he made tea and took it to Violet in her room.
She sat up, weak and submissive, and drank, crying softly.
She turned her face to him as she sank back on her pillow. "I'm sorry,
Ranny," she said; "but you shouldn't have married me. I'm not that sort.
I told you; and you see."
He could not remember when she had ever told him. But it was clear that
he saw. For he said to himself, "They say a lot of things they don't
mean when they're like this."