Chapter Twenty Five.
Christmas came and brought with it Edward Morgan’s gift to his fiancée, a rope of pearls, so beautiful and costly that Prudence, on taking the shining thing from its bed of velvet, and holding it in her hands, was moved with a sense of remorse at the inadequacy of the return she was making this man, who showered gifts upon her in token of his love. She did not want his presents; they were an embarrassment and a distress.
The thought of wearing the pearls, as in the letter which accompanied them he requested her to do, on Christmas night, was distasteful to her on account of the continuous flow of witticism she would be forced to meet from William, who already had revealed a new inventiveness on presenting the registered package to her, and had manifested open curiosity as to its contents, which she had failed to gratify. And she dreaded the cold criticism of Bobby’s appraising eye. Bobby would possibly refrain from verbal comment, but his face would express the more.
She locked the pearls away and decided that she would show them to no one; she would ignore the request that came with them. In any case they were too valuable to wear at a quiet dinner at home, at which the only guests would be Matilda and her husband, who, still in uncertainty as to his living, waited on in Wortheton in hopeful expectation. To wear the pearls in Ernest’s presence, and suffer William’s sly pleasantries unmoved, was more than she felt equal to. Ernest, through the medium of his wife, had expressed amazement at her engagement, which he attributed to worldly considerations.
“She is incapable of appreciating the seriousness of marriage,” he had told Matilda. “Her mind is light and inclines to frivolity, and material advantages.”
That his own inclination had been towards a comfortable income, was a point he was apt to overlook.
Prudence found some difficulty in writing a sufficiently appreciative acknowledgment of her lover’s gift. She hated the necessity for expressing a pleasure which she did not feel.
“Your present is much too beautiful,” she wrote. “I don’t know how to thank you. I am overpowered. You give such wonderful things...”
She added nothing about locking the pearls away, but left it to his imagination to picture her, as he had said he would do, shining in all her girlish beauty with his pearls about her throat. She determined to take them with her to Morningside when she went in April. If he wished to see her wearing pearls, she would gratify him then.
The visit to Morningside hung over her like a nightmare. She was not allowed to forget it; Mr Morgan continually referred to it in his letters. He was having the whole place re-decorated for her; and he wrote consulting her preference in the matter of wall-papers, and her taste in tapestries. The furnishing of the house was Victorian; and he feared she might consider it a little heavy and inartistic. He wanted her to express her wishes in regard to furniture and other matters. But Prudence, taking alarm at the thought of this responsibility, flung the onus of everything on to him, and insisted that the furniture which had sufficed hitherto would assuredly serve for her needs. She did not want anything changed. This proved disappointing to him. He would have liked her to show a greater interest in the home which was to be hers. Her indifference chilled his enthusiasm in the plans he was making for her pleasure; and the arrangements were left more and more in the entirely capable hands of the decorator. “We can alter things later,” he told himself. “And Prudence can buy any new stuff she wants.”
The agreeable prospect of shopping with her compensated for the earlier disappointment. It would be so much pleasanter to choose things together.
When she first beheld Morningside Prudence thought it the ugliest house she had ever been in; but later, when better acquainted with its solid splendour, she decided that it had possibilities, and was really a nice house made to look ugly. There was a dingy serviceable effect about everything.
She arrived on a fine evening in April, soft and balmy, following a day of intermittent showers and blazing sunshine. Mr Morgan accompanied her. He had spent the week-end at Wortheton, and made the journey back with her, as had been arranged. His manner during the journey was kindly and attentive. He displayed great consideration for her comfort, and, because she enjoyed fresh air, lowered one window a couple of inches and buttoned his coat from fear of the draught. The absence of lover-like attentions, which he had sufficient perception to see disturbed her, reassured Prudence, and placed their relations on an easier footing.
When she arrived at his home and was conducted to the drawing-room to be received by his mother, she was conscious of a new feeling in regard to him; he inspired her with a sense of support. She turned to him instinctively as to some one reliable and familiar; and was grateful to him when he slipped his hand within her arm and kept it there while they advanced together down the long room to where old Mrs Morgan, stout and severe of feature, sat in a big chair, quietly observant of her, scrutinising her in the close disconcerting way peculiar to short-sighted people.
“This is the daughter I promised you, mother,” Edward Morgan said.
Mrs Morgan rose slowly and confronted them. She took the girl’s outstretched hand.
“What a child!” she said, and bent forward and kissed Prudence on the cheek.
She was, nor did she hide it altogether successfully, a little disappointed. Edward had prepared her for a young daughter-in-law, but she had not expected to see any one quite so youthful in appearance. Comparing them as they stood side by side, the disparity in age struck her unpleasantly.
“My dear,” she said, “I had not realised you were so young.”
“I don’t think I realised it myself,” Prudence returned, feeling her courage oozing away before the hard scrutiny of those critical eyes, “until to-day. I’ve an unfledged feeling since leaving home. But I’m twenty.”
Twenty! And the man who proposed to make her his wife might, had circumstances so ordained it, have been her father.
“She’ll grow up, mother,” Mr Morgan observed, and pressed the girl’s arm reassuringly. “I must try to equalise matters by growing younger myself.”
But the old lady was not encouraging.
“You won’t succeed, Edward. It’s like planting a bulb the wrong way in the soil; it grows against nature downwards, curves about, and works its way to the surface, crooked. Prudence will have to grow to you; you can’t go backwards.”
He reddened and laughed a little constrainedly.
“I feel as young as I did at twenty,” he said. “Prudence will help to rejuvenate me. I refuse to be discouraged.”
He crossed to the tea-table, poured the girl out a cup of tea, and brought it to her.
“We’ve had a tiring journey,” he said. “I expect you’ll be glad to go to your room and rest. There’s a family gathering to-night—in your honour.” He smiled down into the startled upraised eyes, and added: “Just my brother and his wife. You’ll find Mrs Henry amusing. She’s very eager to meet you.”
“Rose always gushes over new acquaintances,” Mrs Morgan interposed. “She is making plans for Prudence’s entertainment, although I told her that Prudence was coming for the purpose of making our acquaintance, and might prefer to avoid festivities. I think she might have waited to consult her wishes.”
“Oh!” cried Prudence, with a ring of pleasurable excitement in her tones. “But that’s awfully kind of her.”
“You see,” Mr Morgan said, enjoying the sight of her pleasure, and feeling grateful to his sister-in-law for her forethought, “the idea is not amiss. We are out for amusement and agreeable to anything that offers. Rose’s plan is excellent.”
“Rose is glad of any excuse for gaiety,” Mrs Morgan said. “It is ridiculous for a woman of her age, with two big boys, to amuse herself in the undignified manner in which she does. There is to be a dance next week. She says it will introduce Prudence to the neighbourhood. In reality it is an excuse for indulging in a form of exercise which she has outgrown.”
“Do you enjoy dancing, Prudence?” Mr Morgan asked.
Her sparkling eyes answered him.
“Oh! yes,” she murmured eagerly, and was conscious from the expression on Mrs Morgan’s face, of giving offence. “I’ve never been to a dance—a real dance in my life,” she added.
“Too much thought is given to amusement nowadays,” Mrs Morgan observed. “When I was a girl we seldom went to evening parties. Late hours rob young people of their freshness, and these modern dances are very vulgar. Edward dislikes dancing.”
“Oh! once in a way I can put up with that sort of thing,” he interposed quickly. “If Prudence enjoys it, I expect I shall get some pleasure out of the evening.”
Prudence gave him a grateful look, and, in reward for his consideration, remarked:
“It’s fortunate that I brought my pearls. It’s such a splendid opportunity for wearing them. You didn’t prepare me for these festivities.”
“Upon my word,” he returned, laughing, “I never gave it a thought.” He became aware of his mother’s silence, her tight-lipped disapproval, and turned the subject diplomatically. “There’s a busy time ahead for you. We’ve quite a lot of things calling for your attention. And my mother is looking forward to showing you over the house, and letting you into the inner mysteries. She is quite a wonderful housewife.”
“Prudence is probably not domesticated,” Mrs Morgan said. “Girls show no interest in their homes nowadays. Things are left to servants.”
“I’ve never had much chance,” Prudence explained apologetically. “You see, I am the youngest of six daughters. But I’d like to learn.”
Mr Morgan considered her gentle submissiveness very sweet. He was surprised at his mother’s lack of response to this softly-voiced desire; for himself, he felt a strong temptation to kiss the pretty timid face of the speaker, but his natural shyness restrained him from obeying this impulse.
“Six woman are too many in one household,” Mrs Morgan vouchsafed. “Some of you ought to have married.”
“One of us has,” Prudence answered.
“And another is going to,” Mr Morgan put in, with a tentative smile at his fiancée. She laughed softly.
“It suggests the rhyme of the ten little nigger boys,” she said. “Six women in one house; one of them married, and then there were five.”
Later, when Prudence had gone upstairs to her room, Mrs Morgan voiced her opinion of her to her son in a single expressive phrase.
“I am afraid, Edward, that your choice has fallen on a rather frivolous girl.”
Chapter Twenty Six.
Alone in the spacious bedroom allotted to her, Prudence spent the rest time allowed her before dinner in the indulgence of her favourite occupation, leaning from the window, lost in a maze of thought. It struck her very forcibly with not the slightest intimation of doubt that six women in a household were less assertively too many than two women—two women with conflicting interests and equal authority. She determined that she would not consent to live with a mother-in-law. It was very plain to her that in the event of Mrs Morgan sharing their home, the combined wills of mother and son would force her inevitably to regulate her life on the lines which habit and tradition inclined them naturally to follow. She did not aspire to excel as a housewife; nor did she wish to avoid late hours and unwholesome excitement, and develop a horror of draughts and a cautious regard for her digestion. Mr Morgan was obliged to live simply. His diet consisted mainly, it seemed to Prudence, of boiled mutton and milk puddings. Mrs Morgan had impressed these important details on her in the drawing-room while she drank her tea. Any departure from this rigorous self-denial was followed by tribulation. And invariably he drank a glass of hot water the last thing before retiring.
Old Mrs Morgan partook of hot water also. She proposed that Prudence should adopt this excellent custom.
“It is so good for every one,” she had explained to Prudence’s immense embarrassment. “It flushes the kidneys.”
Recalling this amazing statement in the solitude of her room, Prudence was moved to quiet mirth.
“A kidney bath,” she reflected with a flash of malicious humour at Mrs Morgan’s expense, “before bedtime. Excellent practice! I must certainly introduce Bobby to the beverage. We’ll call it K.B. I suppose I’m expected to dine off boiled mutton every night, and wash it down with K.B. What a prospect! I wonder whether his mother suspects that when he is away from home Edward strengthens his nightly tonic with whisky.”
Prudence lingered at the open window until the first gong, booming through the house, roused her from her meditations to the disquieting realisation that she must dress and go down and face a resumption of these surprisingly intimate confidences. Mrs Morgan had given her to understand that she was to be fully informed in everything relating to Edward’s well-being and comfort. The first duty of a wife, indeed the duty which embraced all others, consisted in having always in mind a regard for her husband’s wishes and care for his health and happiness.
“I fail to see where I come in,” Prudence thought. “Presumably my wishes don’t count.”
Mr Morgan was waiting for her alone in the drawing-room when she descended. He came forward quickly at sight of her and took her in his arms and kissed her gently.
“I want to thank you,” he said, “while I have the opportunity, for your sweetness and patience. My mother has coddled me so long; she loves doing it; and I let her because—well, because she is my mother. But don’t be alarmed into believing I am the faddist she would make me appear. You will find, when we are married, it is I who will do the thinking for both. Don’t worry your pretty head with trying to absorb these ideas. They amuse her; we need not distress ourselves about them.”
Prudence looked up at him with a smile in her wide blue eyes.
“Have I really to see to the airing of your flannels before you change?” she asked.
He laughed with her.
“There is an airing cupboard. I don’t think you need bother. But I believe she does.”
“You really are a reassuring person,” she said, and held up her face to him to be kissed.
“You are crumpling your shirt, Edward,” Mrs Morgan said, entering the room at the moment, a commanding figure in black silk and fine old lace, with a critical eye on their grouping and an absence of sympathy in her look.
Prudence moved away quickly with the feeling that she had been rebuked.
The Henry Morgans arrived exactly five minutes in advance of dinner, and were received with restrained cordiality, and duly presented to Prudence. Mrs Henry, a bright little woman in the middle thirties, with a gay audacity of manner and a ready infectious laugh, took Prudence by the shoulders and kissed her effusively. Then she held her off at arm’s length and scrutinised her closely.
“It is absurd,” she remarked, her amused eyes on the girl’s blushing face; “you’ll take precedence of me. You’re the senior partner, you know. We really ought to change husbands.”
“Prudence is better suited to a serious-minded husband than you are, Rose, in everything but years,” old Mrs Morgan retorted.
Mrs Henry did not appear to resent this remark. She and her mother-in-law never met without an interchange of polite hostilities.
“Now you know where to place me,” she said to Prudence. “I’m the little lump of leaven amid the dough of Morgan responsibility. You and I have got to be friends. I’ve been blessing Edward ever since he broke the amazing news for introducing something youthful into the firm. We didn’t expect it of him.”
The gong broke in on these indiscretions with its booming summons to the dining-room. Prudence went in with her fiancé, and faced Henry Morgan and his wife at table. Henry was a younger edition of his brother, and not much more animated. It occurred to Prudence that Mrs Henry struck a bright note of contrast amid the semitones of the Morgan household.
Mrs Henry could on occasions make herself peculiarly offensive to her mother-in-law; but it suited her to cultivate Prudence’s acquaintance, and so she exercised for that evening a certain tact in fencing with Mrs Morgan that gave no substantial ground for disagreement. She contrived none the less to reveal Edward’s mother to his fiancée in an altogether unfavourable light.
“Mother is such an autocrat,” she remarked once laughingly. “I suppose that is due to the fact that she has never had a daughter.”
“If I had had a daughter,” Mrs Morgan replied, “I would have brought her up to respect authority.”
“You’ll be able to practise on Prudence,” Mrs Henry suggested pleasantly, giving the old lady, who was more shrewd than she suspected, an insight into her game. She was trying to prejudice Prudence against her.
Mrs Morgan said nothing; but she determined to counterstroke that move. With the laudable desire of getting on to easier ground, Edward Morgan spoke of the coming dance and Prudence’s anticipatory pleasure. Mrs Henry discussed it happily.
“I love dancing,” she confessed to Prudence. “And of course I knew you would. It’s one way of giving you a glimpse of the aborigines. They are a dull lot on the whole. And I’m afraid we’ll be short of dancing men. I shall have to import a few. I’m glad you approve of the idea; mother, of course, doesn’t.”
“You could scarcely expect dancing to appeal to me at my time of life,” Mrs Morgan observed, her short-sighted eyes scrutinising her daughter-in-law’s face with unflattering attentiveness. “I confess to surprise that it should still attract you so strongly. But for Prudence it is a different matter. At her age dancing is quite suitable. Since Edward is willing to accompany her, I am sure she will enjoy it.” She smiled agreeably at Prudence. “I shall enjoy hearing all about it afterwards.”
Mrs Henry had not calculated on this neat turning of her weapon of offence, and was temporarily at a disadvantage. But she recovered from her surprise with astonishing quickness.
“She will be able to tell you of her many conquests,” she said. “It will amuse you to hear of her triumphs.”
“I pay Prudence the compliment of believing her to be neither silly nor vain,” Mrs Morgan returned. “If she made conquests she would not boast of them.”
“I’m unfortunate,” Mrs Henry remarked plaintively. “I am always saying the wrong thing.” She glanced at Prudence with a swift upward lift of her eyelid, and added: “I shall have to borrow a leaf from your book of deportment. You don’t look as good as they would have me believe; but,” and she turned her eyes to where Edward Morgan sat beside his fiancée, and let them rest contemplatively on his solid figure, “I suppose you really are seriously inclined.”
Chapter Twenty Seven.
During the days which followed Prudence strove continually to overcome her prejudices and adapt herself to Mrs Morgan’s ways. She tried, too, to blind herself to what she now realised for an unalterable fact, that her engagement was a mistake. She did not love Edward Morgan. She did not like his mother, nor his home, nor the life they led. Mrs Henry’s humorously sarcastic criticisms of the Morningside establishment did not annoy her. She was often amused by them, and allowed Mrs Henry to see it. Afterwards, removed from Mrs Henry’s influence, her conscience rebuked her for disloyalty.
She liked Mrs Henry on account of her brightness, and spent more time with her than old Mrs Morgan approved of. Mrs Henry kept open house for her bachelor friends, of whom she had a number, and she took a malicious pleasure in getting Prudence to help in the business of entertaining.
“You’ll meet these men at my dance,” she said. “I want you to know them first; it makes it so much more agreeable.”
Prudence thought so too. She failed to understand old Mrs Morgan’s objection. It was absurd to suppose that she must avoid all other male society on account of her engagement.
These brief lapses into an almost Bohemian gaiety under Mrs Henry’s chaperonage, made the Morningside household more noticeably dull. The evenings were particularly dreary. Mrs Morgan insisted upon playing patience after dinner, three-handed to include Prudence, and necessitating the use of three packs of cards which made for confusion in dealing. Prudence was dense in learning the game, and would have preferred to sit out, but was not allowed to; it was imperative that she should share in the amusement. It did not amuse her; and the concentration necessary in following the play made conversation impossible.
“Edward and I play every night,” Mrs Morgan explained. “When he is absent I play a single-handed patience. But that isn’t so interesting. Now when he has to leave home you will be able to play with me. That will cheer us during his absences, and will be nicer for me.”
Prudence began to feel very much as a fish must when caught in a net. The desire to escape was imperative; but the net tightened hourly; there appeared no weak places in it. And Edward Morgan himself was so amazingly kind, and equally amazingly obtuse. He appeared entirely unaware of the vain longing for escape which dominated Prudence’s mind, and made her increasingly restless because of that gradual closing of the net which made retreat day by day more seemingly impossible.
Old Mrs Morgan gave a dinner party for the purpose of introducing Prudence formally as her son’s betrothed wife to his and her immediate friends. Prudence was obliged to stand beside her with Edward and receive these guests as they arrived, and listen to their congratulations and utter little stereotyped phrases in acknowledgment of their good wishes.
There was no way out of the muddle that she could see. She had sealed and ratified her engagement by this visit to her fiancé’s home.
The dinner party produced a curious state of reaction. Apathetic resignation to the inevitable followed upon this amazingly dull ceremony. She must go through with what she had undertaken and make the best of the bargain. The hope of keeping a separate establishment from Mrs Morgan was as forlorn as the hope of escape had been. Neither mother nor son, she knew, would suffer the arrangement. They would wear down her opposition with the firm kindliness with which those in authority overrule the undisciplined complainings of youth. None the less, she felt that the imposition of a mother-in-law was unfair. Had Mr Morgan raised this condition at the time of his proposal she would not have agreed to it.
The night of Mrs Henry’s dance was to witness another reaction. Prudence’s mood varied so continually during the brief visit to Mr Morgan’s home that it might be said to shift like the compass with each fresh breath of criticism that greeted the intelligence of her engagement. She was painfully sensitive on the subject.
She had looked forward to this dance, the success of which in regard to partners was secured in advance, with much pleasure. It was a new experience for her. She dressed that evening with unusual care, and was conscious on surveying the finished result in the glass of looking her best. When she went downstairs old Mrs Morgan’s dim eyes noticed only that she appeared extraordinarily young and immature; there was a suggestion of the ingénue in the fresh girlish prettiness, emphasised by her white dress and the childlike expression in the wide blue eyes.
At sight of her, flushed and happy, and wearing his pearls about her throat, Edward Morgan was moved to an infinitely tender admiration. The thought of the appraising eyes of other men resting upon her, of her being held in familiar closeness by the partners who would claim the privilege of dancing with her, gave him a queer stab of jealousy. He would have preferred that she should dance only with himself.
“You look like a bride,” he said, and bent over her and kissed her lips.
Both speech and manner disconcerted Prudence. Her glance fell, and the flush in her cheeks deepened.
“I’m glad you think I look nice,” she said.
He put her into the motor, and sat beside her, a silent abstracted figure, enveloped in a heavy fur-lined coat. Concern for the thinness of her attire and fear of draughts occupied him during the brief drive. Prudence was relieved when they reached the house and she was free from his fussy guardianship.
He was waiting for her when she emerged from the cloak-room, and he tucked her hand under his arm with an air of conscious proprietorship and led her through an admiring group of men to where the hostess stood with her husband receiving their guests.
“How sweet you look. Prudence!” Mrs Henry said.
“How do? Awfully glad to see you,” murmured Mr Henry, repeating his formula parrotwise to each arrival.
Edward Morgan passed gravely on into the ball-room with his fiancée. He felt nervous and out of his element. Functions of this description always bored him; he possessed no small talk, and dancing seemed to him a foolish pastime. Nevertheless he claimed two dances from Prudence, whose programme filled rapidly; and, having danced the first dance with her, retired to the outskirts, and leaned against the doorpost, watching the moving scene with eyes that looked with jealous insistence for Prudence’s figure among the gay throng of dancers. Mrs Henry, who found time among her distractions to observe him, drew her husband’s attention to the lounging figure, with the whispered injunction:
“For goodness’ sake take him into the card-room! He is making himself ridiculous.”
But Mr Morgan refused to be beguiled into the card-room. He maintained a determined stand near the door; and Prudence, whenever she left the room with her partner in search of rest at the finish of a dance, was conscious of his hungry watchfulness and the look of grave dissatisfaction in his eyes. She wished that he would not watch her; it was embarrassing.
“He doesn’t look much like the hero of the evening,” one unconscious partner remarked to her as he steered her carefully through the press of people. “I wonder which is the lucky lady?—Some one with her eyes wide to the main chance, I imagine. I’ve been amusing myself with trying to pick her out. She is not conspicuous through attentiveness to him, anyhow. Do you know her?”
“Yes,” Prudence admitted, with face aflame.
“Oh, I say! Point her out to me, will you? I am a new-comer, and out of the know.”
“No; I don’t think I will.”
“That’s the reproof courteous,” he returned, slightly nettled. “You consider my remarks in bad taste.”
“I think them indiscreet,” she answered. “You wouldn’t feel very happy for instance if I laid claim to the honour.”
It never occurred to him to treat this speech seriously. He laughed as though it were a huge joke.
“I’m not such a fool as I look,” he said. “It was because I knew it was safe that I spoke so unguardedly to you.”
Later on in the evening he had cause to remember his indiscretion and to regret it. He noticed her with Edward Morgan, and observed with amazement the intimacy of the terms that held between them. It flashed into his mind with disconcerting conviction that what he had believed to be a joke was no jest after all. He had seen Mr Morgan speak to no one else, dance with no other partner. He pushed his inquiries further, and learned to his ever-increasing discomfiture that it was to Mr Morgan’s fiancée he had made his unguarded remarks.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
That night Prudence asked Edward Morgan for her release. The dance to which she had looked forward so gladly, and which she had not enjoyed, had galvanised her into a fixed determination to secure her freedom while yet there was time. The thought of marriage with a man so much older than herself, with whom she had nothing in common, whose every wish opposed itself in gentle opposition to her own, had become a nightmare to her. Young eyes had looked into her eyes that night with a wondering question in them that had hurt her. The hunger for young companionship gripped her. Her memory echoed the careless inconsequent chatter, the joyous laughter of irresponsible youth. One laugh in particular, an amused incredulous laugh, rang in her ears like a reproach.
Why had she committed this folly? She must draw back before it was too late.
With manifest nervousness Prudence made her faltering appeal for release from her engagement during the homeward drive. Mr Morgan was amazed. He keenly resented her lack of consideration for himself in wishing to withdraw her promise after the publicity given to their engagement. She shrank back from the cold anger in his eyes and the hardness of his voice when he answered her.
“You are overwrought,” he said. “You don’t know what you are saying. What have I done, that you should wish to break off your engagement? I have striven to please you, to make you happy. Do you realise that in less than two months we are to be married? You would make me ridiculous. People will laugh. It will be scandalous.”
His voice gathered anger as he considered the amusement that would arise at his expense when it became known that the young bride he had chosen had jilted him—jilted the wealthy Edward Morgan almost on the eve of the wedding.
“It is absurd!” he added. “You don’t realise what you ask.”
“Oh, please!” she cried, and turned a white frightened face towards him. “Don’t be angry with me. I’m so sorry. I ought never to have become engaged to you. I don’t love you.”
He sounded a note of impatience.
“You raised that point at the time when I proposed,” he said. “I thought we had settled that. Love will come with marriage. I have enough for both.”
“Don’t you see that that only makes it worse?” she said in a voice that shook with nervousness. “I can never love you. I know that now. I’ve tried. Oh! please be generous and forgive me. I am so sorry for causing you pain. I’m so sorry.”
She broke down, and sat huddled in a corner of the motor, and sobbed.
Mr Morgan sank back in his corner and stared out at the darkened street. Never in his life had he felt so annoyed and upset. At the back of his mind lurked the uncomfortable conviction that he had been a fool, that his world would call him a fool, an old fool for falling in love with a pretty face.
He wished he had never seen Prudence, wished that he had never asked her to become his wife. Since he had asked her and she had accepted him, he had no intention of acceding now to her absurd request for release. She was placing him in a most invidious position. She seemed to have no appreciation of what was right and due to him. It would be necessary to make her see that he had to be considered in this as well as herself. He thought of his mother, of the annoyance this would cause her. He determined to ask her to intercede with the girl in his behalf. It was impossible that she should retract from her promise at the eleventh hour.
He sat in a heavy silence, his imagination busy with the awkwardness of this disastrous crisis in his hitherto pleasant life, until the motor turned in at his own gates and stopped in front of the house. He got out, and, leaving Prudence to follow, walked up to the door which he opened with his latchkey. He waited for her in the warm, dimly-lit hall, and closed the door after her and bolted it. He lit a bedroom candle for her with some attempt to atone for his late discourtesy, and asked:
“Would you like anything before you go upstairs?”
“No, thank you.”
She took the candlestick from him with a shaking hand and turned towards the stairs.
“Good-night,” he said.
The emotion in his voice moved her to yet deeper distress. It was the first time she had parted from him without the good-night kiss. She looked back at him where he stood, muffled in his greatcoat, a big ungainly figure, which nevertheless seemed shrunken, possibly on account of the loss of that air of successful assurance which hitherto had characterised the man.
“Good-night,” she answered softly. “I am so sorry that I have hurt you.”
Then, carrying her candle, she went swiftly up the stairs.
Neither Prudence nor Edward Morgan secured any sleep that night. While Mr Morgan tossed restlessly on his bed, fretting and worrying over this blow which she had dealt him, Prudence lay very still and wide-eyed in the darkness, wondering dismally what the new day would bring forth, and how she would face old Mrs Morgan’s anger, and the pained displeasure in Edward’s eyes.
It was obvious to Prudence when she descended on the following morning, heavy-eyed and with nerves strung to high tension, that Mr Morgan had already confided in his mother the fact that she wished to end her engagement. The old lady was upset and deeply affronted. Her agitation betrayed itself in the trembling of her hands as she poured out the coffee from the big silver urn. Nothing was said on the subject uppermost in their thoughts until the finish of the meal, but a sense of something impending hung in the air, making ordinary conversation impossible. When he had finished his breakfast Mr Morgan rose and went out, closing the door behind him. Mrs Morgan followed his exit with her short-sighted gaze; then she sat back in her chair and gave her attention to Prudence.
She did not speak immediately; she was busy collecting her ideas, trying to subdue her bitter resentment against this girl who deliberately planned to wreck her son’s happiness. A betrayal of anger would, she realised, only make the estrangement more complete.
“I want to talk to you,” she said presently, breaking the silence which was becoming increasingly awkward.
Prudence looked up, and sat crumbling the bread beside her plate nervously, and waited.
“Edward has told me what happened last night,” Mrs Morgan added with fresh signs of agitation in her voice. “He is very distressed and worried. This means more to him than you realise. It is not as if he were a young man, and could face a disappointment and get over it. You cannot seriously intend to break off your engagement—now—when everything is arranged? It would be monstrous.”
She paused, and looked with pathetic eagerness to Prudence for her answer. The girl choked. She felt the tears rising to her eyes and hastily winked them away. What could she say? What was there to say in face of her determination not to marry a man with whom marriage seemed to her now intolerable? It amazed her to think that ever she could have contemplated such a step.
“I don’t know how to answer you,” she faltered. “It’s so hateful to keep hurting people. I know I’ve hurt Edward. I know you are thinking badly of me—you must be. And I can’t alter it. I can’t please you. I ought never to have accepted Edward. I don’t love him. How can I marry some one I don’t love?”
The tears fell now unchecked; she made no attempt to staunch them. But old Mrs Morgan took no heed of this display of emotion; no amount of tears could atone for such heartless conduct. She set herself to the task of overruling the girl’s decision.
“I agree with you that you ought not to have engaged yourself to my son,” she said; “but, since you are engaged to him and every one knows of the engagement, it would be most dishonourable for you to end it now. Your father will say the same. You cannot do it, Prudence.”
“But I must,” Prudence insisted.
“No.” The old lady became more emphatic. “It is unthinkable. You can’t do it. I don’t consider, myself, that you will make Edward a suitable wife; but he still wishes it; your family wish it. You cannot draw back.”
Prudence pushed back her chair and stood up.
“I’ll go home,” she said. “I’ll go to-day—now. I don’t think that Edward has a right to expect me to many him against my will. I’ll go home.” She gripped the back of her chair hard, and met Mrs Morgan’s unfriendly eyes with no sign of yielding in her look. “I know you are angry with me,” she added. “They’ll be angry at home. I can’t help that. I deserve it. But to do as you wish wouldn’t help matters. It would be another mistake. I couldn’t make him happy.”
“You will never make any one happy,” Mrs Morgan said, “because you are utterly selfish.”
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Prudence was not allowed to return home that day as she wished to do. Old Mrs Morgan insisted upon writing first to Mr Graynor to prepare him for his daughter’s unexpected return, and to explain the reason for her travelling before the original date and alone. In the circumstances it was impossible that Mr Morgan should accompany her.
Prudence dreaded the sending of this letter. She feared as the result of its dispatch that some member of her family would arrive to take her home like a child who is in disgrace. She retired to her room and spent the greater part of the day in tears till her face was disfigured and her eyelids swollen with weeping, so that Mrs Henry, when she called during the afternoon, could not fail to detect these signs of distress. Old Mrs Morgan was too upset to receive any one; and Prudence entertained the mystified visitor alone, and in response to repeated probings, explained the situation to her in jerky incomplete sentences which conveyed nothing very clearly, save the fact that she wished to end her engagement and that the Morgans would not agree to this on account of what people would say.
Mrs Henry’s primary emotion, when this point became clear, revealed itself in a vindictive gratification in her mother-in-law’s discomfiture. Apart from that she kept an open mind on the subject. She liked Prudence. She would have preferred that Edward should not upset her own arrangements by taking to himself a wife, but, since he was inclined that way, she thoroughly approved his choice, and had become reconciled to the thought of his marriage. She scarcely knew whether to feel relieved or disappointed at this unexpected turn of affairs. But she was frankly amused. The picture of old Mrs Morgan, amazed and angry, fussing in irreconcilable distress over what people would say, filled her with indescribable satisfaction.
“They can’t make you marry against your will,” she said reassuringly.
Prudence was not so sanguine. Persistent opposition of the kind enforced in her family bore one with the irresistible force of a flood in the most unlikely directions. To brave this opposition from a distance was a very different affair from facing it daily and being crushed beneath its influence. She had had experience enough of this sort in the past.
“It wouldn’t be so intolerable,” she said, “if Edward and I could five alone. I want a home of my own. I should hate to have my household ordered according to Mrs Morgan’s ideas of what a home should be. Imagine not being mistress in one’s own house!”
“I can’t imagine anything of the kind,” Mrs Henry said, and became animated with a new and brilliant inspiration. “Make your consent to marrying him conditional on his keeping a separate establishment,” she suggested. “Turn the old woman out—or make him take another house. That’s how I should act in your place.”
The audacity of this proposal robbed it largely of its effect. Prudence rejected it without consideration.
“They would never agree to that,” she said.
“Then Edward has no right to hold you to your engagement. You didn’t undertake to marry his mother.”
Mrs Henry felt particularly pleased with her Solomon-like solution of the difficulty. She urged Prudence to give it her attention.
“You have the whole situation in your hands, if you like to be firm,” she said.
It was a shabby card. Prudence felt, to hold in reserve for the winning of the game. Nevertheless, if it was a shabby card, it was a very strong one: it threw the responsibility of decision on Mr Morgan’s shoulders.
“Don’t let them bully you, you poor child!” Mrs Henry added, and passed a friendly arm around Prudence’s waist. “Be firm, and show some spirit, and you’ll win through.” She took Prudence out motoring, to change the current of her thoughts, as she expressed it. “It won’t help matters if you are ill on our hands,” she said.
William arrived at Morningside as a result of Mrs Morgan’s letter, a pompously irate and blustering William, whose anger roused Prudence to a show of defiance, but otherwise left her unmoved.
“This is a nice thing to have happened,” he observed, his cold eyes resting with unsympathetic criticism on her white face, with the eyes ringed from sleeplessness and recent distress. “You have disgraced the family. No Graynor, whatever his faults, has acted dishonourably before. Your conduct is scandalous. Here have I been obliged to leave my business and start off at a moment’s notice on your account. You show no consideration for any one.”
“You might have spared yourself the journey, so far as my pleasure is concerned,” Prudence retorted.
He insisted upon her returning with him by the first available train, an arrangement which suited Prudence, whose one desire was to get away from Morningside under any condition. Edward Morgan’s sense of injury, which he made very manifest, and his mother’s silent anger, were difficult to face.
She had not seen Edward alone since the night of the dance; but he sought an interview with her before she left the house to which he had brought her in the proud belief that she would one day live there with him as his wife. He came to her in the drawing-room where she waited dressed ready for departure, with an air of perplexed and hurt inquiry in his look. He refused to believe in the unalterable quality of her decision. The whole thing was utterly incomprehensible to him.
“Don’t move,” he said gravely, as Prudence started up nervously at his entrance with a hurried demand to know whether the motor and William were ready. “I couldn’t let you leave without a further effort to arrive at some sort of an understanding. The motor will not be round for a few minutes. There is plenty of time. Won’t you sit down?”
She reseated herself, and looked away from his reproachful eyes, painfully conscious of the changing colour in her cheeks. It troubled her to see him look so sad and stern. He drew a chair forward and sat down near her. His proximity, the ordeal of remaining there alone with him, was peculiarly distressing to her.
“I am not going to accept your present decision as final,” he said, after a pause given to reflection. “You haven’t allowed yourself opportunity for thought. I regard this unaccountable change in your feelings as the result of some emotional phase which will eventually pass. No; don’t interrupt me,” for she had looked up as if about to speak. “I would rather that you took time to think about this matter first. I have a right to that much consideration at least. It is not fair to me that you should rely upon your impulses in so grave an issue. Treat me justly, Prudence. Go home and weigh the question carefully, and then let me hear from you again. My love for you remains unaltered in essence, though I confess to a feeling of disappointment at your want of appreciation. Take time, my dear. Give yourself at least a month for reflection. I have not released you from your engagement; I cannot do that. But if at the end of the month you still feel you do not wish to marry me, write to me frankly, and I promise you you will not find me unreasonable.”
“Thank you,” Prudence said with her face averted. “You are very kind.”
Mr Morgan, who was finding a pathetic satisfaction in the rôle of sorrowful mentor, took her listless hand in his, and assumed a friendlier tone. He was beginning to believe his own assertion that her present mood was merely a phase that would pass and leave her in a normal frame of mind once more. He pressed his point.
“You haven’t answered me,” he said gently. “You will do as I ask?”
“I’ll think it over,” she agreed. “And I’ll write. But—I wish you didn’t care so much.”
Conversation hung after that. Mr Morgan had made his appeal; he had nothing further to add, and Prudence found nothing to say. It came as a relief to both when the door opened abruptly, and William thrust his head inside and demanded how much longer his sister intended keeping him waiting. She rose and offered Mr Morgan her hand. He pressed it warmly, and followed her from the room, and saw her into the waiting motor. He still wore an air of chastened sorrow, but there was a gleam in his eyes suggestive of hope; and he turned away from watching the departure of the motor and went into the house with a lessening of the heavy gravity of his expression and a look of greater assurance than he had worn since the rupture. He refused to accept defeat. When she left his house Prudence had on her finger the engagement ring which he had given her. She had offered to return this; but in answer he had taken her hand and replaced it and told her to keep it where it was. It was not until after she reached home that she remembered it and took it off and locked it away from her sight.
The return home was a miserable affair. Her conduct in breaking off her engagement was viewed on all sides as a dishonourable act. No one had any sympathy with the reasons she alleged for this amazing decision. Mr Graynor refused with an obstinacy that baffled her to discuss the subject. He would not hear of her breaking her word to his valued and trusted friend. It seemed to him disgraceful that she should contemplate such a step. To jilt a man like Edward Morgan appeared to him an unpardonable offence.
Prudence crept away early to bed and cried her heart out in the solitude of her room.