He looked at her, and for a moment it revived, it stirred in his heart, that odd mingled sense of absurdity and tenderness.
She would come back, he told himself; she would come back. Meanwhile he could call his soul his own, to say nothing of his body. Under all the shock of it Ransome felt a certain relief in realizing that Violet Usher had gone. It was as if some danger, half discerned, had been hanging over him and had gone with her.
But winter and spring passed, and she did not come back. They passed monotonously, like all the springs and winters he had known. He had got his rise at Michaelmas; but he was free from the obsession of the matrimonial idea and all that he now looked forward to was an indefinite extension of the Athletic Life.
In June of nineteen-four he entered for the Wandsworth Athletic Sports. He hoped to win the silver cup for the Hurdle Race, against Fred Booty, as he had done last year.
Wandsworth was sure of its J. R. F. Ransome. Putney and Wimbledon, competing, were not sending any better men than they had sent last year. And this year, as Booty owned, Ransome was "a fair masterpiece," a young miracle of fitness. His admirable form, hitherto equal to young Booty's, was improved by strenuous training, and at his worst he had what Booty hadn't, a fire and a spirit, a power, utterly incalculable, of sudden uprush and outburst, like the loosening of a secret energy. When he flagged it would rise in him and sting him to the spurt. But, while it made him the darling of the crowd, it was apt to upset the betting of experts at the last minute.
There is a level field not far from Wandsworth which is let for football matches and athletic sports. Railings and broken hedges and a few elm trees belt the field. All round the space marked out for the contest, a ring of ropes held back the straining crowd; and all round, within the ring, went the course for the mile-flat race. Down one side of the field, facing the Grand Stand, was the course for the jumping, for the hundred yards' flat race, and for the hurdle race, which was the last event. On this side, where the crowd was thickest, the rope was supplemented by a wooden barrier.
The starting-post was on the right near the entrance to the field; the winning-post on the left directly opposite the Grand Stand. Those who could not buy tickets for the Grand Stand had to secure front places at the barrier if they wished to see anything.
Here, then, there was a tight-packed line of men and women, youths and girls, with an excited child here and there squeezed in among them, or squatting at their feet under the barrier. Here were young Tyser and Buist and Wauchope of the Polytechnic, who had come to cheer. And here, by the winning-post, well in the front, having been there since the gates were open, were Maudie Hollis and Winny Dymond, in flower-wreathed hats and clean white frocks. Behind, conspicuous in their seats on the Grand Stand as became them, were Mr. and Mrs. Randall, and with them was Ranny's mother.
For all these persons there was but one event—the Hurdle Race. For all of them, expectant, concentrated on the imminence of the Final Heat, there was but one distraction, and that was the remarkable behavior of a young woman who had arrived too late for a satisfactory place among the crowd.