In April Ransome looked confidently for Violet to "settle down." Mrs. Usher had assured him again and again that the next month would bring the blessed change.
"She'll be all right," said Mrs. Usher, "when the nurse goes and she has you and Baby to herself."
And at first it seemed as though Violet's mother knew what she was talking about.
April put an end to their separation. April, like a second honeymoon, made them again bride and bridegroom to each other. Nature, whom Ranny had blasphemed and upbraided, triumphed and was justified in Violet's beauty, that bloomed again and yet was changed to something almost fine, almost clear; as if its coarse strain had been purged from it by maternity. Something fine and clear in Ranny responded to the change.
And, as in their first honeymoon, Violet's irritation ceased. She was sullen-sweet, with a kind of brooding magic in her ways. She drew him with eyes whose glamour was tenderness under lowering brows; she bound him with arms that, for all their incredible softness, had a vehemence that held him as if it would never let him go; and in the cleaving of her mouth to his there was a savage will that pressed as if it would have crushed between them all memory and premonition. This was somewhat disastrous to fineness and clearness, and Ransome's no doubt would have perished but for the persistence with which he held Violet sacred as the mother of his child.
Her attitude to the child was still incomprehensible to him, but he was beginning to accept it, perceiving that it had some obscure foundation in her temperament. There were moments when he fell back on his old superstition (exploded by the doctor) and told himself that Violet was one of those who suffer profoundly from the shock of childbirth. And in that case she would get over it in time.
But time went on, and Violet showed no signs of getting over it, no signs, at any rate, of settling down. On the contrary, before very long she slipped into her old slack ways. With all her fierce vitality it was as if she had no strength to turn her hand to anything. The charwoman came every week. (That was no more than Ransome was prepared for.)
The charwoman worked heavily against odds, doing all she knew. And yet, in the searching light of summer, it was plain, as Ransome pointed out, that Granville was undergoing a slow deterioration.
First of all, the woodwork cracked and the paint came off in blisters, and the dirt that got into the seams and holes and places stayed there. Granville was visited with a plague of fine dust. It settled on everything; it penetrated; it worked its way in everywhere. Violet, going round languidly with a silly feather brush, made no headway against the pest.