Chapter Twenty.
Prudence poured out the tea while Major Stotford sat with his back to the light, attentively observant of her actions, causing her considerable confusion by the intensity of his regard, and by the fact that he had fallen upon a quite unusual silence and seemed content simply to sit and watch her.
“We must hurry,” she said, handing him a cup. “If I cause them anxiety at home through being late they will make such a fuss about my cycling in future.”
“Oh, Lord!” he murmured. “What a nuisance a family can become. I wish you were an orphan.” He stirred his tea slowly, and smiled at her. “You are living up to your name. Do you know, when I first heard it, I thought it strangely unsuited.”
“I suppose you think me imprudent?” she said, without looking at him.
“No; not that,” he hastened to assure her. “But Prudence is such a Puritanic appellation. It suggests a nun. I’m not sure on the whole that I don’t prefer Imprudence. It’s purely a matter of taste.”
“Never mind my name,” she said, and looked vexed. “You are not the first to discover its unsuitability. Will you have another cup of tea?”
“I haven’t started on my first cup yet,” he answered, and lifted it to his lips to conceal his amusement. “You are in a hurry. See here!” He placed a gun-metal watch on the table beside his plate. “We’ll give it ten minutes. If you attempt to finish under you will ruin your digestion. I would, if permitted a choice, allow half an hour for tea and another half-hour for digestion; but since that doesn’t fit in with your wishes, I sacrifice mine. Try this plum cake; it’s rather good. The woman who runs this place was formerly a servant of mine, and her plum cakes are excellent.”
He cut the cake into generous slices. Prudence took a slice and pronounced it as good as he had promised. Although she had declared that she was not hungry, with the food before her she discovered a very healthy appetite. Her spirits began to revive. After all, it was rather jolly having tea in this quaint place, with the autumn sunshine streaming in through the little window and falling brightly across the tea-table, till the honey in its glass pot shone like liquid amber, and the dahlias, which Major Stotford had removed from the centre of the table because they obstructed his view, were ruby red against the snowy cloth. The sunlight fell too upon the man’s dark hair and showed it thinning on the top and about the temples. Prudence noted these things with interest. She wondered what his age was, and decided that he was older than he appeared. She began to feel more at ease with him. He ate surprising quantities of cake in the limited time at his disposal, and dispatched several cups of tea. At the expiration of the ten minutes he returned the watch to his pocket and rose briskly.
“Time’s up,” he said, coming round to her seat and standing over her with his hand on the back of her chair. “I think I deserve thanks for my self-sacrifice, don’t you?”
Prudence would have risen too, but it was impossible to do so without coming into collision with him. She wished he would not stand so close.
“I can’t see where the self-sacrifice comes in,” she replied. “You made an excellent tea.”
He laughed and leant over her chair, so that their faces were on a level. The expression in his eyes startled her. She jerked back her chair quickly and stood up, but immediately his hand slipped to her arm and held her.
“Do you know,” he said, “I think you are a little afraid of me.”
“Let me go—please!” She was thoroughly alarmed now. The old uneasiness gripped her. She experienced again the sensation of being trapped. And his eyes frightened her. They held hers with strangely compelling force, and there was a look in them such as she had never seen in a man’s eyes before—such as she had never imagined human eyes could express. “I wish you—wouldn’t look at me—like that.”
The grip on her arm tightened. He drew her close to him, and his other hand came to rest on her shoulder, slipped round her shoulders and held her.
“Look into my eyes,” he said. “Don’t be frightened. There is nothing to be frightened about.”
“Oh, please!” said Prudence, near to tears. “Let me go.”
“In a minute,” he returned softly. “I’ve something to say first. You shy child, what are you afraid of? I’ve a great affection for you. You are the dearest, sweetest little girl I have met for many a long year. I want to be friends—now and for ever. And I’m going to seal the compact right here.”
Swiftly with the words his clasp of her became vicelike. It was useless for Prudence to struggle against him. Her resistance served only to strengthen his resolve. He crushed her to him, set his lips to hers, and kissed her—kissed her with a passion that was as a flame which burned into her soul. Then he released her; and she fell back with a gasp of anger, her face white, her eyes ablaze with rage and mortification. She leaned with her clenched hand upon the tablecloth, panting and inarticulate. He turned to give her time to recover, picked his cap up from a chair, and faced round again deliberately.
“I couldn’t help it,” he said; “you were so sweet. I’ve been wanting to do that all the time. Don’t look so tragic. I won’t offend again.”
“How dare you?” she breathed; and with difficulty he forced back the smile that threatened to break over his features. That was exactly what he had expected her to say, what he had known she would say, as soon as she found any voice to speak with.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Upon my soul, I don’t know how it happened. I’m sorry—to have annoyed you. I’m not sorry about anything else. I had to kiss you.”
“I want,” Prudence said, with a faint sob in her voice, “to go home.”
“You aren’t angry with me?” he said, and became suddenly humble. “You aren’t going to punish me? I’m really ashamed of my roughness. Forgive me. Say you forgive me. I will not offend again. Please...”
“I will never willingly speak to you again,” Prudence said. “If I had any means at all of getting back without you I wouldn’t drive with you now. Please don’t say any more. Let us start at once.”
“You are as hard as a piece of flint,” he said, “for all your sweetness. I didn’t think you could be so unkind. Come then!”
He opened the door for her and followed her into the passage. From across the passage the sound of merry voices broke upon their ears. Major Stotford glanced in the direction from whence the sounds came, and then glanced curiously at Prudence. She walked on, very erect and quiet, with a white chilled face, and a hurt look in her eyes, seeming to notice nothing.
Once during the drive back he broke the silence which up to that moment had endured between them since they had taken their seats in the car. He had been driving at top speed; but they were nearing the inn where they had left the bicycle, and he slowed the car down and turned his face towards his quiet companion.
“Prudence,” he said, “you aren’t for keeping it up, are you? I’ve apologised. I’m really awfully sorry. Let bygones be bygones, won’t you? I wish I hadn’t made such an ass of myself. You surprised and delighted me. I didn’t think you’d take it like that.”
“Major Stotford,” Prudence returned with her face averted, “I have never given you permission to use my name.”
He reddened angrily, turned his attention to the steering and made no response. Nothing further passed between them. He let the car out, taking, with a recklessness that at another time would have made the girl nervous, the sharp curves of the winding road. Had they met any traffic along the road his driving would have caused an accident, as it was he nearly ran down a cyclist whom they overtook, and who saved himself and his machine by riding into the hedge.
Prudence’s heart stood still on perceiving the cyclist. She had taken one swift look at him as they rushed past, had met his eyes fully, eyes in which indignation yielded to amazement and a most unflattering criticism as they rested upon her face, which from white flamed swiftly to a shamed distressed crimson in the moment of mutual recognition.
The Rev. Ernest Jones extricated himself and his bicycle from the hedge and pursued the racing car. Why he pursued it he could not have explained; he had certainly no hope of overtaking it, and he had no idea that the car would come to a standstill shortly after passing him. He discovered it half a mile further on at the bottom of the hill, with Major Stotford standing beside it, and Prudence in the road, holding her bicycle which the man at the inn had brought out for her. These proceedings were nothing short of astounding. Mr Jones felt they needed explaining. He put on a fresh spurt, and in a cloud of dust rode almost into Prudence, and alighted.
Major Stotford uttered an exclamation of disgust and started to beat the dust from his clothes, while Prudence silently regarded her brother-in-law, and he in turn surveyed the general grouping with manifest disfavour in his curious eyes.
“You are riding home,” he said to Prudence, not in the manner of a question, but simply stating a fact. “I will accompany you—when you are ready.”
“I am ready now,” she answered, and led her bicycle into the middle of the road.
Major Stotford, still beating the dust from his clothes, did not look round. Mr Jones held his bicycle ready; he had no intention of mounting until he had seen Prudence in the saddle. Instantly with the placing of her foot on the pedal, Major Stotford swung round and approached her. He held out his hand to her.
“Just for appearances,” he said in an undertone. “You must... It’s too silly... parting like that—before him.”
She shook hands gravely. He put his hand to his cap and stepped back.
“Good-bye,” he called after her. “Sorry you couldn’t come for a longer spin. I’m off to-morrow.”
He paid no attention to Mr Jones, who was already in pursuit of Prudence, and ringing his bell fussily; he turned his back on him and went into the inn for the purpose of washing some of the curate’s dust from his throat, reflecting while he did so that, had Prudence been more reasonable, she would have avoided the parson. Despite the fact that he felt annoyed with her, he regretted the complication of the meeting which he foresaw would create new difficulties for her.
“He’ll tell of course,” he mused. “He’s the sneaking sort of little cad who feels it his special mission in life to use the lash where he can. Well, she ran into it, poor little Imprudence!”
Chapter Twenty One.
Mr Jones was spared the necessity of describing the conditions under which he had met Prudence by Prudence’s own frank confession immediately on her arrival at the house. She was either too proud to appeal to Mr Jones’ generosity, or she did not credit him with the possession of this quality. He had quite expected an appeal from her, urging him to secrecy in the matter, and was a little uncertain as to the attitude he should adopt. But he was fully determined to improve the occasion with spiritual advice and a little brotherly reproof; also he intended that she should thoroughly appreciate his magnanimity in shielding her from the consequences of her very indiscreet behaviour. And she spoilt his pleasing rôle by refusing to give him the cue. This annoyed him, and showed him plainly that his first duty was to his father-in-law, who had every right to be informed of his daughter’s indiscretions. He followed Prudence into the drawing-room, the sense of responsibility sitting heavily upon him, and was received by Mr Graynor and by his sisters-in-law with marked cordiality.
“You should have arrived earlier,” Agatha said. “The tea is cold. Where is Matilda?”
“I didn’t come from home,” he answered. “I’ve just cycled in from Hatchett. I’ve had tea, thanks.”
And then Prudence’s bombshell was delivered.
“So have I,” she said. “I met Major Stotford, and we had tea at a Cyclists’ Rest.”
“You did what?”
On any other occasion the scandalised horror in Agatha’s voice would have roused Prudence to a defiant retort; but the afternoon’s experience had subdued her spirit; she felt too crushed and miserable to resent her sister’s amazed anger, or to heed the exchange of significant glances between the others. She was dimly aware that her father rose and approached her, but the pained displeasure of his look left her unmoved. It did not seem to her to matter particularly what happened, or what they thought of her; she was past caring about such things.
“I thought I had given you quite clearly to understand that I did not wish you to pursue the acquaintance with Major Stotford,” Mr Graynor said. Prudence’s eyes fell. “I believed I could trust you,” he added reproachfully; “and you don’t even respect my wishes.”
“I will in future,” she answered with unusual meekness. “It seemed ungracious to refuse after his kindness.”
“More particularly when it was against your own inclination,” broke in Agatha.
Mr Graynor raised a protesting hand.
“Not now,” he said. “We will speak of this later.”
And with a word of apology to Mr Jones, he left the room. Prudence followed him into the hall.
“Daddy, I’m sorry,” she said, and caught at his sleeve; but, for the first time within her memory, he repulsed her.
“I don’t want to hear any more,” he said. “You have annoyed me exceedingly.”
He went on, leaving Prudence to realise the enormity of her conduct, and the hopelessness of expecting forgiveness in this quarter. She had offended him deeply. She ran upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom and sought relief from tears.
The exasperating part of the affair lay in the wholly unnecessary attitude of inflexible veto adopted by her family. Prudence was not likely to repeat her mistake. Experience teaches its own lessons, and her experience had been sufficiently humiliating without any additional disgrace. She bore for a time with this state of affairs: when the general hostility became insupportable she set her mind to work to discover a remedy. As a result of this mental activity, Mr Edward Morgan received one morning the letter for which he had so long and so patiently waited.
Mr Morgan read the letter in the privacy of his office, smiled, re-read it, examined it from all angles, and promptly proceeded to answer it, a light of satisfaction illumining his features as he wrote.
And yet there was in the briefly worded note not much that a man could have twisted into any meaning conveying particular encouragement; nevertheless, the invitation for which he had waited had come at last; that sufficed for Mr Morgan.
“It is so dull,” Prudence had written. “When are you coming to pay your promised visit?”
His answer read:
“My dear Miss Prudence,—
“I was delighted to get your letter. It would be selfish on my part to say that I am rejoiced to know you feel dull; but at least I cannot express sincere regret since the admission is followed by what I have been hoping for ever since we parted—your permission to visit you again. I am coming immediately. I was only waiting for just this dear little letter.
“Yours very truly,—
“Edward Morgan.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Prudence when she read this letter, and bit her lip in vexation, her face aflame at the thought that she had taken the irrevocable step, and brought very close the moment for the great decision of her life.
She knew that he would ask her to marry him, that he would take her consent for granted; and, although in sending the letter she had decided upon taking this step, now that the thing was upon her she felt reluctant and afraid.
“You’ve done it now,” she told herself, for the purpose of stiffening her resolution. “You ought to have realised your doubts sooner. It is impossible to draw back.”
Impossible to draw back! The finality of the phrase gripped her imagination with the startled sensation of a lost cause. She had burnt her boats. The prospect ahead was not entirely lacking in fascination; but she wished none the less that some kind of raft might discover itself on which she could retreat conveniently if the alternative proved very distasteful. The thought of being kissed by Mr Morgan, as Major Stotford had kissed her, the idea of giving any man the right to so kiss her, filled her with sick apprehension. The whole process of love-making thrilled her with disgust.
She leaned from her window and looked out upon the glistening darkness of the wet November night, and her thoughts became detached from present complexities, and attuned themselves to memories that were becoming old. They were nearly two years old, but they wore the stark vividness of very recent things. She allowed her fancy to riot unchecked around these bitter-sweet memories of a romance which had started from slumber only to fall back again into sleep, a sleep no longer sound and reposeful but disturbed by haunting dreams, dreams that were elusive and disconnected, and which belonged to the might-have-been. There was no shrinking from these dreams; they floated before her mind arrayed in the gracious beauty of simple and sincere emotions. The thought of love, of passion even, in this connection, had no qualm of revulsion in it. To be held in strong arms a willing captive, to be kissed by lips to which her own responded, that was a different matter. There would be no sense of shame in that, only a great wonder and a vast content.
“Dreams! dreams!” Prudence murmured, and listened to the falling of the rain without—wet darkness everywhere, the dismal darkness of a winter world sodden with the sky’s incessant weeping.
She clenched her hands upon the wet sill, and felt the rain drops on her hair.
“He is out there in the sunshine,” she thought; “and I’m here in the dark and the rain alone. It is easy to forget when the sun shines always.”
Abruptly she drew back and closed the window and turned up the lights in the room.
“I wish he wasn’t coming quite so soon,” she said, crouching down by the dying fire, a shivering, shrinking figure, with rain-wet hair, and eyes which were wet also, but not with rain.
The memories were shut out with the rain-washed night. She was back in the present again, with the disturbing reflection that the morrow, the last day of sad November, would see the arrival of Edward Morgan and the end of her girlish dreams.
Chapter Twenty Two.
Mr Edward Morgan arrived on the following afternoon. Prudence watched him from the window disentangling himself from the carriage rugs, and fussing with the muffler which he wore wound carefully about his throat. The wind was in the north-east, and he was subject to bronchitis.
Swathed in wraps he did not cut a romantic figure: he looked what he was, a prosperous, middle-aged man who valued his health and refrained from taking liberties with it. Prudence told herself that he was wise to be cautious, at the same time she wished that he was of an age at which such caution was unnecessary.
He mounted the steps, and was welcomed in the hall by Mr Graynor and taken to the library for purposes of refreshment stronger than tea after his cold and tedious journey. Later, he made his appearance in the drawing-room, divested of his outdoor wear and improved on that account. A subtle blending of whisky and cigar smoke emanated from his person, of which Prudence was critically aware as she shook hands and replied to his inquiries as to her health. He was in immense spirits, as became a successful lover; also he was a little shy and nervously anxious to please.
He talked about his journey and discussed politics and business and the weather; and Prudence listened, taking no part in the conversation, and feeling grateful to him for refraining from addressing her directly. He was, while intensely alive to her presence, seemingly unmindful of it. He credited her, not without reason, with sharing his shyness; and was anxious to give her time to get used to him and feel her way back to their former easy relations. Miss Agatha received the greater part of his attention, and in return pressed the hot scones on him hospitably. He refused these on the plea that they gave him indigestion; but he accepted cake, and a cup of the eighteenpenny tea, which he pronounced excellent.
“Mrs Morgan is well, I hope?” Miss Agatha inquired conversationally, filling in one of those abrupt, unaccountable, and disconcerting pauses in the talk, which flowed with even dulness between the hitches.
“Thank you, yes. My mother enjoys excellent health. Henry’s wife has been laid up; they had to operate for appendicitis. She’s about again now. Henry and the boys are flourishing.”
There followed polite expressions of regret for Mrs Henry Morgan’s indisposition, broken into by the arrival of William, whose greeting of Mr Morgan overflowed with cordiality.
“Been looking to see you in these parts for months,” he said. “Beastly weather for travelling; the wind is cutting. Are those hot scones, Prudence?”
William was so accustomed to being waited upon by the different members of his family that it never occurred to him to attend to his own needs. He did not observe the flush of annoyance that overspread Prudence’s face, nor the reluctance with which she rose to fetch the scones in question; Mr Morgan observed it, however, and was before her in reaching the fireplace where the scones lay on a hot plate inside the fender. He stooped for the plate; and the stiffness of his movements, while apparent to Prudence, passed uncriticised on this occasion. William protested loudly.
“Oh, come!” he said. “You shouldn’t do that. I can’t allow a visitor to wait on me. One of the girls will do it.”
Mr Morgan disregarded the remonstrance, refusing to relinquish the dish of scones.
“My mother brought me up to wait upon her,” he said, smiling. “It comes natural to me.”
Prudence felt pleased; but she had no faith in the lesson proving beneficial to William; he would assuredly miss the point.
“Well, you’re a younger man than I,” said William jocularly. “I shouldn’t show such energy after a long journey.”
Which speech, delivered for Prudence’s benefit, William considered particularly tactful. He had in mind his sister’s reflections on Mr Morgan’s age. But Mr Morgan was not helpful.
“I’m forty-three to-day,” he acknowledged, with, in William’s opinion, quite unnecessary candour. “I decided on this date for making the journey from sentimental reasons; it occurred to me as an altogether agreeable way of celebrating the occasion.”
He did not look in Prudence’s direction while he spoke, for which consideration she was obliged to him: she felt the eyes of the rest focussed upon herself, and guessed what was in their thoughts in connection with these confidences. It did not in the least surprise her to hear William playfully observe that they would have to contrive something special in the way of entertainment to mark the event and make this birthday a memorable one. He looked meaningly at Prudence, and slyly at Mr Morgan, and remarked that birthdays conferred peculiar privileges and gave a right to indulgence. But Mr Morgan repudiated this.
“At my age one doesn’t insist on those prerogatives,” he said. “The only advantage I take of the day is to give myself pleasure. I have done that.”
From which Prudence gathered to her relief that he did not intend to press his suit that day. Nor did he. He rather skilfully evaded the tête-à-têtes with her, which every member of the household seemed in conspiracy to bring about. He was giving her time to commit to heart the lesson which he had told her he wanted her to learn. It was a lesson which she could not master with him for teacher; but she came to feel a very warm friendship for him, which in lieu of anything better seemed not insufficient to begin with.
Mr Morgan had been at Court Heatherleigh a week before he broached the question of marriage with her; and Prudence, lulled into a sense of security by his avoidance of the subject, doubted whether he intended to propose to her, and was divided between a state of mortification and relief. The proposal when it came startled her the more by reason of this adaptation of Mr Morgan from the rôle he had been cast for to the less romantic rôle of friend. It found her immensely unprepared, as the delayed falling of anything long expected is apt to do when launched suddenly and with irrelevant haste. She was altogether unaware of what was in his mind at the moment when he sprung the thing upon her.
They were playing billiards together after dinner, with Mary acting as marker and making a third in the conversation that confined itself almost exclusively to the game. Prudence, in the interest of making a brake, did not observe when Mary left the room; she became aware of her absence for the first time on looking round to call the score. Mr Morgan marked for her. When he approached the table, instead of playing, he laid his cue on the cloth and took Prudence’s hand.
“Come and sit down,” he said, drawing her to the settee. “We’ll finish the game presently.”
Prudence relinquished her cue to him and sat down. He put the cue away in the rack and seated himself beside her.
“I’ve been a long time coming to my point,” he said, coming to it rather abruptly now that he was once started; “but I think you must have understood my reason for delay. I did not want to hurry you. You know why I came down... Prudence, will you marry me?”
Prudence gave a little sigh, and sat perfectly still, staring with amazed eyes at the neglected balls on the green cloth. Oddly, the thought which struck her at the moment was that it was unnecessary to break off in the middle of a game to ask her that. There was no need to make opportunities; they were thrust at him.
“Let me think,” she said. “Give me time. You—startled me.”
“But you knew that I meant to ask you that question?” He took her hand again and pressed it gently. “When you sent that letter, wasn’t it intended for permission to speak? I interpreted it that way.”
“I—don’t—know.” She was still for a moment; then she turned to him and looked him uncertainly in the eyes. “I was very miserable when I wrote that letter. Yes; I suppose that was what I meant—then.”
She broke off, and her gaze wandered away and came to rest again on the balls.
“It’s silly of me,” she said, speaking very low. “I feel a little afraid.”
“Just shyness,” he said reassuringly, stroking the hand which lay limply in his. “I am old for you; but you will find me the more gentle, possibly the more understanding, on that account. My darling, I love you very dearly. You are so young—you don’t know yet what love is. I did not know either until recently. I come to it rather late. But my feeling for you is very deep. Prudence, my dear, I want you. I love you. If you give yourself to me I will do everything in my power to make your life happy. Will you marry me, dear?”
It seemed to Prudence that there was only one possible answer. She had understood when she invited him to come down the significance of what she did. She had no right to encourage him to hope and then fail in her part. He was too good a man to play with. She kept her face averted while she answered him, staring fixedly at the shining balls, lying where her last stroke had left them placed conveniently, she realised with grim appreciation of her mistake, for him to score off.
“I want to be quite frank with you,” she said, her breathing fast through sheer nervousness, an earnest expression on her face, which he thought very modest and gentle. “I don’t love you, Mr Morgan,—not in that way—not, I mean, as you love me. I’ve thought—I should like to marry you. I think that still—only I’m afraid sometimes,—afraid that you’ll find me disappointing.”
He placed his arm very gently round her shoulders and held her so without attempting any warmer caress. He smiled into her troubled eyes.
“There is only one thing that could possibly disappoint me,” he said, “and that is if I fail to make you happy. Trust me, and all will be well.”
And so Prudence secured her passage through the door which it seemed he alone could open for her into those wider spaces where she imagined freedom was to be found. But emerging with Edward Morgan at her side, it gradually became clear to her that she was doubly fettered. In blindly groping for her freedom she had given herself to a new and more complete bondage. She would leave the old tyranny behind her, only to pass to another condition of fresh and more pressing obligations. The certainty of these things came to her with the realisation of her distaste for her new responsibility.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Prudence insisted upon a long engagement.
That was the first hitch in the amicable relations between her and her fiancé. Mr Morgan could see no reason why they should not marry immediately. He had less time than she to waste, and he was impatient of delay. But Prudence remained firm. She held out for a six months’ engagement; and Mr Graynor from purely selfish reasons ranged himself on her side. He was glad that her choice had fallen so wisely on this trusty friend of long standing. He could hand her over to the care of Edward Morgan with no anxiety for her future well-being; but he did not want to part with her too soon. When she was married the opportunities for seeing her would be few, and he dreaded the separation.
“Six months is not so very long,” he told the exasperated Mr Morgan. “And Prudence is only twenty.”
“If I were twenty,” Mr Morgan retorted, “I might see the matter in that light. Unfortunately I am not that age. But I shall have to exercise patience, I suppose.”
He bought his fiancée a magnificent half hoop of diamonds, and slipped it on her fingers, where it looked, Prudence considered, oddly out of place. It was altogether too valuable for constant wear. She did not tell him so for fear of hurting his feelings; but she wished that he would buy her less extravagant gifts. Whenever he gave her anything it was of the costliest description that he could procure. It seemed to give him peculiar satisfaction to surround her with expensive things. And he was amazingly kind and considerate for her unexpressed wishes. Prudence never knew how much it cost him in self-restraint in those early days of their engagement to keep under the ardour of his love for her, and school his passionate desire to take her in his arms and kiss madly her cool unresponding lips. He was wise, this mature lover. He knew that he had to foster her kindly affection for him; that he would need to tend and cherish it a long time before he could look to see it blossom into love. But he did not despair. He believed that she would give him eventually a full and willing response.
The engagement brought unforeseen consequences in the form of affectionate and intimate letters from the different members of Mr Morgan’s family. All these people were unknown to Prudence; yet they wrote to her as though the prospective relationship admitted them to terms of confidential familiarity.
Old Mrs Morgan wrote approving her son’s choice, and congratulating Prudence on having won so excellent a husband. She was glad, she added, that Prudence was young; she liked young people about her. She looked forward to having Prudence on a visit, when she would instruct her in regard to Edward’s likes and dislikes, the care of his health, and other matters of similar importance.
Mrs Henry Morgan’s letter was gushing and insincere in tone. As a matter of fact Mr Morgan’s sister-in-law was not very pleased to hear of his engagement. She had come to regard him as a confirmed bachelor, and her two sons, for whom she was very ambitious as quite certain of inheriting their uncle’s immense wealth. She had mapped out a brilliant future for them in which Morgan Bros, played no part; and she considered it indelicate on Edward’s side to upset her plans by marrying—at his time of life.
“You are a brave little person,” ran one passage in her letter; “a man past forty is not adaptable. But I’ll give you all sorts of wrinkles how to manage him. And of course his mother will live with you. She and I don’t get on.”
“Of course his mother won’t live with us,” Prudence told herself.
But she learned later that Mrs Henry’s statement was correct. Old Mrs Morgan had managed Edward’s house always, and would continue to do so.
“You will love her,” he assured Prudence; “and most certainly she will love you.”
An invitation to spend Christmas in Derbyshire followed; but Prudence, panic-stricken at the thought of meeting these people, insisted on spending her last Christmas at home; and it was finally settled that the visit should be deferred till the spring, when Mr Morgan promised himself the pleasure of fetching her to spend a fortnight with his mother, and of bringing her home again at the finish of the visit. There was little likelihood of seeing much of her in the interval; but she promised to write to him regularly once a week, setting aside his tentative suggestion that a daily correspondence would be welcome by frankly admitting that she would find nothing to say. He was disappointed. The ink on his own pen would not have dried from a dearth of ideas. At forty-three a man’s passion is no whit less ardent than that of a boy of twenty; but the man knows how to practise restraint. It was this knowledge which helped Edward Morgan over the difficulties of his courtship with a girl whose heart he had yet to win, and to whom passion was an unknown quantity.
Prudence was rather sexless in those days. The realities of love and marriage were mysteries to her. Marriage meant no more than the solution of a problem that had occupied her attention on and off for years. She saw no other way of obtaining her emancipation. And he was very unexacting in his devotion, and patient and kind.
The kindly attentions of Mr Morgan, the cessation of general hostilities, and the patronising approval of brother William, effected a wonderful clearance in the domestic atmosphere. Prudence was once more in favour, and the indiscretions of the past were tacitly overlooked. She discovered also that by virtue of her engagement she had achieved a new importance in Wortheton social life. People called to offer their congratulations; and the vicar talked affably of the imitative tendency of marriage, seeming to ascribe Prudence’s good fortune to the example set by her sister. He informed Mr Morgan rather unnecessarily that he was rich in this world’s goods.
Amid the general rejoicings Bobby alone stood aloof, critical and disapproving and altogether unimpressed with the splendour of the match.
“You don’t need to marry money,” he wrote. “There’s more than enough of the beastly commodity in the family as it is. And Morgan! ... Of course he’s all right in himself, and a good fellow; but he’s more than double your age. Imagine what you would say if I wanted to marry a woman old enough to be my mother! Break it off, Prue. I’ll be home shortly, and I’ll stand by you.”
Prudence shed a few surreptitious tears over this letter, though it moved her to mirth as well; it was so characteristic of the writer. But, save for glimpses during the holidays, Bobby had no idea of the flatness of life at Court Heatherleigh, its repression, its sneaking pose—there was no other term for it—of pious superiority which crushed the spirit and the natural honesty of those upon whom its influence was exerted. She was not marrying Mr Morgan for his wealth; she was not marrying him for love. Her reasons, when she came to analyse them, occurred to her singularly inadequate. She felt very doubtful as to the wisdom of the step she had taken. The idea of a triangular household, with a mother-in-law in supreme command, seemed to her rather like a repetition of the unsatisfactory home conditions. She felt that Edward Morgan owed it to her to set up a separate establishment, and even ventured to suggest this rearrangement to him. He heard her in pained surprise.
“My mother will not intrude on us,” he said. “Morningside has been her home always. I could not agree to her living elsewhere.”
“Couldn’t we live elsewhere?” Prudence insisted. “I should like a house of my own.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, with his hands on her shoulders, and his grave eyes looking tenderly down upon her. “Home for my mother is where I am.”
He stooped and kissed her as a sort of act of forgiveness for the want of consideration she had shown.
Chapter Twenty Four.
On the morning that Edward Morgan left Wortheton it was arranged that Prudence should drive with him to the junction and see the train off. It was never clear to Prudence with whom the idea originated; it certainly did not emanate from her own brain. She was even a little embarrassed at the thought of the four-mile drive with her heavily coated and bemuffled fiancé, and the prospective ordeal of standing by the door of his compartment during those exasperating, interminable minutes before the starting of the train.
She came downstairs into the hall dressed for the drive in a navy costume which accentuated the girlish slenderness of her figure to discover Mr Morgan winding his many wraps about him, and talking cheerfully with her father and sisters, who were gathered together to see him off.
He paused in the business of buttoning his coat to inquire anxiously if she were sufficiently warmly clad for the day, which was bright and cold, with a touch of December frost in the air. She replied carelessly that she did not feel cold; and Mr Graynor, with his arm about her shoulders, remarked thoughtlessly:
“Young blood, Morgan, defies the weather.”
“I think Prudence should wear a fur about her throat,” Agatha said. “It would look more suitable.”
Mary was despatched forthwith to fetch the unwanted addition, which, when it appeared, Mr Morgan insisted on placing round her shoulders. Prudence took her seat in the carriage, feeling oppressed with the warmth of the sable and the confined heated atmosphere of the artificially warmed brougham, with its windows carefully closed against the cold clear air. She dragged at the fur impatiently.
“I must take it off,” she said. “I feel stifled.”
“All right,” he acquiesced, and passed his arm round her waist in a clumsy caress. “I’ll keep you warm. Comfy, eh?”
She smiled at him a little nervously.
“You are just a mountain of clothes,” she said.
During the long drive Mr Morgan kept his arm about her, and held her so closely that Prudence felt suffocated. She proposed letting down the window part way; but Mr Morgan showed such alarm at the idea that she did not persist.
“You don’t understand the risk,” he said. “This winter travelling... It’s how people contract pneumonia, risking chills through open windows. You don’t know how to take care of yourself. It’s time I took a hand at it. I’m going to take great care of you, little girl,—all my life. Open windows!—no! This open-air craze is the cause of most of the ills of life.”
Prudence laughed.
“I understood it was the cure for them,” she replied. “I live in the open air—and sleep in it.”
“Sleep in it!” he ejaculated in horrified accents.
“Well, not actually that,” she said; “but with the bedroom window wide—always.”
He stared at her. He had never supposed that any one, save those undergoing the outrageous experiment of the new-fangled open-air cure, which he considered stark madness, slept with open windows in the winter. His own windows were always carefully secured and heavily curtained. Occasionally, during the very warm summer months, he allowed an inch at the top to remain open for purposes of ventilation.
“You will grow wiser as you grow older,” he said, and determined that on that point anyhow he would have his own way.
It was a relief to Prudence when they arrived at the station. She walked on to the platform, declining to accompany Mr Morgan to the booking-office while he procured his ticket. She wanted to fill her lungs with fresh air before the further ordeal of final leave-taking; and she wanted for a few minutes to be rid of his kindly presence, and the necessity of responding to his lover-like advances. It was all so dull and irksome; there was only one word which occurred to her as applicable to the situation, and that was stodgy. The stodginess of it was getting on her nerves.
When finally the big over-coated figure emerged upon the platform and came towards her Prudence felt a touch of compunction because she could not return the smiling gladness of his look with eyes which expressed a like pleasure at his approach; her own gaze was critical and entirely matter-of-fact.
His train was in. She opened the door of an empty compartment and stood beside it. He joined her, waited until the porter had placed his luggage on the rack, and dismissed him handsomely; then he motioned Prudence to get into the compartment, and followed her quickly and closed the door upon themselves.
“We’ve just time,” he said, “for a last good-bye.” And took her in his arms.
She had never felt so embarrassed in his presence before, perhaps because he had never before assumed so lover-like and determined an attitude. He tilted back her face and kissed her lips, and continued to hold and kiss her in this extravagant manner, despite the fact that people passed the carriage at intervals and stared in as they passed. Mr Morgan was indifferent to this manifest curiosity in his doings, and his broad figure blocked the middle window and screened Prudence from intrusive eyes.
“Oh!” she said, and attempted to withdraw from his embrace. “The train will be starting immediately. I had better get out.”
“Shy little girl!” he returned, and laughed joyously. “You’ve never been very free with your kisses, Prudence; and it will be a long time before I see you again. All right! You shall get out now. One good kiss before I let you go.”
He fairly hugged her. Prudence gave him a cool hasty peck on the cheek, slipped from his hold, and was out on the platform as soon as he opened the door. He closed the door and fastened it and leaned from the window to talk to her, holding her hand until the guard’s flag waved the signal for her release.
“Good-bye, my darling,” he called to her.
Prudence stood back and waved her hand to him, waved it gaily with a glad sense of relief. The last she saw of him as the train began to move out of the station was his grave face regarding her mournfully as he pulled up the window before settling down in his corner.
Prudence hurried out to the waiting carriage with her thoughts in a whirl. This business of being engaged was an altogether perplexing affair. She had not expected things to be like this somehow. She did not know quite what she had expected; but she had never imagined that the stolid Edward Morgan could assume the rôle of lover and confidently look for a similar response from her; she had believed he would maintain the more dignified attitude of a warm and affectionate friendliness throughout their engagement; and she felt vexed and cheated because he had disappointed her in this belief.
“It’s absurd,” she told herself, with her hot face turned to the sharp crisp air which came through the open window, “for him to imagine I am going to let him make love to me when I only want him to be nice and kind always.”
But she began dimly to apprehend that the absurdity was likely to go on.
Bobby came home for the Christmas holidays and talked to her seriously of the mistake she was making. He did not look forward to the prospect of coming home finally to find Prudence gone; and the next term at school was his last.
“Beastly rotten it will be here without you,” he remarked. “You might have waited, Prue, a little longer. You don’t love old Morgan, do you?”
That was a poser for Prudence.
“I’m fond of him,” she answered guardedly. “He’s kind, and generous. When I am married I shall be able to do as I like.”
“Rot!” he retorted. “It will mean simply exchanging one dulness for another. Then you’ll vary the dullness by falling in love with some one else, and there’ll be a scandal. I know you. You’ll never settle down to a stick-in-the-mud existence with old Morgan. And serve him jolly well right for being such an ass.”
Prudence regarded him with newly awakened interest, her expression slightly aggrieved.
“I had no idea you held such a low opinion of me,” she said.
He laughed.
“That’s human nature, old girl. If you intend to remain faithful to old Morgan you’ll not have to look at another man, because when the right man comes along you’ll know it; all the wedding rings in the world won’t keep you blind to facts. You chuck the silly old geyser,” he counselled in the inelegant phraseology he affected, “before you tie your life into a hopeless knot.”
She shook her head.
“It’s not so easy,” she said.
“They’d be down on you, of course. But I’d stand by you. We’d worry through.”
“I didn’t mean that.” She attempted explanations. “He’s so good and kind. You don’t understand. I’d feel the meanest thing on the face of the earth if I hurt him deliberately like that. And there isn’t any need. I want to marry him.”
“There’s no accounting for tastes, of course,” he said rudely, and flung out of the room in a mood of deep disgust.
The whole business of Prudence’s engagement was profoundly exasperating to him. It obtruded itself at unexpected moments with an insistence that was to his way of thinking indecent. It interfered with his arrangements. So many hours of her time were given to letter writing that the size of the weekly epistle was ever a matter of suspicious amazement to him. He had no means of knowing how long those bald sentences which Prudence sprawled largely with a generous marginal space over the sheet of notepaper took in their composition. He suspected that she wrote reams to the fellow and posted them on the sly.
The regular arrival of Mr Morgan’s weekly effusion was a further irritation. This was handed usually to Prudence across the breakfast table with ponderous playfulness on brother William’s part, and a show of sly surreptitiousness, that drew general attention to the transit from his pocket to her reluctant hand.
The sorting of the letters was accompanied by such facetious subtleties as “Do we behold a billet doux?” or the murmured misquotation: “He sent a letter to his love.” And the bulky envelope would be passed to her to the accompaniment of appreciative giggles from his sisters, and received by Prudence with as unconcerned an air as the trying circumstances made possible, and left by her lying unopened on the table exposed to the general gaze while she finished her meal. She carried her letter away with her and read it in the privacy of her room.
“I can’t think how you stand it,” Bobby said once, when they were alone together. “If Uncle William made such fatuous remarks to me I’d hit him.”
“I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing how he annoys me,” she answered. “William would vulgarise the most sacred thing.”
“You aren’t for calling this luke-warm affair sacred, I hope?” Bobby asked with fine sarcasm. Whereupon she smiled suddenly and pulled his scornful young face down to hers and kissed it.
“It’s one way out,” she explained; and he was silent in face of the reasonableness of her reply.