Thus nineteen-seven, that dreadful year, rolled over into nineteen-eight. By nineteen-ten, at the very latest, Ransome looked to get his divorce. He had no doubt that he could do it, for he found it far less expensive to live with his mother at Wandsworth than with Violet at Granville. He knew exactly where he was, he had not to allow so considerably for the unforeseen. His income had a margin out of which he saved. To make this margin wider he pinched, he scraped, he went as shabby as he dared, he left off smoking, he renounced his afternoon cup of tea and reduced the necessary dinner at his A B C shop to its very simplest terms.

The two years passed.

By January, nineteen-ten, he had only paid off what he already owed. He had not raised the thirty pounds required for his divorce. Indomitable, but somewhat desperate, he applied to his Uncle Randall for a second loan at the same interest. He did not conceal from him that divorce was his object. He put it to him that his mind was made up unalterably, and that since the thing had got to be, sooner or later, it was better for everybody's sake that it should be sooner.

But Mr. Randall was inexorable. He refused, flatly, to lend his money for a purpose that he persisted in regarding as iniquitous. Even if he had not advanced a further sum to young Randall's father, he was not going to help young Randall through the Divorce Court, stirring all that mud again. Not he.

"You should wash your dirty linen at home," he said.

"You mean keep it there and never wash it. That's what it comes to," said young Randall, furiously.

"It's been kept. And everybody's forgotten that it's there by this time. Why rake it up again?" said his Uncle Randall.

And there was no making him see why. There was no making any of them see. Mrs. Ransome wouldn't hear of the divorce. "It'll kill your Father, Ranny," she said, and stuck to it.

And Ranny set his mouth hard and said nothing. He calculated that if he put by twelve shillings a week for twenty-five weeks that would be fifteen pounds. He could borrow the other fifteen in Shaftesbury Avenue as he had done before, and in six months he would be filing his petition.

As soon as he was ready to file it he would tell Winny he cared for her. He would ask her to be his wife.

He had not told any of them about Winny. But they knew. They knew and yet they had no pity on him, nor yet on her. When he thought of it Ranny set his face harder.

Yet Winny came and went, untroubled and apparently unconscious. She was not only allowed to come and go at Wandsworth as she had come and gone at Granville, by right of her enduring competence; she was desired and implored to come. For if she had (and Mrs. Ransome owned it) a "way" with the children, she had also a way with Mrs. Ransome, and with Mr. Ransome. The Humming-bird, growing weedier and weaker, revived in her presence; he relaxed a little of his moroseness and austerity. "I don't know how it is," said Ranny's mother, "but your Father takes to her. He likes to see her about."

Saturday afternoons, and Sundays, and late evenings in summer were her times, so that of necessity she and Ranny met.

Not that they pleaded necessity for meeting. Since his awful enlightenment and maturity, Ransome had never thought of pleading anything; for he did not hold himself accountable to anybody or require anybody to tell him what was decent and what wasn't. And Winny was like him. He couldn't imagine Winny driven to plead. She had gone her own way without troubling her head about what people thought of her, without thinking very much about herself. As long as she was sure he wanted her, she would be there, where he was. He felt rather than knew that she waited for him, and would wait for him through interminable years, untroubled as to her peace, profoundly pure. He was not even certain that she was aware that she was waiting and that he waited too.

In the spring of nineteen-ten it looked as if they would not have very long to wait. He had measured his resources with such accuracy that by June, if all went well, he could set about filing his petition.

And now, seeing the thing so near and yet not accomplished, Ranny's nerve went. He began to be afraid, childishly and ridiculously afraid, of something happening to prevent it. He had a clear and precise idea of that something. He would die before he could file his petition, before he could get his divorce and marry Winny. His heart to be sure was better; but at any moment it might get worse. It might get like his father's. It might stop altogether. He thought of it as he had never thought of it before. He humored it. He never ran. He never jumped. He never rode uphill on his bicycle. He thought twice before hurrying for anything.

Against these things he could protect himself.

But who could protect him against excitement and worry and anxiety? Why, this fear that he had was itself the worst thing for him imaginable. And then worry. He had to worry. You couldn't look on and see the poor old Humming-bird going from bad to worse, you couldn't see everybody else worrying about him, and not worry too. He would go away and forget about it for a time, and when he came back again the terrible and intolerable thing was there.

And at the heart of the trouble there was a still more terrible and intolerable peace. It was as if Mr. Ransome had made strange terms with the youth and joy and innocent life that had once roused him to such profound resentment and disgust. His vindictive ubiquity had ceased. When the spring came he could no longer drag himself up and down stairs. His feet and legs were swollen; they were like enormous weights attached to his pitifully weedy body. His skin had the sallow smoothness, the waxen substance that marked the deadly, unmistakable progress of his disease. He could not always lie down in his bed. Sometimes he lived, day and night, motionless in his invalid's chair, with his legs propped before him on a footrest. He would sit for hours staring at them in lamentable contemplation. He could measure his span of life from day to day as the swelling rose or sank. On his good days they wheeled him from his bedroom at the back to the front sitting-room.

And through it all, as by some miracle, he preserved his air of suffering integrity.

It was quite plain to Ranny that his father could not live long. And if he died? Even in his pity and his grief Ranny could not help wondering whether, if his father died any time that year, it would not make a difference, whether it would not, perhaps, at the last moment prevent his marrying?

Partly in defiance of this fear, partly by way of committing himself irretrievably, he resolved to speak to Winny. He desired to be irretrievably committed, so that, whatever happened, decency alone would prevent him from drawing back. Though he could not in as many words ask Winny to marry him before he was actually free, there were things that could be said, and he saw no earthly reason why he should not say them.

For this purpose he chose, in sheer decency, one of his father's good days which happened to be a fine, warm one in May and a Saturday. He had arranged with Winny beforehand that she should come over as early as possible in the afternoon and stay for tea. He now suggested that, as this Saturday was such a Saturday as they might never see again, it would be a good plan if they were to go somewhere together.

"Where?" said Winny.

Wherever she liked, he said, provided it was somewhere where they'd never been before. And Winny, trying to think of something not too expensive, said, "How about the tram to Putney Heath?"

"Putney Heath," Ranny said, "be blowed!"

"Well, then—how about Hampton Court or Kew?"

But he was "on to" her. "Rot!" he said. "You've been there."

"Well—" Obviously she was meditating something equally absurd.

"What d'you say to Windsor?"

But Winny absolutely refused to go to Windsor. She said there was one place she'd never been to, and that was Golder's Hill. You could get tea there.

"Right—O!" said Ranny. "We'll go to Golder's Hill."

"And take the children," Winny said.

Well, no, he rather thought he'd leave the kids behind for once.

"Oh, Ranny!" Voice and eyes reproached him. "You couldn't! You may never get a day like this again."

"I know. That's why," said Ranny.

The kids, Stanley, aged three, and Dossie, aged five, understanding perfectly well that they were being thrown over, began to cry.

"Daddy, take me—take me," sobbed Dossie.

"And me!" Stanley positively screamed it.

"I say, you know, if they're going to howl," said Ranny.

"You must—"

"That's it, I mustn't. They can't have everything they choose to howl for."

"There," said Winny. "See! Daddy can't take you if you cry. He can't, really."

(She had gone—perfidious Winny!—to the drawer where she knew Stanley's clean suit was. Stanley knew it too.)

The children stopped crying as by magic. With eyes where pathos and resentment mingled they gazed at their incredible father. Tears, large crystal tears, hung on the flame-red crests of their hot cheeks.

Winny turned before she actually opened the drawer.

"Who wants," said she, "to go with Daddy?"

"Me," said Dossie.

"Me," said Stanley.

"Well, then, give Daddy a kiss and ask him nicely. Then perhaps he'll take you."

And they did, and he had to take them. But it was mean, it was treacherous of Winny.

"What did you do that for, Winky?" he said, going over to her where she rummaged in the drawer.

"Because," she said, "you promised."

"Promised what?"

"Promised you'd take them. Promised Stanny he should wear his knickers. They told me you'd promised."

And he had.

"I forgot," he said.

"They'd never have forgotten."

She was holding them, the ridiculous knickers, to the nursery fire.

It took ten minutes to get Stanley into them, into the little blue linen knickers he had never worn before, and into his tight little white jersey; and then there was Dossie and her wonderful rig-out, the clean, white frock and the serge jacket of turquoise blue and the tiny mushroom hat with the white ribbon. It took five minutes more to find Stanley's hat, the little soft hat of white felt, in which he was so adorable. They found it on Ranny's bed, and then they started.

It was a great, an immense adventure, right away to the other side of London.

"We'll take everything we can," said Ranny. And they did. They took the motor bus to Earl's Court Tube Station, and the Tube (two Tubes they had to take) to Golder's Green. The adventure began in the first lift.

"Where we goin'?" the children cried. "Where we goin', Daddy?"

"We're going down—down—ever so far down, with London on the top of us—All the horses"—Winny worked the excitement up and up—"All the people—All the motor buses on the top of us—"

"On top of me?"

"And on me?" cried Dossie. "And on Daddy and on Winky?"

"Will it make us dead?" said Stanley. He was thrilled at the prospect.

"No. More alive than ever. We shall come rushing out, like bunny rabbits, into the country on the other side."

Ever so far down into the earth they went, with London, and then Camden Town, and then Hampstead Heath—a great big high hill—right on the top of them; and then, all of a sudden, just as Winny had said, they came rushing out, more alive than ever, into the country, into the green fields.

But there was something wrong with Ranny. He wasn't like himself. He wasn't excited or amused or interested in anything. He looked as if he were trying not to hear what Winny was saying to the children. He was abstracted. He went like a man in a dream. He behaved almost as if he wanted to show that he didn't really belong to them.

Of course, he did all the proper things. He carried his little son. He lifted him and Dossie in and out of the trains as if they had been parcels labeled "Fragile, with Care." But he did it like a porter, a sulky porter who was tired of lifting things; and they might really have been somebody else's glass and china for all he seemed to care.

Ranny was angry. He was angry with the little things for being there. He was angry with himself for having brought them, and with Winny for having made him bring them; and he was angry with himself for being angry. But he couldn't help it. Their voices exasperated him. The children's voices, the high, reiterated singsong, "Where we goin'?" Winny's voice, poignantly soft, insufferably patient, answering them with all that tender silliness, that persistent, gentle, intolerably gentle tommy-rot.

For all the time he was saying to himself, "She doesn't care. She doesn't care a hang. It's them she cares for. It's them she wants. It's them she's wanted all the time. She's that sort."

And as he brooded on it, hatred of Winky, who had so fooled him, crept into his heart.

"Oh, Daddy!" Dossie shouted, with excitement. (They had emerged into the beautiful open space in front of Golder's Green Station.) "Daddy, we're bunnies now! We'll be dea' little baby bunnies. You'll be Father Bunny, and Winky'll be Mrs. Mother Bun! Be a bunny, Daddy?"

Perceiving his cruel abstraction, Dossie entreated and implored. "Be it!"

But Daddy refused to be a bunny or anything that was required of him. So silent was he and so stern that even Winny saw that there was something wrong. She knew by the way he let Stanny down from his shoulder to the ground, a way which implied that Stanny was not so young nor yet so small and helpless as he seemed. He could walk.

Stanny felt it; he felt it in the jerk that landed him; but he didn't care, he was far too happy.

"He's a young Turk," said Winny, and he was. By his whole manner, by the swing of his tiny arms, by his tilted, roguish smile, by his eyes, impudent and joyous (blue they were, like his mother's, but clear, tilted, and curled like Ranny's), Stanny intimated that Daddy was sold if he imagined that to walk was not just what Stanny wanted. And in spite of it he was heartrending, pathetic; so small he was, with all his baby roundness accentuated absurdly by the knickers.

"He's just such another as you, Ranny," Winny said. (She was uncontrollable!) "Such a little man as he is, in those knickers."

"Damn his knickers," said Ranny to himself, behind his set teeth. But he smiled all the same; and by the time they had got into the wonderful walled garden of Golder's Hill he had recovered almost completely.

It was not decent to keep on sulking in a place which had so laid itself out to make you happy; where the sunshine flowed round you and soaked into you and warmed you as if you were in a bath. The garden, inclosed in rose-red walls and green hedges, was like a great tank filled with sunshine; sunshine that was visible, palpable, audible almost in its intensity; sunshine caught and contained and brimming over, that quivered and flowed in and around the wall-flowers, tulips and narcissus, that drenched them through and through and covered them like water, and was thick with all their scents. You walked on golden paths through labyrinths of brilliant flowers, through arches, tunnels and bowers of green. You were netted in sunshine, drugged with sweet live smells, caged in with blossoms, pink and white, of the espaliers that clung, branch and bud, like carved latticework, flat to the garden wall.

Neither could he well have sulked in the great space outside, where the green lawns unrolled and flung themselves generously, joyously to the sun, or where, on the light slope of the field beyond, the trees hung out their drooping vans, lifted up green roof above green roof, sheltering a happy crowd.

And even if these things, in their benignant, admonishing, reminding beauty, had not restored his decency, he was bound to soften and unbend, when, as they were going over the rustic bridge, Stanny tried to turn himself upside down among the water lilies. And as he captured Stanny by a miracle of dexterity, just in time, he realized, as if it had been some new and remarkable discovery, that his little son was dear to him.

By slow stages, after many adventures and delays, they reached the managerie on the south side.

"Oh, Daddy, Daddy, look at that funny bird!"

Dossie tugged and shouted.

In a corner of his yard, round and round, with inconceivable rapidity and an astounding innocence, as if he imagined himself alone and unobserved, the Emu danced like a bird demented. On tiptoe, absurdly elongated, round and round, ecstatically, deliriously, he danced. He danced till his legs and his neck were as one high perpendicular pole and his body a mere whorl of feathers spinning round it, driven by the flapping of his wings.

"He is making an almighty fool of himself," said Ranny.

"What does he do it for, Daddy?"

"Let's ask the keeper."

And they asked him.

"'E's a Emu, that's what 'e is," said the keeper. "That's what he does when he goes courtin'. Only there won't be no courtin' for him this time. 'Is mate died yesterday."

"And yet he dances," Winny said.

"And yet he dances. Heartless bird!" said Ranny.

They looked at the Emu, who went on dancing as if unobserved.

"Scandalous, I call it," Ranny said. "Unfeelin'."

"Perhaps," said Winny, "the poor thing doesn't know."

"Per'aps he does know, and that's why he's dancin'."

Winny gazed, fascinated, at the uplifted and ecstatic head.

"I know," she said. "It's his grief. It's affected his brain."

"It's Nacher," said the keeper, "that's what it is. Nacher's wound 'im up to go, and he goes, you see, whether or no. It's the instint in 'im and the time of year. 'E don't know no more than that."

"But that," said Winny, "makes it all the sadder."

She was sorry for the Emu, so bereaved and so deluded, dancing his fruitless, lamentable dance.

"He is funny, isn't he?" said Stanny.

And they went slowly, spinning out their pleasure, back to that part of the lawn where there were innumerable little tables covered with pink cloths, set out under the trees, and seated at the tables innumerable family parties, innumerable pairs of lovers, pairs of married people, pairs of working women and of working girls on holiday; all happy for their hour, all whispering, laughing, chattering, and drinking tea.

On the terrace in front of the big red house were other tables with white covers under awnings like huge sunshades, where people who could afford the terrace sat in splendor and in isolation and listened to the music, played on the veranda, of violins and cello and piano.

Ransome and Winny and the children chose a pink-covered table on the lawn under a holly tree in a place all by themselves. And they had tea there, such a tea as stands out forever in memory, beautiful and solitary. What the children didn't have for tea, Ranny said, was not worth mentioning.

And after tea they sat in luxurious folding-chairs under the terrace and listened to the violins, the cello, and piano. Other people were doing the same thing as if they had been invited to do it, as if they were all one party, with somewhere a friendly host and hostess imploring them to be seated, to be happy and to make themselves at home.

And down the slope of the lawn, Stanny and Dossie rolled over and over in the joy of life. And up the slope they toiled, laughing, to roll interminably down.

And the moments while they rolled were golden, priceless to Ranny. Winny, seated beside him on her chair, watched them rolling.

"It's Stanny's knickers," she said, "that I can't get over!"

"I don't want to hear of them again" (the golden moments were so few). "You make me wish I hadn't brought those kids."

"Oh, Ranny!" Her eyes were serious and reproachful.

"Well—I can't get you to myself one minute."

"But aren't we having quite a happy day?" she said. "What with the beautiful flowers and the music and the Emu—"

"You were sorry, Winky, for that disgraceful bird, and you're not a bit sorry for me."

"Why should I be?"

"My case is similar."

Her eyes were serious still, but round the corners of her mouth a little smile was playing in secret by itself. She didn't know it was there, or she never would have let it play.

"Don't you know that I want to say things to you?"

She looked at him and was frightened by the hunger in his eyes.

"Not now, Ranny," she said. "Not yet."

"Why not?"

"I want"—she was desperate—"I want to listen to the music."

At that moment the violins and the cello were struggling together in a cry of anguish and of passion.

"You don't," he said, savagely.

He was right. She didn't. The music, yearning and struggling, tore at her heart, set her nerves vibrating, her breast heaving. It was as if it drew her to Ranny, urgently, irresistibly, against her will.

"Not now, Ranny," she said, "not now." And it was as if she asked him to take pity on her.

"No," he said. "Not now. But presently, when I see you home."

"No. Not even then. Not at all. You mustn't, dear," she whispered.

"I shall."

They sat silent and let the music do with them as it would.

And the sun dropped to the fields and flooded them and sank far away, behind Harrow on the Hill. And they called the children, the tired children, to them and went home.

Stanny had to be carried all the way. He hung on his father's shoulder, utterly limp, utterly helpless, utterly pathetic.

"He's nothing but a baby after all," said Winny.

They were going over Wandsworth Bridge.

"Do you remember, Ranny, the first time you ever saw me home, going over this bridge? What a moon there was!"

"I do. That was a moon," said Ranny.

There was no moon for them to-night.

It was in a clear twilight, an hour later, that he saw her home.

They went half the way without speaking, till they came to the little three-cornered grove beside the public footpath. It was deserted. He proposed that they should sit there for a while.

"It's the only chance I'll ever get," he said to himself.

She consented. The plane trees sheltered them and made darkness for them where they sat.

"Winky," he said, after an agonizing pause, "you must have thought it queer that I've never thanked you for all you've done for me."

"Why should you? It's so little. It's nothing."

"Do you suppose I don't know what it is and what you've done it for?"

"Yes, Ranny, you know what I did it for, and you see, it's been no good."

"How d'you mean, no good?"

"It didn't do what I thought it would."

"What was that?"

"It didn't keep poor Vi and you together."

"Reelly"—She went on as if she were delivering her soul at last of the burden that had been too heavy for it—"I can see it all now. It did more harm than good."

"How do you make that out?"

"D'you mind talking about it?"

"Not a bit."

"Well, don't you see—it made it easier for her. It gave her the time and everything she wanted. If I hadn't been there that night she couldn't have gone, Ranny. She wouldn't have left the children. She wouldn't, reelly. And I hadn't the sense to see it then."

"I'm glad you hadn't."

"Oh, why?"

"Because then you wouldn't have been there. I knew you were trying to keep it all together. But it was bound to go. It couldn't have lasted. She'd have gone anyhow. You don't worry about that now, do you?"

"Sometimes I can't help thinking of it."

"Don't think of it."

"I won't so long as you know what I did it for."

He meditated.

"I know what you did it for in the beginning. But—Winks—you were there afterward."

"Afterward—?"

"After Virelet went you were doing things."

"Well—and didn't you want me?"

"Of course I wanted you. Did you never wonder why I let you do things? Why I can bear to take it from you? Don't you know I couldn't let any other woman do what you do for me?"

"I'm glad if you feel like that about it."

"I don't believe you've any idea how I feel about it. I don't believe you understand it yet." His voice thickened.

"I couldn't have let you, Winny, if I hadn't cared for you. I should have been a low animal, a mean swine to let you if I hadn't cared. I'm not talking as if my caring paid you back in any way. I couldn't pay you back if I worked for you for the rest of my life. But that's what I'm going to do if I can get the chance."

She could feel him trembling beside her and she was afraid.

"Would you let me?" he said. "Would you have me, Winny? Do you care for me enough to have me?"

"You know I've always cared for you."

"Would you marry me if I was free?"

"Don't talk about it, dear. You mustn't."

"And why mustn't I?"

"It's no good. You're not free. You married Vi, dear, and whatever she's done you can't un-marry her."

"Can't I? That's precisely what I can do; and it's what I'm going to do."

"You're not. You couldn't."

It seemed to him that she shrank from him in horror.

"You don't understand. You're talking as if she and I cared for each other. That's at an end. It's done for. She's asked me to divorce her."

"Asked you? When?"

"More than two years ago, and I promised. She wants to marry Mercier, and she'd better. I'd have been free two years ago if I'd had the money. But I've got it now. I've been saving for it. I've been doing nothing else, thinking of nothing else from morning till night for more than two years, because I meant to ask you to marry me."

"All that time?"

"All that time."

"But Ranny, you know you needn't. I'm quite happy."

"Are you?"

"Yes. You mustn't think I'm not and that you've got to make anything up to me, because that would make me feel as if I'd—there's a word for it, I know, but I can't think of it. It's what horrid girls do to men when they're trying to get hold of them—as if I'd comp—comprised—"

"D'you mean compromised?"

"Yes."

"I make you feel as if you'd compromised me?"

"That's right."

"Well, I am jiggered! If that doesn't about take the biscuit! Winky, you're a blessing, you're a treasure, you're a treat; I could live for a fortnight on the things you find to say."

He would have drawn her to him, but she held herself rigid.

"Well, but—I haven't—have I?"

"If you mean, have you made me want to marry you, you have. Haven't I told you I've thought of nothing else for more than two years?"

"D'you want it so badly, Ranny?"

"I want you so badly. Didn't you know I did? Of course you knew."

"No, Ranny, I didn't. I thought all the time perhaps some day poor Virelet would come back."

"She'll never come back."

"But, if she did? If she changed her mind? Perhaps she's changed it now and wants to come back and be good."

"If she did I wouldn't take her."

He felt her eyes turn on him through the dark in wonder.

"But you'd have to. You couldn't not."

"I could, and I would."

"No, Ranny, you wouldn't. You'd never be cruel to poor Vi."

"Don't talk about her. Don't think about her."

"But we must. There she is. There she's always been—"

"And here we are. And here we've always been. Have you ever thought for a minute of yourself? Have you ever thought of me? I'm sick of hearing you say 'poor Vi.' Poor Vi! D'you know why I won't take her back? Why I can't forgive her? It's not for what you know she's done. It's for something you never knew about. I've a good mind to tell you."

"No—don't. I'd rather not know. Whatever it was, she couldn't help it."

"You ought to know. It was something she did to you."

"She never did anything to me, Ranny."

"Didn't she? She did something to me that came to the same thing. I suppose you think I cared for her before I cared for you?"

"Well—yes."

"I didn't then. It was the other way about. And she knew it. And she lied to me about you. She told me you didn't care for me."

"She told you—?"

"She told me."

"I didn't think that Virelet would have done that."

"Nor I."

She paused, considering it.

"How did you find out it was a lie, Ranny? Oh—oh—I suppose I showed you—"

"Not you. She owned up herself."

"When?"

"That night she went off. She wrote it in that letter. She told me why she did it, too. It was because she knew I cared for you and was afraid I'd marry you. She wasn't going to have that. Now you know what she is."

"Why did you believe her?"

"Why, Winky, you, you little wretch, you took care of that all right."

"But, Ranny, if you cared for me, why did you marry her?"

"Because I was mad and she was mad, and we neither of us knew what we were doing. It was something that got hold of us."

"Aren't you mad now, Ranny?"

"Rather! But I know what I'm doing all the same. I didn't know when I married Violet."

"Don't talk as if you didn't care for her. You did care."

"Of course I cared for her. But even that was different somehow. She was different. Why do you bother about her?"

"I'm only wondering how you'd feel if you was to see her again."

"I shouldn't feel anything—anything at all. Seeing her would have no more effect on me than if she was a piece of clockwork." He paused.

"I say—you're not afraid of her?" he said.

"No. I've been through all that and got over it. I'm not afraid of anything."

"You mean you're not afraid to marry me?"

"No. I'm not afraid."

He felt her smile flicker in the darkness.

It was then that in the darkness he drew her to him, and she let herself be drawn, her breast to his breast and her head against his shoulder. And as she rested there she trembled, she shivered with delight and fear.