The Combined Maze

by May Sinclair

If the idea of divorce had been appalling five years ago, it was still more appalling now. Since, after all, poor Violet had removed herself so far and kept so quiet, the scandal of her original disappearance had somehow diminished with every year, while, proportionately, with every year, the scandal, the indecency, the horror of the Divorce Court had increased, until now it seemed to be a monstrous thing.

And that Ranny should have chosen this time of all times! When they'd paid off all the creditors and got clear, and stood respected and respectable again. As if his poor father's insolvency, which, after all, he couldn't help (since it was the Drug Stores that had ruined him), as if that wasn't enough disgrace for one family, he must needs go and rake up all that awful shame and trouble, after all these years, when everybody had forgotten that there had been any trouble and any shame.

That was what Mrs. Ransome found so hard to bear. And that she had been deceived; that he should have let her go on thinking that it wasn't possible, up to the last minute (it was Saturday and he was going to the lawyer on Monday), she who had the first right to be told.

All these years he had deceived her. All these years he had meant to do it the very minute he had got his rise.

For Ransome had attained the summit of his ambition. He was now a petty cashier with a pen all to himself at the top of the counting-house, and an income of two hundred a year. Short of making him assistant secretary (which was ridiculous) Woolridge's could do no more for him.

And Winny Dymond (Mrs. Ransome reflected bitterly), though he hadn't been free to speak to her, though he was practically (it didn't occur to Mrs. Ransome that what she meant was theoretically) a married man, Winny had known it all the time.

It was extraordinary, but Mrs. Ransome, who was really fond of Winny, felt toward her more acute and concentrated bitterness than she had felt toward Violet, whom she hated. She was able to think of Ranny's first wife as poor Violet, though Violet had made him miserable and destroyed his home and had left him and his children. And the thought of his marrying Winny Dymond was intolerable to Mrs. Ransome, though she had recognized her as the one woman Ranny ought to have married, the one woman worthy of him, and she would have continued to welcome her in that capacity as long as Ranny had refrained from marrying her.

For Ranny's mother knew that in Violet her motherhood had had no rival. Violet's passion for Ranny, Ranny's passion for Violet, had not robbed her of her son. Violet, not having in her one atom of natural feeling, and caring only for her husband's manhood and his physical perfection, had left to Mrs. Ransome all that was most dear to her in Ranny. Married to Violet, he was still dependent on his mother. He clung to her, he deferred to her judgment, he came to her for comfort. If he had been ill it was she and not Violet who would have nursed him. Whereas Winny would take all that away from her. She would take—she could not help taking—Ranny utterly away; not from malice, not from selfishness, not because she wanted to take him, but because she could not help it. She was so made as to be all in all to him, so made as to draw him to her all in all. There would be absolutely nothing of Ranny left over for his mother, except the affection he had always felt for her, which, for a woman of Mrs. Ransome's temperament, was the least thing that she claimed. Her instinct had divined Winny infallibly, not only as a wife to Ranny, but as a mother. A mother Winny was and would be to him far more than if she had used her womanhood to bear him children.

So that, without the smallest preparation, she saw herself required at six months' notice to give up her son. And while she blamed him for not having told her, she overlooked the fact that if she had been told she could not have borne the knowledge. It would have poisoned for her every day of the eight hundred and forty-five days for which in her ignorance she had been so happy.

She did not attempt to deny that she had been happy. But what she had said to Ranny when he told her was, "It's a mercy your poor father doesn't know."