The Combined Maze

they kept i

ied Mr. Ransome, believing with a final and absolute conviction in his wisdom and his goodness. What she was keeping up had kep

ion, his distinction. Fulleymore Ransome had about him the small refinement of the suburban shopk

le of his home. Even there he had contrived to create around it an atmosphere of mystery. So that it was open to Mrs. Ransome to regard each Headache as an accident, a thing apart, solitary and miraculous in its occurrence. Faced with the incredible fact, she found a certain

innermost integrity. Her vision of him was inspired by an innocence and sincerity th

itself under the name of Headache, but in those hours when the Headache cast its intolerable gloom over the household

nd him under the sofa cushions. She was wearing her new slaty-gray gown with the lace collar, and a head-dress that combined the decorum of the bonnet

goin' to chur

ns and said: "Oh, Lord! That

preme instance of

d was carrying it off, successfully, if you like, but still carrying it. Whereas what she desired him to see was th

ernight. It was this habitual consecration of Mr. Ransome that made his last lapse so remarkable and so important, while it revealed it as fortuitous. Ranny had

the brushing of his tall hat, the drawing on of the dogskin gloves he wore in his office. It was not easy for Mr. Ransome to exceed the professional dignity of his frock coat and gr

nsome did not evade it; on the contrary, she used it to

s since He's been sidesman. It's my belief He'd rise up off his deathbed to hand that

im," Rann

on a Sunday morning, that, while it reinstated Ranny's father in his

g, too," his

andsworth. (He had, in fact, a pressing engagement to meet young Tyser at t

to tell him that a spin, on a Sunday, was dissipation, and he, recklessly, ini

n and a mother; and whether it wouldn't be fairer all around, and much more proper, if she was to wear something in the nature of a veil? Then he buttoned up her gloves over her little fat wrists and kissed her in several places where the veil ought to have been; and when he had informed h

l, as it were the cry of his young soul, a shrill song of triumph and

rift. Going the pace, he was, with a vengeance, l

rling of the wheels; scattering his youth to the sun and his strength to the wind in the f

nny on a Su

hat at Sunday dinner his father reached, socially, a very high level. It seemed so to Mrs. Ransome as she bloomed and flushed in a brief return of her beauty above the mutton and the tart. She b

tion was unknown, even to herself. It was by courage and the magic of personality-some evocation of he

they had taken it into their heads that Mr. Ransome was a wise and good man. They had taken it on hearsay, on conjecture, on perpetual suggestion conveyed by Mrs. Ransome, and on the grounds-absolutely incontrovertible-that they had never heard a word to the contrary. Never, until the other day, when that young Merc

o much as born. And by holding their tongues about it and not passing it on they had succeeded in dismissing from their minds, for long intervals at a time, th

upstairs in the best parlor on the front; that Sunday that had been half pleasure and half pain; that strange and ominous Sunday whe

affection was what you looked for from the Randalls, and o

for the greater salience of his big mustache (dark, grizzled like his hair). A man with handsome eyes-prominent, slightly bloodshot, generous eyes. He migh

by the tightness of her Sunday gown. Under her polished hair Mrs. Randall's face shone with a blond pallor. It had grown up gradually round her features, and they, becomi

g her large husband through the doorw

ows. There was a davenport between them, and, opposite, a cabinet with a looking-glass back in three arches. It was Mr. Ransome's social distinction that he had inherited this walnut-wood furniture. Modernity was represe

oked at John Randall and his wife, and smiled and flushed with gladness and with pride. It took so little to make her glad and proud. She was glad that Bessie was wearing the black and white which was so becoming to her. She was glad that there was honey as well as jam fo

he Borough Council, an important man, a man (it was said of him) with "ideas." He was a Liberal; and so, for

tea and abused the Tory Government. Not any one Tory Government, but all Tory Governments. Mr. Ransome said that all Tory Governments were bad. Mr. Randall, aiming at precision, said he wouldn't say they were bad so much as stupid, cowardly, and

it did matter, my boy. It mattered a great deal. Credit was everything, the nation's confidence was everything. A Governm

stare terribly at Mrs. Ransome, who was sending a signal to her

Tory Government, I'll put it for 'em

Fulleymore," s

let him have i

sooner or later, have a war. And w

complicated gesture which implied destruction of all Tory Governments, homage

nd the teapot toward Mrs. Randall, and to whisper agai

ying something. A bit of scrap, now and then, with other nations was, in Ran

with Ranny. He wanted to know whether he, Ranny, t

precisely what he does think. Made

y all treated him as if he

t almost confirmed his father's view of his philosophy. He was working up f

g of this Boer War in especial. If anything"-he weighed it, determined, in his

Randall, "do you sell

mixture, nerve tonic, stom

. Randall, "to a month's booki

t, with a sinister intonation,

all. "Why, Fulleymore, you should ha

andsworth. They all come to Him, whether it's toothache or bronchitis or the influenza, or a housemaid with a whitlow on

s bill he's saved m

ealth. Never knowin' when the night bell won't ring, and He have to g

went on; it flowed round him where he sat morose and remote; and Ranny, in the window seat, was silent, listening with an inscrutable intentness to the three voices that ran on. He marveled at the way they kept it up. When his mother's light soprano broke, breathless for a moment,

ody knew, nobody cared what he was

hat he had forgotten to say anything about it to his mother,

him, thus accentuating and prolonging the unpleasantly, the intolerably festive hour, Mr. Ransome felt that he had been tried to the utmost, and that courtesy and forbearance had go

ht have left the room and sat by himself in the back parlor. But he spared them this humiliation. Outraged as he was, he would not go to the extreme length of forsaking them. He was a good man; and, as a good man, he would not be separated from his family, though he loathed it. So he hung about the room where they were; he brooded over it; he filled it with the

made of it, that intolerable, that incredible Sunday afternoon; how he saw it through; how he got back on it and found in it his

ansome left the room at the summons of the shop-bell. Ranny

cher, ain't he

lf go, addressing

d. You've no ideer of the glee he bottles up inside himself. Fair bubblin' and sparklin' in him, it is. Som

eyes, affected to reprove him. "You dry up, you young

ut of pure light-heartedness. The sound of the hopping brought Mr. Ransome in a fury from the shop below. He s

asked, in a voice that woul

aid Ranny. "

day afternoon. Pandemonium it is. 'Aven't you got all the week for your silly monkey tri

med the doo

sidence, High Street, Wandsworth, Mr. Fulleymore Ransome will give an Entertainment. Humorous Impersonations: Mr. F. Ranso

id his mother, behind

ent, when festivities will conclude with a pe

could take it that way); but this time, through all her

seeing Booty home, she told him what it was.

ou I wouldn't bring strangers in for a bi

say,

d been going to ask her if he mig

e was one that could get away by Hi

scuttles about pretty

s all h

what it had cost her to give him that pitiful hint. He was balancing

long intermissions and most brief. Ranny had ways, soft words, cajoleries, caresses that charmed her in her secret desolation. Balancing himself on the ar

y. "Do you bury yourself in

eed! Get alo

her-nor roses neither. What did God Almig

eak so," said his mot

on't mind," said Rann

o her neck again a

ouldn't do it. You reelly wouldn't. I don't k

ifled with his burrowing. "You fair drive me m

There! You're spoilin

and his mothe

are. If you could see

stroked, not without ten

art, Ran, you'd leave off mak

ave off kissin

en thought of it. He saw her fugitive, swift-darting, rebellious rather than r

foreboding. She said to herself: "When his time comes there'll be n

mfort from