Chapter Eleven.
With Bobby’s return to college, life for Prudence reverted to the old dreary routine of ceaseless exasperating duties and increasingly curtailed liberty. She had a strong suspicion that the sisterly supervision which she was conscious was being exercised was carried out at brother William’s suggestion. Although there was no one, with the exception of the curate, to tempt her to indiscreet behaviour it was very obvious that she was not trusted to venture abroad without one of her sisters to chaperon her.
Prudence found this irksome at first, and set herself, sometimes successfully, to evade their united vigilance; but after one or two apparently accidental encounters with the curate, who appeared astonishingly in the most unexpected places and joined her on her stolen walks, she accepted the new development with a meekness which agreeably surprised her family, and discomfited the curate.
It was the curate’s quietly resolved manner, his air of exaggerated conspiracy, that drove Prudence to this unusual submissiveness. She knew quite well that the little man was making up his mind to propose to her, and she did not wish to give him the opportunity. Her decision was taken abruptly, after meeting him one day on the high road along which she was walking briskly with her back to the tall chimneys and her face to the wind and the little village which lay half-way between Wortheton and the junction town which connected it with the busier world from which it held aloof. The curate was cycling from the opposite direction. He was due to attend a meeting within the half-hour and had barely time to arrive at the appointed place; but when he came face to face with Prudence he alighted nimbly from his machine, and, pulling off a heather mixture glove, extended an eager hand. For a moment she allowed him to hold hers in his grip, and found herself wondering while she faced him which of his admirers had knitted the gloves for him. Then she withdrew her hand and remarked, for the lack of something more interesting to say, that the wind was boisterous.
“Yes,” he said; “you have it against you. Why not face about? It’s a great help at one’s back.”
This suggestion Prudence considered artful without being brilliant. She had no desire for his company on the return journey.
“I love to feel it in my face,” she said. “And since you prefer it behind it is well we are travelling in opposite directions.”
But the curate was not to be disposed of so easily. He turned his cycle and fell into step beside her. Prudence was taller than he; he was obliged to look up from under the wide brim of his hat when regarding her, a reversal of the usual order which occasioned him secret vexation.
“One so seldom gets a chance of seeing you alone,” he said. “I suppose it is because you are so much younger that your sisters make so much of you. They care for you tremendously. It is beautiful to observe their devotion.”
This view of her family’s watchful mistrust as a manifest sign of their devotion was new to Prudence and afforded her amusement. She wondered whether he was altogether sincere in what he said, or if he were indulging in unsuspected satire.
“I find it a little trying sometimes to be the family pet,” she returned demurely. “The position is rather like that of the cat of the house which gets called indoors when it would prefer to remain in the garden. I wonder myself at times why the cat obeys the summons.”
He experienced a little difficulty in following her train of thought.
“It’s thinking of the milk, I suppose,” he suggested, whereat Prudence laughed.
“I dare say that explains it—economic dependence explains many uncomfortable things. I haven’t much sympathy with the domesticated cat,” she added. “She should ignore the call, and remain in the garden and eat birds.”
“Surely,” he said, a little pained, “you wouldn’t wish it to do that? It’s so cruel.”
“So is eating mutton,” she answered flippantly; “but we all do it.”
He digested this for a moment, found no adequate answer, and turned the conversation.
“I was thinking of you as I rode,” he said, in tones into which he threw an inflection of tenderness which she could not fail to detect. “I scarcely dared to expect so much happiness as to meet you like this. You are a tremendous walker. Do you realise how far you are from home?”
He still hoped to induce her to turn and walk back with him. He would be late for his meeting in any case. He was too mentally flurried to decide how he should explain the defection: he was not very ready at invention; but the sight of Prudence’s fair indifferent face drove him to the verge of recklessness; no consideration at the moment was strong enough to tear him from her side.
“The farther the better,” Prudence answered. “I am walking into the sunset.” She turned her face to the westering sun and the warm glow in the sky that lit its declining glory. “When I turn about I see only the chimneys; they blot out everything for me.”
“But one can’t see them from this distance,” he insisted, and paused and looked back to verify his statement.
Prudence smiled faintly.
“I can,” she said. “I see them even in my dreams.”
“I think myself they look rather fine,” he said. “The red bricks against the trees are arresting.”
“Yes,” she agreed, and smiled at him more directly. He felt that he had struck a happy note and was unnecessarily elated.
“All great industries appeal to me,” he continued as they walked on again. “I’m tremendously interested in the factory—and in the workpeople. They are so human and yet simple. I enjoy working among them. And Mr Graynor is so generous. The workpeople think very highly of him. I have been very happy in my labours since coming here.”
Prudence, missing the guile in this, looked at him in astonishment.
“Really!” she said. “You are easily pleased.”
“You think so?” He drew a little nearer to her; his disengaged hand, hanging at his side, brushed lightly against hers. “I don’t think that myself. But you see I have met much kindness here, and—forgive my saying so—it is such a happiness in itself to know you. I doubt whether you understand what a priceless pleasure that is to me.”
“It is very flattering of you to say so,” Prudence broke in hastily, and not so much turned the conversation as jerked it into an impersonal channel. “Look at that gorgeous splash of red on those clouds. Isn’t it just as though they were catching fire?”
“Yes,” he said in a flattened voice, feeling the rebuff; “it’s very fine.”
“Isn’t it? And that warm light on the trees... You can see it spreading along the branches. They’re all aglow. If it could only last!”
“‘The light of the whole world dies when day is done,’” quoted the curate sentimentally, and gazed in rapt admiration upon her face which was all aglow too, but owed nothing of its colour to the sunset. “You look like one inspired,” he added. “I wish I could sketch you as I see you now.”
Prudence made an impatient movement.
“I don’t believe you care a bit for beautiful scenery,” she said.
“I do,” he assured her eagerly. “I admire everything beautiful. I... Never mind the sunset now. I’m thinking of you. I can’t think of anything else. I want to—”
“Oh!” she interrupted, with a note of sharp relief in her voice, and turned an embarrassed face in the direction of a solitary pedestrian, who appeared opportunely round a bend in the road, and slowly advanced, bearing a bundle in her arms, which at first the girl failed to recognise for an infant, wrapped in an old shawl. “There’s some one I want to speak to,” she said, and blessed Bessie Clapp for her timely appearance—“some one I know.”
“I’ll wait,” he said, still resolute though considerably ruffled at the interruption.
Prudence regarded him frowningly.
“No,” she insisted, “you mustn’t wait. I want to see her alone. I shall walk back with her.”
“That isn’t altogether kind,” he said—“to dismiss me. But I may see you another time?”
He held out his hand and waited. If he expected a direct answer to his tentative suggestion, he was disappointed. Prudence shook hands hurriedly, murmured a breathless good-bye, and left him to mount his cycle and ride in unclerical mood to his neglected meeting, where he accounted for his unpunctuality by confessing to a puncture which he omitted to explain was caused by a thorn which he had painstakingly placed in the road and ridden over when a quarter of a mile from the town. Which proves what an amount of trouble a conscientious person will take in the insincere evasion of a direct lie.
Prudence meanwhile advanced to meet the girl in the road. As the distance between them decreased she discovered that what the other carried in her arms was not an inanimate bundle, as she had supposed, but a little child. Instantly her interest quickened. The unexpected appearance of Bessie Clapp had seemed to her merely opportune at a moment when any diversion would have been welcome, but the sight of Bessie with a baby in her arms—presumably her own baby—caught her attention away from her immediate concerns and brought the other’s affairs into greater prominence. She had always believed that this girl had been hardly dealt by, and no one had ever considered it worth while to enlighten her. Prudence’s sense of justice was in arms, and her liking for Bessie, whom she had known from childhood, awoke anew at sight of the beautiful tragic face with its look of passionate antagonism. She halted in the girl’s path and accosted her with disarming friendliness.
“I’m so glad to meet you,” she said. “I thought you had left this neighbourhood altogether.”
“There are some as would like to make me leave,” said Bessie Clapp, her dark unsmiling gaze on the fair tranquillity of the younger, happier face. “I’ve been badgered enough. We’m living in the little village down over the hill.”
“Just five miles away! And I never knew.” Prudence bent suddenly over the bundle in her arms. “Is this your child?” she asked.
“Yes; he’s mine.”
There was proprietorship but no pride in the admission. It was Prudence’s hand which pulled the covering away from the tiny face.
“Oh!” she said, and half drew back, and then bent again compassionately over the ugly little mottled piece of humanity in the beautiful young mother’s arms. “I’ve never seen so young a baby before. What do you call him?”
“He isn’t christened,” the sullen voice responded. “I’ve no patience with those silly customs.”
“But,” began Prudence, and looked perplexed, “he’ll have to have a name of his own some time.”
“We call ’im William,” the young mother volunteered. “There’s no need for cold water splashing over that. If ’e don’t like ’is name later on, ’e can change it.”
Prudence, steering away from the subject, replaced the shawl over the little face and impulsively held out her arms.
“Let me carry him,” she said. “I’d love to; and you are tired. Where were you taking him?”
“To the farm yonder, among the trees. I get milk for ’im there. ’E’s been weaned these three weeks.”
The exchange from the girl-mother’s arms to the younger arms extended eagerly to receive their burden was effected silently. Prudence walked on proudly, bearing her unaccustomed charge with a sense of new responsibility suddenly acquired. She loved the feel of the little warm body against her heart; the nestling pressure of this soft helpless thing, which lay so confidingly within the shelter of her arms, roused in her the strong protective maternal instinct which is every woman’s heritage. In her pity for its puny helplessness she forgot the sense of shock which the first glimpse of the repellently ugly wrinkled face had occasioned her, forgot the circumstances of its unfortunate birth, and the more recent revelation that it had not been received into the Church, was not in any sense of the term a Christian; she realised only that she held in her arms that most wonderful of all things, a new generation; and felt in her heart the warm glow of protective love for this weak little morsel of humanity, born into an unwelcoming world—a love child who was denied love. The unfair conditions of the child’s birth awoke her utmost compassion. She felt resentful against its unknown father, against the injustice of the world’s judgment, which throws discredit on maternity rather than on illicit love. The greatest crime of this unwedded mother, Prudence recognised, lay in the fact that she had brought a child into the world.
“He must be a great comfort to you,” she said gently. “A baby makes up for a lot.”
Bessie Clapp laughed harshly.
“Ban’t many as think like you,” she said. “They wouldn’t agree with you at Court Heatherleigh.”
And Prudence, thinking of Agatha, and Matilda’s pink shocked face, of brother William’s austere principles, and her father’s cold disapproval at the mere mention of Bessie’s name, could not contradict this. They would have been scandalised, and she knew it, could they have seen her walking with this outcast, and carrying the outcast’s baby in her strong young arms.
Chapter Twelve.
The meeting with Bessie Clapp set Prudence’s mind working in new directions. She realised, with an immense pity and a growing wonder for the complexities of human emotions, that this girl, whose motherhood had come to her in circumstances which the world surrounds with contumely and disgrace, had no love for the child of her unlawful passion. She had allowed Prudence to discover that. But for the fear of consequent punishment, she had admitted with bitterness that she would do away with the baby. She confessed too to a hatred of its father.
Prudence wondered whether this unnatural dislike for her own offspring resulted from the shame with which its birth had covered her, or was the inevitable consequence of the revulsion of feeling which had swept from her heart every kindly emotion which must have drawn her once towards the man she now professed aversion for. The man who had injured her had a lot to answer for. If ever it lay in her power to hurt him in return it was fairly certain that she would not hesitate to use her opportunity. The silence which she maintained in regard to his name was no guarantee of a wish to shield him; it suggested rather a caution which awaited its hour to strike.
The meeting left Prudence with a feeling of depression. It did not decrease her pity, but it lessened her liking for the girl to discover her attitude of bitter resentment against the helpless mite she had brought into the world. And it set her thinking about marriage in a new light. Was it possible to cease to love a man one had loved once passionately? And could a woman grow to hate the children of a loveless marriage? If these matters were beyond the control of human will power, it seemed that it might be so. Here was an example of it anyway, though it might be a bad example. Until that talk with Bessie Clapp it had never occurred to Prudence that a woman could dislike her own child. It was one of the inexplicable problems of life.
Prudence reached home to discover that she was late. Miss Agatha met her in the hall, already dressed for the evening meal, which was the most important function of the day, and at which no one was expected to put in a tardy appearance. Miss Agatha glanced from the warning face of the great clock at the foot of the staircase to the sweet flushed face of her young sister, and from thence to her dust-soiled shoes.
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “Don’t you see the time?”
“I’ll hurry,” Prudence answered. “It won’t take me three minutes to change. I’ve been for a tramp.”
“You have a deceitful habit,” Miss Agatha admonished her, “of slipping away from the house without informing anyone. If you were less selfish it might occur to you that your sisters would like to accompany you occasionally. I can’t understand why you prefer to walk alone.”
“I shall be late,” Prudence said, with her foot on the stair, “if I stay to go into that now.”
And with a rebellious face she ran upstairs, leaving Miss Agatha, aghast and indignant, looking up from the foot of the staircase after her vanishing figure. Prudence was getting altogether out of hand.
“She tramps the country,” William affirmed on learning the trouble, “like a factory girl. I won’t have my sister making herself so noticeable—mooning about the lanes and hanging over stiles. It—it isn’t respectable.”
“I wish,” Miss Agatha said, meanly shifting responsibility, “that you would put your foot down. If you were firm she might possibly respect your wishes. I can do nothing with her.”
“M’m!” William coughed gently, and assumed an expression which he hoped conveyed the air of inflexibility he deemed suited to the responsible position thus conferred on him. “I’ll see to it,” he said; and felt relieved when the gong sounded in advance of Prudence’s entry, and so deferred the moment for exercising his authority.
He was less confident than Agatha that firmness on his part would produce the result desired. He had in mind the occasion when he had insisted upon an apology before the resumption of fraternal relations with his young sister. He had maintained a dignified silence until the thing threatened to become ridiculous, and still the apology had not been forthcoming: he had been forced to capitulate; and the memory of that defeat rankled. But the lesson had been salutary in so far that it discouraged him from straining his authority to a point whence it aggravated to open revolt. Defiance was a quality which defeated William’s statesmanship.
Prudence came running down the stairs as the rest of the family crossed the hall on the way to the dining-room.
“You ran it pretty close, Prue,” her father said, as she took the last couple of stairs at a jump and landed laughing beside him. He patted the little hand she slipped within his arm.
“You are precisely two minutes late,” Miss Agatha observed. “I think you might have made a greater effort to be punctual.”
“I might, of course, have slid down the banisters,” Prudence retorted.
“Tut, tut!” Mr Graynor patted the small hand again in gentle reproof. “You are tomboy enough without scandalising us to that extent.”
Save that he held his head a little higher on passing behind her to his seat at table, William disregarded her presence, a sign by which Prudence recognised that she was once again in disgrace. It occasioned her therefore something of a shock when William approached her later during the evening and requested a few minutes of her time. He had something of importance, he announced, which he wished to say. This request in its unexpectedness deprived her for the moment of breath. She was attracted by his speech and puzzled. She found herself wondering amazedly what kind of confidence William intended to repose in her. William found her silence embarrassing; he had expected her to give him a cue. He cleared his throat, nervously fingering the arrangement of his tie. Prudence began to feel sympathetic. She believed he was about to confess to some romantic attachment, although there was not, so far as she knew, any woman of their acquaintance likely to inspire sentiment in him. If William were in love, that might account for his preoccupation during dinner.
“Please give me your whole attention,” he said, which was a superfluous remark even for a commencement; it was so obvious that he was receiving what he asked for. “It is a little difficult for me, a little—ahem!—embarrassing to say what I wish to say in view of your inexperience.”
This confirmed Prudence’s suspicion. She smiled at him encouragingly.
“Oh! I expect I’ll understand,” she said kindly. “It’s nice of you to tell me, anyhow.”
He was taken aback, and he showed it. He had never known Prudence so amenable before; her attitude discountenanced him slightly.
“I am glad you take so sensible a tone,” he returned; “it makes my task easier. I do not wish to find fault; your conduct is indiscreet rather than blameworthy. You ought to realise that it is not seemly for a young girl in your position to tear about the country as you do. I am not sure that in a factory town it is altogether safe. In any case it gets you talked about. It distresses your sisters; it distresses me. It lays you open to misapprehension. Why should you wander about the roads alone?”
“Oh! Is that all?” Prudence’s smile had changed in quality; kindliness made way for irony. “How do you know I do wander alone?” William reddened angrily.
“I should be sorry to insult you by supposing the contrary,” he replied with restrained annoyance. “No one in this house credits you with being other than thoughtless. Your behaviour shows a great want of consideration for your family.”
“It wasn’t until to-day that I realised you were all so devoted to me,” Prudence returned with suspicious meekness. “I have yet to get accustomed to that idea. So much family affection is embarrassing.”
“If you are going to adopt that outrageous tone,” William observed with a resumption of dignity, “I have nothing further to say.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Prudence reassured him. “You haven’t left much unsaid. You have filled my mind with a lot of new ideas that make it feel like a rubbish heap. If the roads are not safe for a girl to walk along, it is time some one saw to it that they were made so. As for being talked about, no one with a decent mind would make matter for talk where there was none. Are you quite sure, William, that your own mind doesn’t need a little tidying up? Your workpeople at least are your responsibility. If you have any dubious characters among them, turn them away—as you turned away Bessie Clapp.”
William’s face was crimson. He rose and stood looking down at her with the look of a man who feels himself deeply insulted.
“You forget yourself,” he said. “How dare you mention that woman’s name to me?”
“I have held that woman’s child in my arms to-day,” she answered quietly. “I think perhaps that gives me the courage.”
He bent swiftly and caught her by the shoulder.
“So that’s how you spend your time?” he said, staring into her steady eyes. He emitted an ugly laugh and pushed her roughly from him. “A decent-minded girl would shrink from such contact.”
She smiled coldly.
“It is only the decent mind that does not fear these things,” she answered, and turned away from the look in his eyes, which was not good to see.
It was by a great effort at control that he refrained from striking her. He spluttered for words. Confronted with her cool disdain, anger overcame him. He felt himself at an immense disadvantage.
“You are impossible!” was all he could find to say.
Prudence, thinking over the scene later, while leaning from her window with the night wind cooling her heated face, wondered what was wrong with herself that this spirit of antagonism should flame forth at the slightest provocation. Why could she not endure William, and suffer his little homilies with patience? Why should Agatha’s constant fault-finding irritate her to the verge of desperation? If she were possessed of a vein of humour, she told herself, these things would merely afford amusement. But they did not amuse. They were slowly souring a naturally sweet disposition.
Big tears welled in the blue eyes, hung for a space on her lashes, and fell like silver dew upon the rose-leaves beneath the sill—hot tears that sprang from the well of discontent which had its source in a vain longing for unattainable things.
Chapter Thirteen.
The troubles of youth are none the less real because to riper age they appear trivial in the retrospect. In the constant fret against the irksome restrictions of her life Prudence’s sunny nature fought under unequal conditions, with the result that the sun suffered many an eclipse. In one of these depressed moods she wrote to Bobby to the effect that she felt unequal to holding out until he came home for good, and that if matters did not improve the desperation of the situation would drive her to elope with the curate.
“The sole consideration which deters me,” she added, “is that Jones is such an impossible name.”
“What’s in a name?” Bobby wrote back airily. “You’re safe, old girl, if you jib at a little thing like that.”
The curate, failing to meet Prudence alone and wearying of being fenced with, took a mean advantage of her at the annual Sunday-school treat, and secluding her in a corner of the playing-field with her class of infants, set the infants running races and came rather abruptly to his point.
“I love to watch you with little children,” he remarked with disconcerting suddenness. “You have such a wonderful sympathy with them.”
“I like children,” she answered guardedly; and tried to gather the babies about her; but the curate was throwing sweets for them, and they preferred scrambling for these to clinging to teacher’s hands. There is a time for everything.
“So do I,” he said, attentively scrutinising her averted face, and admiring the fine colour in her cheeks which a new quality in his voice had brought there. “Children in the home make home beautiful.”
He swept the field with his glance, and decided that his chance was short-lived and might not come again. He plunged desperately.
“I want to marry,” he said, hurriedly, and threw a further quantity of sweets to the children and turned more directly towards her. “I have been waiting so long for an opportunity of saying this to you that you will forgive me if I seem a little abrupt and choose my time inopportunely. I never see you alone now. You cannot have failed to observe how deeply in love I am. You are so sweet and gentle that I feel you will be kind. I want a little encouragement.” He paused expectantly. “I may go on?” he asked, when she took no advantage of his hesitation. “You will give me a little hope?”
Prudence turned her face and met his eyes fully. There was no possibility of mistaking his meaning.
“No, please don’t,” she said. “I don’t want you to say any more. I hoped you would see it wasn’t any use. I’m sorry.”
The curate although a vain man, had never felt very confident of winning her. He wanted her quite urgently; but he was not so deeply in love with Prudence as he was with himself, and the certainty of defeat wounded his pride more than it wounded his feelings. He had no intention of giving her the satisfaction of being in a position to say that she had refused him. He dissembled meanly, congratulating himself on the clever ambiguity with which he had worded his proposal.
“I am sorry you have formed that opinion,” he said, trying to keep the chagrin he felt from betraying itself in his voice. “You are so much with her that I believed you would enjoy her entire confidence, and I was vain enough to expect a little encouragement. But I am not going to accept your opinion as final. I shall make my appeal to her. Perhaps I ought to have done so in the first instance; but a man feels naturally diffident at these times.”
The play of expression on Prudence’s face while she listened to his stilted sentences was remarkable. He would have been very obtuse if he believed that he succeeded in deceiving her. It was very evident that she apprehended him very clearly. A little smile hovered about her mouth when she replied to him.
“If it is Matilda you allude to,” she said, with an ambiguity equal to his own, “I wish you all the success you deserve.”
He raised his hat gravely and left her, carrying the bag of sweets with him, to the manifest disgust of the staring infants; and Prudence, watching his hurrying little figure making its purposeful way through the different groups in search of his unconscious quarry, laughed quietly and without malice, despite his ungenerous effort to humiliate her.
“Now I shall have a new enemy in my brother-in-law,” she reflected. “He is marrying the chimneys. But Matilda will be too grateful to him to resent that.”
Matilda was grateful. She was sufficiently overcome with the honour thus conferred on her to satisfy even Mr Jones’ colossal vanity. Mr Jones accepted his triumph with becoming condescension; to describe his air as elated would be misleading. His manner towards his affianced wife, who was several years his senior, and had never been handsome, was benevolently patronising. His courtship was business-like, and free from those affectations of silly sentiment so unsuited to his calling. If Miss Matilda regretted the lack of lover-like attentions, she concealed her disappointment, clinging insistently to the belief that everything that Ernest did was right and dignified. It would have been unbecoming in a clergyman to be demonstrative.
“I used to think,” she confessed to Prudence in a moment of rare confidence, “that it was you he admired. You remember how he used to persist in accompanying us on our walks, and how he talked principally with you? All the while he was thinking of me. He told me so. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“He has the sense,” Prudence answered, and kissed the flushed face kindly, “to realise that you will make the best wife in the world for a clergyman.”
And she thought of Bobby’s epithet, “money-grubbing little worm,” and decided that it aptly fitted Ernest.
Bobby chaffed her about the curate, affecting to believe she had suffered a disappointment.
Prudence did not confide in him the tale of the curate’s duplicity; loyalty to Matilda kept her silent on that subject. But her wrathful disgust was roused on the day of Matilda’s wedding, when Mr Jones, claiming the privilege of a brother, caught her unprepared in the hall and kissed her unsuspecting lips.
“If you ever take such a liberty with me again,” she said, white and angry, “I will make you the laughing-stock of Wortheton.”
He assumed an air of dignity while conscious of looking ridiculous. Her words, her tone in uttering them, lashed him into a rage of hatred that cured him finally of any tender thought he had cherished in regard to her. He spoke of her later to his wife as ill-mannered and ungentle of temper, a description which, while holding it to be ungenerous, occasioned Matilda considerable comfort. She had felt uneasily jealous of Prudence at times, even during the days of her brief engagement. Mr Jones had shown such predilection for the society of the younger sister that Matilda, like Leah, was made to realise the humiliating position of the substitute. Her faith in his uprightness did not allow of disbelief; besides which his ill-natured criticism of her young sister carried conviction; his tone expressed cordial dislike.
“Fuller acquaintance with her reveals her more objectionable qualities,” he said. “I believed her to be a nice, simple girl, but she is certainly not that.”
“Prudence is very warm-hearted,” Matilda said weakly in defence of the absent. “But father spoils her a little.”
“He makes a fool of her,” was the bridegroom’s unclerical retort.
Thus Matilda left the home of her childhood, seated beside her husband in the carriage which was to take them to the junction, and to the back of which Bobby, with a sense of the eternal unfitness of things, had tied one of Matilda’s discarded shoes. Not even the thought of the comfortable dowry which went with the gentle Matilda had the power to lighten Mr Jones’ lowering countenance during the long drive to the station, and Mr Graynor had behaved with quite surprising generosity in the matter of settlements. The hard ring in Prudence’s voice, when she had threatened to make a laughing-stock of him, the expression of disgust on her white face, hit his pride hard. And he dared not offend her further from the wholly unnecessary fear that she would put her threat into execution. He knew that he had paid her marked attention, and that Wortheton was aware of his preference. If she chose to spread tales about him they would not lack credence.
His frown deepened when he felt his wife’s gloved hand timidly feeling for his; then he roused himself with an effort and responded to the gentle pressure of her fingers.
“It’s nervous work getting married,” he said, with an uneasy laugh. “The fuss and the crowd... every one staring. Phew!”
Matilda sympathised with him; she had felt nervous also.
“I’m glad it’s over—oh! so very glad—and happy, dear.”
“Blithering ass, isn’t he?” was Bobby’s cheerful comment, when, turning from watching the vanishing carriage, he found Prudence beside him, looking unusually tall and womanly in her bridesmaid’s dress of soft blue, with a hat with cornflowers in it shading her face. “Come along, and drink to their connubial bliss in another bumper of champagne.”
He filled her glass for her and one for himself.
“Cheer up,” he cried, and raising his glass, grinned at her over the brim. “There are more Joneses than one in the sea. You needn’t sport the willow so openly. It’s indecent. Here’s to their health, wealth, and happiness! It will be wealth for him, anyway—cute little beast!”
Prudence became aware of her father surveying them from the doorway with a tired smile on his bored and worried face. He had slipped away from his guests, who lingered aimlessly on the lawn, and followed them indoors. She persuaded him to take a seat beside her and drink a glass of his own very excellent champagne.
“It’s jolly good stuff. You did them awfully well, sir,” said Bobby enthusiastically approving. “We’ve given Wortheton something to think about. It’ll be Prue’s turn next.”
“There’s plenty of time for Prudence,” Mr Graynor said—“plenty of time.”
He found himself looking at her in her unfamiliar dress, surprised, as Bobby had been, by the womanliness he realised for the first time. It disconcerted him.
“Weddings are a nuisance; they upset the household,” he said. “I wish all these people would go.”
“They are like the wasps,” said Bobby; “they’ll hang about so long as the grub’s there. I’ll go out and clear them off.”
He left the room by the window. Mr Graynor looked after him, and meeting Prudence’s eye, exchanged a smile with her.
“The assurance of youth!” he remarked. “You and I, we’ve had enough of them, Prue.” He regarded her again more attentively. “That blue dress is very becoming to you, my dear.”
Prudence flushed warmly. His appreciation recalled to her mind the light of admiration in the curate’s eyes, his quick hungry swoop towards her, the eager furtiveness of his kiss—the first time that a man’s lips had touched hers, other than the members of her family. But he belonged to the family in a sense—a wretched little hanger-on, catching at the overflow from the Graynor pockets.
“If it is becoming, I don’t believe you like it very well,” she said.
“It makes you look old—perhaps that’s why,” he answered, and thought with regret of the little girl who had given place to this tall and gracious young woman.
Chapter Fourteen.
Matilda’s departure from the family circle made strangely little difference. She had made no particular place for herself in the home which she had occupied for thirty years, had established no claim on any member of her family. If anyone missed her, it was Prudence: Matilda had been the most amiable of her elder sisters; but she had never been in any sense of the word a companion. The first Mrs Graynor’s family, with the exception of the younger son, were none of them companionable; they were self-contained and reserved, and lacking in those qualities of individuality and initiative which make for the breaking away from tradition and the following a line of one’s own. Matilda was naturally submissive. She had submitted uncomplainingly to Agatha’s rule all her life; and she left one submission for another, and, in accordance with the dictates of the marriage service, which Prudence considered degrading and Matilda thought beautiful, became subject willingly to the dominating and not particularly chivalrous authority of her husband. Had Mr Jones succeeded in winning the sister whom he had coveted, he would have found this comfortable arrangement of relationship reversed. There was no aptitude for submission in Prudence.
On one point after Matilda’s marriage Prudence was firm: she refused to be chaperoned on her walks by one of the remaining sisters. Matilda’s presence she had suffered as a protection against the curate’s advances; since these advances were no longer to be dreaded, she refused to be shadowed in future, and in order to escape from the annoyance took to cycling, a form of exercise which none of the elder Miss Greynors would attempt.
Her cycling took her far afield, and brought many new pleasures into her life. Miss Agatha tried to veto the idea; but Prudence, backed by her father’s permission, and in possession of a fine new machine which he bought for her, defied opposition and rode forth whenever the weather permitted in quest of new experiences. Sometimes she met with adventures, and got into unexpected and informal conversations with strangers encountered surprisingly in little outlying villages where she dismounted to rest and quench her thirst. Cycling in its early stages is very thirsty work. She never mentioned those experiences at home; not that she was naturally secretive, but she held a strong conviction that such harmless amusement would meet with disapproval; and life had taught her that it is wisest to avoid unpleasantness.
And once she met with an accident. That had to be admitted because it could not by any means be suppressed.
It was a silly sort of accident, which an experienced rider might have averted; and it left her injured in temper as much as physically hurt. The bicycle suffered the greater damage. She was free-wheeling down hill with a broad open road ahead and nothing more formidable to pass than a leisurely farm cart, crawling up the steep incline, accompanied by an amiable sheep-dog which, until the cycle came abreast with it, was ambling comfortably within the shade at the back of the cart. Apparently the sight of the girl on the cycle excited it. It rushed forward unexpectedly and, barking vociferously, got in front of her wheel. Prudence swerved violently in order to avoid it, overbalanced herself, and, before she quite realised what was happening, found herself in the road inextricably mixed up with her crumpled machine. The dog, its feet planted deeply in the white dust, barked in enjoyment of this new kind of game.
The farmer pulled up his horse, and looked down upon their grouping with an expression of stolid amiability.
“’E won’t ’urt ’ee,” he called out reassuringly, and whistled to the dog, which, disregarding its owner, continued to bark gleefully at the débris.
Prudence lifted a face pale with indignation to the speaker.
“’E won’t ’urt ’ee,” he repeated, and in case she needed further reassurance, added comfortably: “’E’s done it afore. ’E’s that friendly. But you needn’t be afraid; ’e won’t hurt.”
“Afraid!” she ejaculated, and sat up and looked around for her hat. “He’s done all the mischief he can. Get down, please, and wheel my machine as far as the cottage. I’ll have to rest.”
It dawning upon the man for the first time that the lady was annoyed with him, he proceeded to obey her instructions, curiously little resentful of her anger. While Prudence painfully regained her feet he righted the disabled cycle, and, after a glance at his horse to assure himself of his intention to stand, half-wheeled half-carried the machine to a cottage at the bottom of the hill, and propped it against the wall of the house.
“’E’s that friendly,” he reiterated, gently admonishing the dog which accompanied them delightedly. “’E always runs up to folk like that. ’E’s done it afore. But ’e wouldn’t ’urt anyone. It’s just friendliness.”
Prudence found nothing to say. She was already ashamed of her heat; but the man’s amiable indifference exasperated her. This was due, not to any want of consideration, but to rustic obtuseness. He was urgently anxious to reassure her in regard to the dog; ladies were scared as a rule of dogs; he was also desirous of returning to his cart, the horse having views of its own about standing. He knocked on the cottage door, quite unnecessarily; two girls, who had witnessed the accident, having already appeared in the entrance. One of them was laughing immoderately, as though she considered the affair a huge joke, enacted for her special amusement; the other, and older girl, favoured her with a reproving look.
“Young lady’s met with a accident,” the man explained. “The dog done it; ’e’s that friendly. She wants to rest a bit.”
He left it at that, and hurried back to his cart. The elder girl invited the stranger to come inside, and the younger, following them, stood in the doorway, laughing. Prudence showed her annoyance.
“It wasn’t so funny as you seem to think,” she said, surveying her from a chair in indignant surprise.
“I know,” the girl replied, her laughter trailing off into spasmodic giggles. “I don’t know what makes me keep laughing. But it was funny seeing you in the road, an’ the bicycle an’ all. It made me fair screech. I’m glad you’re not hurt.”
“You’d like a glass of water, I expect?” said the older girl; and the younger, as if desirous of atoning for her misplaced merriment, hurried away to fetch it.
“I don’t know how I shall get home,” said Prudence, who was more concerned with this difficulty than with her bruises, although these were more considerable than she had thought at first. She had wrenched her ankle badly. “I’m ten miles from Wortheton, and my machine is twisted hopelessly—even if I could ride it, which at present I don’t feel equal to doing. Could I get a conveyance near here?”
“No,” answered the girl. “There’s nothing but that cart that’s gone on. I don’t know what you’ll do.”
They were not very helpful people, and there was no other house within sight. Prudence began to fear that she would be hung up there for the night. She wondered whether for a consideration the girl who had laughed so immoderately would walk to the nearest village and secure some sort of conveyance. She regretted that she had not commandeered the cart of the man whose dog was responsible for the mishap, but events had been too hurried to allow her time to realise the difficulties of getting home in her damaged condition. She appealed to the girl, who still stood surveying her with a wide grin of amusement, and who seemed by no means eager to undertake the mission. She looked out along the dusty road and up the steep hill, down which Prudence had sped to her undoing, and hesitated; then she picked up a hat which was lying on a chair and remarked that she would go up the road a bit and see if anyone were about.
Prudence sat on in the room, waiting in the company of the sister, with a blank feeling of hopelessness for the next event. This when it befell was so altogether unexpected that at the moment when she first caught sight of a motor, with the girl who had set forth on her reluctant search seated in the back, she almost discredited her senses. But the motor came to a stop in the roadway before the house, and the other girl, springing up and going to the window, remarked explanatorily over her shoulder:
“It’s Major Stotford in his car. That’s a rare bit of luck for you. I suppose Lizzie stopped him. She’s got a cheek. He’s lord of the manor over to Liscombe. It’s all his property about here.”
Lizzie burst in in great excitement.
“It’s all right,” she cried; “the Major’ll drive you. Only you must be quick; he hates to be kept waiting.”
She ran out again, and stood in the road staring admiringly at the rather heavy, handsome man who remained at the steering wheel, and only looked round when Prudence, walking with an unmistakable limp, emerged from the house, with the other girl behind her, and approached the car. With his first casual glance at her the look of indifference gave immediate place to an expression of very real interest. What he had expected he hardly knew, certainly not what he saw. He raised his cap, and with an alertness he had not yet displayed, left the wheel and opening the door of the car stepped into the road.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” said Prudence. “It’s most awfully kind of you to come to the assistance of a stranger. I fear it will trespass on your time. I live at Wortheton; that’s ten miles from here.”
“Wortheton!” he said, and smiled charmingly. “My time is not so valuable that so heavy a call upon it need worry you. I’ll sprint you home under the half-hour.”
He held the door for her and helped her up. Lizzie had occupied the back seat, but plainly he preferred to have Prudence beside him.
“Is that your cycle?” he asked. “You have had a spill.”
“Yes. It will need to visit the doctor before I can ride it again,” she said, and turned a look of regret on the damaged machine.
“So will you, by the look of things,” he remarked, and scrutinised her more closely.
Prudence leaned down to take her farewell of, and recompense the sisters, who, sober enough now, watched the proceedings with interest.
“I’ll send out for the cycle to-morrow,” she said.
But Major Stotford saw no necessity for leaving the cycle behind.
“It will go in the back all right. We might as well take it along,” he said, and lifted it into the car.
Lizzie, considerably more obliging than heretofore, lent a hand. When he had settled the machine he took his seat beside Prudence.
“Anyone we pass will conclude that I’ve run you down, and that I’m taking home the pieces,” he said, smiling at her with curious intimacy, as the car took the long hill, and the girl leaned back white and weary against the cushions. He drew a flask from his pocket and handed it to her. “Don’t look so horrified. If you could see the colour of your face you would realise as surely as I do that this is what you need. Take a good pull at it and you’ll feel better.”
“I begin to believe that the lamp on my bicycle must once have belonged to Aladdin,” Prudence said with a quiet little laugh of enjoyment. “I rubbed it to some purpose in the dust of the road. Whatever I require appears.”
Major Stotford laughed with her. The thought in his mind, which he was careful not to express in words, was that she carried the magic within her. He leaned forward and altered the pace of the car, which had been running at top speed.