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Updated: June 4, 2025
It was a pity, though, that she didn't take more kindly to the baby, seeing that, after all, the poor little thing was innocent, it didn't know what it had done. Ranny would not have permitted himself this reflection but that a whole fortnight had passed and Violet had not died. Ranny's fatherhood was perturbed by Violet's indifference to the baby.
"Well did you give her any cause for jealousy?" Ranny's mother struck in. "He wouldn't, John." And his Aunt Randall murmured half-audible and shocked negation. Ranny stared at his uncle as if he wondered where he was coming out next. "Of course I didn't." "Are you quite sure about that?" "You needn't ask him such a thing," said Ranny's mother; and Ranny fairly squared himself.
All in a row Ranny's silver prize cups shone again as on the day when he bore them from the field. The smell of dust was gone. Instead of it there came toward him a sweet smell of violets and of woman's hair. On the sofa in the window Violet lay like a suburban odalisk, voluptuous, heavy-scented.
And then his zephyrs and his flannels! Ranny's mother had always seen to them herself. She had washed them with her own hands. Ranny's wife sent them to the laundress, not too often. So that Ranny, the splendid, immaculate Ranny she had fallen in love with, appeared after his marriage a shade less immaculate, less splendid than he had been before.
He broke the news to Winny, sitting with her in their little halfway grove, the place consecrated to Ranny's confidences. "I can't do different," he said, summing it all up. "Of course, you can't. Never mind, dear. Let's go on as we are." It was what Violet had said to him, but with how different a meaning! "But Winky it means waiting years.
He was dressed, and knew that he was dressed, with absolute correctness in the prevailing style, a style that disguised and restrained his increasing flabbiness, whereas, though Ranny's figure was firm and slender, his suit was shabby. Leonard Mercier had the prosperous appearance of a man unencumbered with a wife and family.
It would respond explosively to devices so old, so stale, so worn by repetition, that the wonder was they didn't alienate it, or disgust. The rapid approach and withdrawal of Ranny's hand, his face suddenly hidden behind its pinafore and exposed, still more suddenly, with a cry of "Peep-bo!" its own inspired seizing of Ranny's hair, would move it to delirious laughter or silent strangling frenzy.
And all the time he drank; he drank worse than ever; furtively, continuously he drank. Nobody could stop him, for nobody ever saw him doing it. He did it, they could only suppose, behind Mr. Ponting's back in the dispensing-room. They were free to suppose anything now; for, since Ranny's great delivering outburst, they could discuss it; and in discussion they found relief.
And she was more than ever there after April of nineteen-seven, when the little son was born. The little son that they called Stanley Fulleymore. When he came more and more of Ranny's savings had to go. He didn't care. For he had gone again through deep anguish, again believing that Violet would die, that she couldn't possibly get over it. And she had got over it; beautifully, the doctor said.
There was fright in Violet's eyes. "She's not told me anything. I've got eyes. I can see for myself." "Oh, you've got eyes, have you? Jolly lot you see!" But she was penitent that night and asked Winny to forgive her. She implored her not to leave off coming. And Winny came and went now in pain instead of joy. Everything in Ranny's house pained her.
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