Chapter Thirty.
An intolerable fortnight went by. Prudence bore with the displeasure of the family, which manifested itself in a gloomy reserve in her presence, with such cheerfulness as she could command. The influence of Agatha and brother William pervaded the household and fenced her about in a withering isolation. She had ample opportunity for the reflection which Mr Morgan had so earnestly entreated her to give to the matter of her engagement; but this subject least engrossed her attention. The alternative of marriage with Mr Morgan in order to escape from the dreary home life was less attractive than it had seemed. It held out no promise of freedom. Old Mrs Morgan’s rule was as arbitrary as Agatha’s. There still remained to her the move in the game which Mrs Henry had suggested so readily; but Prudence felt reluctant to win that way.
From Bobby’s letters Prudence derived her sole source of comfort. These came fairly frequently, and urged upon her the necessity for keeping her end up. Bobby approved of the rupture which disturbed the peace of two households, and promised his active support in the near future, and in the present his very sincere sympathy.
“You’ve done the right thing at last, old girl,” he wrote. “It would have been better had you done it before; but it’s no use wailing about that. Don’t let them bully you into retracing your step.”
Advice that was easier to give than to follow, in view of the general displeasure. There were moments when Prudence felt that if something did not speedily relieve the tension she would be unable to hold out against the combined pressure of her family’s disapproval and her father’s sorrowful anger. The latter hit her hard. She had not known what it was to be really estranged from him before.
“I wish you would try to understand,” she pleaded with him once. “I can’t bear it when you never speak. I want to talk to you about—things. I want to make you understand my point of view. You can’t really think it right I should marry a man I do not care for.”
“I do not think it right that you should jilt an honourable man like Edward Morgan,” he said.
“But if I don’t love him?” she insisted. “You married for love.”
“Yes,” he answered. “And there was as great a difference between the ages of your mother and me as between you and the man you have promised to marry. But your mother was happy with me.”
“Because she loved you,” Prudence replied.
“Yes,” he allowed, and shifted uneasily in his chair and shaded his eyes with his hand. “I think your mother’s sense of duty would have kept her to her promise in any case,” he added quietly. “There is a code of honour. Prudence, which we, who would keep our own respect and the respect of others, must uphold. In urging the plea for your own happiness you are opposing a selfish consideration against the happiness of a good and just man. You have to think of him as well as of yourself—of his happiness and your honour. I beg you not to jilt him in this heartless manner. It is not right, Prudence. I must continue to set my face against it.”
That was the last time she attempted to plead her cause with him. He was past being able to appreciate her point of view. The only member of the family who sympathised with Prudence, and who in unobtrusive fashion sought to show a kindly understanding and to invite her confidence, was Matilda. Marriage had not lessened Matilda’s love for romance, though there was little that was romantic in her own life. Ernest was sternly opposed to sentiment; and his wife, beautifully submissive to his prejudices, restrained her sentimental yearning in his presence, and in his absence fed her emotional mind on erotic literature and dreams. He was absent from Wortheton at the time of Prudence’s amazing return. The expected living had fallen vacant, and he had gone in advance of his wife to prepare the new home for her reception. That she might like a voice in the furnishing and decoration of the dilapidated vicarage which her money was to restore did not seem to have occurred to him. He felt indeed quite generous and important while spending her money lavishly, according to his own idea of what was needful and agreeable for their mutual comfort. The enlargement and improvement of his study gave him much pleasurable thought.
Matilda, as well as Prudence, felt relieved that he was away. The breaking of Prudence’s engagement would have afforded him many opportunities for making unfavourable comments on his sister-in-law’s character. Matilda on this subject held views opposed to the rest. The engagement had always been a matter for wonderment to her. Her mind strayed continually back to the days of Steele’s visit, and harped with reflective persistence on the more vivid events of that time. She pictured his strong, good-looking face, and the admiration in his eyes when they had rested upon Prudence. She recalled the night when he had entered the garden and talked stealthily with her young sister under her window. She felt puzzled to understand how, after knowing Philip Steele, Prudence could have engaged herself to marry any one else. Matilda would have lived solitary, wedded to the memory of romance, rather than shut romance out of her life.
“You should not many a man you don’t love,” she said once. “You are young enough to wait.”
“I have waited two years,” Prudence answered drearily.
“Wait a little longer. You don’t want to marry Edward Morgan?”
“I don’t want to; but it looks as if I should be driven to marry him against my will.”
Matilda found nothing to say to that. She had never possessed any will of her own as opposed to the family.
The month for reflection drew to a close, and Prudence had arrived at no settled resolve as to what she purposed doing; she could not determine what to write to Mr Morgan. She had promised him that she would write, but she found nothing to say. The relations between herself and her family became more strained. William made unnecessary references to the Graynor Honour at frequent intervals. The word of a Graynor, he remarked, was regarded as equal to his bond—in the past; and left it to be generally inferred that it remained for Prudence to break that admirable record.
Old Mr Graynor took little notice of her. He was not actively unkind; but she had disappointed him keenly, and he allowed her to feel the weight of his displeasure.
Goaded beyond measure, her thoughts reverted at times to the dull tranquillity of the Morningside establishment, and the relief to be gained from Mrs Henry’s bright companionship, the memory of which brought a sense of comfort to her weary brain. If it were not for old Mrs Morgan...
She sat down one day to write to Mr Morgan. She took her engagement ring from the locked drawer and packed it in its case and directed it to him. All of which was entirely simple. But the writing of the letter was a different matter. It was very difficult to set down on paper what she wanted to say. Ultimately the letter was written but the finished production did not please her; the sentences looked bald and brutal and ungracious. It was one thing to resolve to refuse to marry a man unless he sent his old mother out of the home, it was another and altogether detestable matter to put that statement on to paper. She could not do it. Either she must marry the man unconditionally, or end the engagement finally. It was impossible to make any such stipulation.
So the letter was never sent. Prudence eventually destroyed it; and still in a state of desperate indecision, entered upon a further period for reflection.
The re-opening of the subject devolved upon Mr Morgan. After the lapse of six weeks a letter arrived, reminding her of her promise to write to him, urging his love upon her, and hoping that she had reconsidered her decision. It was a restrained and kindly letter, with not one sentence in the whole of it into which she could read a hint at reproach. Quite at the finish he wrote:
“My mother sends her love, and wishes me to say that, as possibly you would be happier keeping house alone, she will find a home for herself near ours.”
A flush came into Prudence’s face while she read these words. She smiled ruefully, and laid the letter aside, and sat quite still, looking out at the sunlight with a shadow of doubt like a passing cloud darkening the blue of her eyes.
“That knocks down all my defences,” she mused, and moved suddenly and found her handkerchief and buried her face in it. “I’m a fool to cry,” she reflected. “It doesn’t alter anything really... But I wish she hadn’t sent that message.”
Thus ended Prudence’s fight for freedom. She gave in weakly, without further struggle; her resolves borne down by the relentless opposition of the family, by Mr Morgan’s quite courteous persistence, and by his mother’s unexpected concession. She no longer had any substantial reason to urge against the marriage. The reason which she had put forward repeatedly, that she did not love the man she was being forced to marry, was treated as frivolous and generally disregarded. There appeared no way of escape.
Marriage, which once had seemed to her to offer freedom from the dull restrictions of her home life, was nothing more than a shuffling of the same pack of cards. She would change her place in the game, that was all; leave one control for another. Perhaps that was life—woman’s life, anyway. But she had dreamed once of fine things, big things, in a world that was fair and lovely and tolerant—the land of promise of every young imaginative mind.
Chapter Thirty One.
Having yielded on the most important point. Prudence conceded every other. She no longer seemed to possess any will, or, if the will were there, she had no heart to express her wishes. The family arranged everything without consulting her; and the marriage, which was hurried forward to fit in as nearly as possible with the date previously fixed upon, was the biggest and most important function of its kind that Wortheton had ever seen.
The young bride alone showed no interest in the proceedings, and wore her white satin and orange wreath with a look of weary protest in her pretty eyes, and an air of shrinking timidity which Mr Morgan considered very beautiful.
Bobby’s disgust at the whole affair was openly manifest. It would have been more seemly, he told her with scorn, had she married the curate.
“There’s no accounting for tastes,” he said, with an odd lack of sympathy in his manner. “Morgan is a refined edition of Uncle William. When you are indulging in your hot water kidney cures and boiled mutton and respectability, don’t forget that you asked for these blessings.”
“Oh, Bobby!” she protested.
“Well, I told you not to give in. You should have taken a firm stand.”
“When you have lived at home a little while you will discover how simple that advice is to follow,” she said, and left him to digest this remark at his leisure. She felt too flattened to argue with him.
But on the day of the actual ceremony Bobby proved helpful and encouraging. He hovered about her watchfully, and was always at hand to fend off the bores, as he expressed it.
“It might be worse, old girl,” he said. “When you are fed up with things, send for me, and we’ll manage some sort of a stunt together.”
There was no pretence between him and Prudence that the latter’s marriage was a subject for rejoicing: they were too intimately acquainted with each other’s thoughts to attempt a pose.
“Lord! won’t it be dull,” he said, “without you.”
The Rev. Ernest assisted in marrying his sister-in-law; and Matilda in a dove-coloured dress, a little regretful, and still puzzled by the turn of events, followed the service tearfully, and compared Mr Morgan’s matured thick-set figure with Steele’s well-set-up, muscular youthfulness, to the former’s disadvantage, and tried to solace her misgivings with the reflection that doubtless everything was ordered for the best in this admirably regulated universe.
Then the ring was placed on Prudence’s finger; and the married couple repaired to the vestry, where Prudence signed the register which witnessed to the sacrifice of her girlhood and all her dreams of romance and freedom and the great flight into the unknown, which was to have revealed such wonderful possibilities of a golden life, complete and satisfying, and bright with gratified desires. The shackles were riveted and her wings clipped for all time.
Marriage is one of two things, a realisation of life, or a compromise. Prudence had effected a compromise, with her eyes opened wide to what she had lost.
“That’s finished,” Edward Morgan said in satisfied tones, and kissed his wife heartily.
Every one showed an eagerness to kiss the bride. Even William raised her veil and laid a benedictory kiss upon her brow; but it was Bobby alone who felt her lips respond to his in warm affection; to the rest she remained a composed, unsmiling young woman, far too composed for a bride, Matilda thought. She never shed a tear. Matilda had shed several—emotional drops of pure happiness. She recalled her sentimental mood of tremulous joy with agreeable satisfaction. Love must express itself in such tender ways; it is never coldly and gravely self-contained, as in Prudence’s case.
“I hope you will be very happy, dear,” Matilda said mournfully. “It is a blessed thing to be married.”
At which the bride’s stony features relaxed into a quiet smile; she had often heard Ernest make use of the same expression, though never in relation to his connubial bliss.
Old Mrs Morgan, and Mr and Mrs Henry attended the wedding; and Bobby and Mrs Henry exerted themselves to make the affair go off brightly. Mrs Henry was a sport, Bobby opined. He had an idea that under her auspices Prudence might have quite a good time, the nightly K.B. and the mother-in-law notwithstanding.
Mrs Henry confessed to him her surprise at Prudence’s sudden capitulation.
“I never supposed she would give in,” she said.
“It wasn’t her fault entirely,” Bobby returned. “The family made it so beastly uncomfortable for her. Now you see us in bulk you ought to be equal to grasping the situation. You see us at our amiable best; we aren’t often so agreeable. But even at our best we are a trifle heavy.”
“You are the lightest heavyweight I have ever encountered,” she replied, laughing.
“Oh! I don’t count. I’m a sort of changeling.” He brought his face suddenly close to hers. “I say,” he said confidentially, “look after Prue a bit, and help her to a spree occasionally. It’s been dull enough for her at home. She ought to have a fling now and again.”
Mrs Henry looked into his earnest eyes reflectively for a moment, and smiled.
“That will be all right,” she said. “I’ve been a rebel always. We’ll contrive between us to make things hum. You shall come along some day and see.”
“I can’t understand a man wishing to marry a girl who has shown that she isn’t keen,” he remarked.
Mrs Henry betrayed amusement.
“The average man’s vanity prevents him from realising her lack of eagerness,” she returned cynically.
“He attributes her reluctance to shyness or ignorance or any other incomprehensible feminine quality, seldom to non-appreciation of himself. It is just as well, perhaps; it makes things pleasanter. But don’t you think at this stage it would be advisable to admit the keenness?”
“Well, perhaps,” he allowed, and smiled in response to the laugh in her eyes. “Life is all a game of make-believe, after all. Look round, and behold! Every one affecting affability, and trying to appear as though this were a joyful occasion. There is as much real joy in a funeral. Uncle William is genuinely pleased anyhow. He has always feared that Prue would get Benjamin’s share of the spoil. There is more than a touch of the miser in the Graynor blood.”
William meanwhile was conversing amiably with the bride, who, wearied with congratulations, had drawn a little apart from the press of guests, and stood in the opening of the French window where the sunlight fell on the sheen of white satin and brightened the gold of her hair. From where she stood she could survey the wallflowers growing in the borders near the path. The sight of them brought back vividly the memory of the night when they had suffered sadly from the tread of despoiling feet. She answered William absently.
“I am proud of you,” he said unexpectedly, and placed a heavy hand upon her arm. “The Graynor honour is safe in your keeping.”
She looked at him curiously. William was fond of talking of the Graynor honour as though it were a quality peculiarly and finely personal. She wondered what he had ever done to make it so manifestly his. He spoke as a man might speak, but never does, who spends his life in defence of this particular virtue.
“I’ve renounced the Graynor,” she replied with a little twist of her lips. “I’m not keeping anything appertaining to the name. As for honour, we guard it best, perhaps, when we are least concerned about it—it’s a natural instinct, not an hereditary quality.”
“It has always been an attribute of our family,” he observed pompously.
“Like the chimneys,” she remarked—“which spoil the landscape for other people.”
She felt irritated, irritated with his sententiousness, his inflated pride. She wished he would not thrust his unwanted company upon her. His condescending air of being kind and brotherly exasperated her. He had rushed her into this marriage, he and Agatha; and she was resentful and bitter on this account. It was a matter of immense regret to her at that moment that she had yielded to the force of circumstances and become the reluctant bride of a man who was altogether too good to be treated in this fashion. Their married life could never be entirely happy: he would demand of her what she could never give.
The consciousness of his claim upon her galled already. When she saw him coming towards her, where she stood with William in the aperture of the window, advancing heavily with his smiling gaze upon her white-clad figure, she experienced a difficulty in meeting his eyes. Something akin to fear gripped her heart and held her silent, white-lipped and unsmiling, as he approached. She felt a wild desire to escape—out through the open window, beyond the walls into the road—to run away into the wide open country and hide.
He little guessed at the storm that shook that quiet figure which remained so still and unresponsive when he halted beside it, with some jesting remark about her having slipped away from him. She gathered from his words that she had done an unprecedented thing in deserting his side. That was her place—at his side—always.
He conducted her to the dining-room, where a huge wedding cake adorned the centre of the long table, a mountain of ornamental white sugar and silver decorations, which it was required she should cut, while her husband stood by, glad and proud, wishful to be helpful, enjoying these absurd customs, and listening to and responding to the toasts with heartfelt appreciation.
Would all this insincere merrymaking never end?
Old Mr Graynor put out a hand and felt for hers under the tablecloth, and pressed her fingers tenderly. His action, in its simple appeal, melted the ice that was closing about Prudence’s heart. She turned to him swiftly, silently, and smiled into his understanding eyes with eyes as dim as his. The new antagonism broke down; he was again the one human being whom she greatly loved. And he was feeling every whit as lonely and sad at heart as herself. How stupid and unnecessary it all seemed, and yet how inevitable!
There followed the change into her travelling-dress, and the bustle of departure amid hurried farewells; and then Prudence entered the motor—the fine new car which Edward had bought for her, and in which they would make the journey to London, en route for the Continent, where the honeymoon was to be spent.
He had thought of everything that would conduce to her pleasure and comfort; and had sacrificed many an old-fashioned prejudice in planning a honeymoon that would appeal to her more youthful ideas of enjoyment. He did not care about travelling himself, and he hated foreign places and people. But he enjoyed giving her pleasure.
When the car turned out of the gates and whirled down the white road, he took her in his arms and crushed her to him and rained ardent kisses on her unresponsive lips.
“My darling!” he murmured. “My own darling! How good it is to be alone with you at last!”
Thus Prudence left her girlhood behind her and started upon her married life.
Chapter Thirty Two.
One sorry satisfaction attends on circumstance which admit no prospect of great happiness or pleasurable development, disappointment and disillusion are alike avoided. During five dull years of married life Prudence passed from one stage to another of repugnance, remorse, and hostility, till she reached the final stage of apathetic resignation to the conditions of her life.
The years, and Prudence’s lack of any response, had considerably altered Edward Morgan’s feelings towards her. The ardour of his passion had cooled, and a polite indifference mainly characterised his mental attitude in regard to his girl-wife. He remained proud of her, proud of her youth and of her beauty; but they were in no sense companions, or even faintly interested in each other’s concerns. They went their separate ways within the first two years of the ill-assorted union. During the first year they quarrelled frequently. Mr Morgan, unaccustomed to opposition, found himself so constantly opposed to his young wife in small things that his temper suffered considerably. Their first serious difference was in the matter of open windows. Mr Morgan was unaccustomed to sleeping with his window open to the treacherous ills of the night air; Prudence was unaccustomed to sleep with them closed. She could not, she averred, sleep at all in an insufficiently ventilated room; she couldn’t breathe without air. It transpired that Mr Morgan’s respiratory organs worked better in a confined atmosphere. He ought to have belonged to the toad, or other hybernating species, Prudence reflected, but forbore to frame her reflections in speech.
They spent some hours one cold night in the unprofitable exercise of jumping in and out of bed, alternately opening and shutting the window; until Prudence, recognising the absence of dignity in these proceedings, feigned slumber; and awoke in the morning with a headache, and the fixed resolve to have a separate sleeping apartment.
Quarrels were frequent after that decision, which she adhered to firmly; until finally they arrived at that state of mutual indifference to which most unsuitably married people attain in time, when they are not sufficiently spirited to part, or are deterred by other considerations from taking this step.
No children came to bless the union. The little hands which might have drawn them together, the little feet which alone could have bridged the distances, were destined never to gladden their hearts. It was a great grief to Prudence that she had no child. Had a little child been born to her it would have eased her heart hunger and filled her lonely life and satisfied her. It might possibly have reconciled her to her marriage. The mother instinct was strong in her. She desired a child with passionate intensity, and she was denied this greatest wish of her life. She resented this. It widened the gulf between herself and her husband, and fed her discontent from the perennial springs of regret which occasionally submerge the barren woman’s soul in bitter waters.
She wished to adopt a child; but Edward Morgan objected to the introduction into his quiet home of a child who was not his; and she let the matter drop. It would have caused dissension had she persisted. Edward was seconded in his objection by old Mrs Morgan, who continued to live with them, her promise of a separate establishment having ended in a temporary absence from Morningside, to which she returned on a visit to her daughter-in-law, which prolonged itself indefinitely until her presence in the home was tacitly accepted as a matter of course. Had she adopted a child, there would have been, Prudence foresaw, considerable disagreement in regard to its upbringing; she and the Morgans held such opposite views on subjects of hygiene and education and general discipline.
Mrs Henry was Prudence’s sole refuge from unutterable boredom. The worldly-minded little woman proved a staunch ally. But her influence did not tend towards reconciling Prudence to her lot. Mrs Henry cordially detested her husband’s people, and enjoyed nothing better than inciting her sister-in-law to rebellion.
“They would flatten you out, if you allowed them to,” she declared, “until you felt like nothing in the world so much as a tired worm. They tried it on with me.”
Prudence fell into the habit of seeking Mrs Henry’s society whenever life at home proved more than usually trying; and Mrs Henry, whose house enjoyed the reputation of being a sort of free hotel, encouraged her visits, recognising in her pretty sister-in-law’s presence an additional attraction to her successful parties.
The intimacy between the two women was a source of continual annoyance to Mrs Morgan; but Edward, who liked his brother’s wife and trusted his own wife implicitly, saw no reason for objecting to the friendship. Possibly he was wise enough to recognise that any objection to this harmless pleasure would be futile. The affair of the windows had left a lasting impression on his mind.
The beginning of the sixth year of her married life, when Prudence, at the age of twenty-five, outwardly very little altered since the day she married, had become resigned, if not reconciled, to a life in which she foresaw no possibility of change, witnessed the outbreak of war—the war which sprung so suddenly upon the world, and which was destined to change so many lives. Lives which were fitted into grooves so deeply that it seemed they had rusted there and could never be dislodged, were flung out of their ruts like lava spit from the mouth of a volcano by this greatest upheaval which the world had known. To Morgan Bros, as to Mr Graynor, the great disaster brought added prosperity. The works were engaged in the manufacture of khaki, which Bobby, afire with enthusiasm, and eager for release from a life that was irksome and uninspiring, donned speedily, to William’s manifest satisfaction, and his grandfather’s pride and grief.
That was the beginning of the changes in Prudence’s life. Apart from her anxiety on Bobby’s account, and the natural gravity which the appalling immensity of the disaster occasioned, Prudence in the early days witnessed only the lighter side of war. Mrs Henry, destined before those tragic five years ran their terrible course to lose both her young sons, worked hard in the early days—indeed, she worked unflaggingly to the end, and bravely strove to hide her sorrow from the world—to give the men she knew, and many who were strangers to her until the wearing of the uniform made them participators in her hospitality, the best of times while they remained in England. Dances and entertainments of every description were organised on a princely scale for the benefit of the men who were out to defend the honour of the Empire.
Old Mrs Morgan looked upon all this festivity disapprovingly, and remonstrated with her, urging the unseemliness of fêting in such frivolous fashion men who were about to face death, and many of whom would be called inevitably before long to meet their God. But Mrs Henry treated these remonstrances with smiling indifference.
“The heroes of Waterloo left a ball-room to defeat their enemies,” she argued. “I expect the poor dears fought better and died happier by reason of those few bright hours. The boys like being amused, and they love flirting with the girls. Whatever does it matter? If one has to die one might as well have a good time first. It is the moment, after all, which counts. We have only the present to think for; there may be no to-morrow.”
Which view of things did not tend to soothe her mother-in-law, who had arrived at an age which avoids reflecting on the uncertainty of the future.
“Rose has no spiritual outlook,” she observed one evening, over the nightly glass of hot water which she sipped with an enjoyment a toper might evince while imbibing his grog. “Her attitude towards the Hereafter is frankly pagan. She will perhaps be brought some day through suffering to recognise the vanity of this world, and the importance of the Future Life. No one can escape responsibility for his acts.”
“Quite possibly Rose’s record will be finer than the records of many people who lead seemingly exemplary lives,” returned Prudence, to whom her mother-in-law’s narrow views were particularly irritating. “‘How strange it will be,’ as Lewis Hind says, ‘if, when we awake from the dream of death, we find that we are judged only by the good we have done.’ That would cause a considerable readjustment of the balance.”
“People who lead good lives do good by example,” Mrs Morgan insisted; “those who spend their days in a feverish round of pleasure exert an evil influence.”
“The warm impulses which make for kindly human acts and brighten life for others have for me greater virtue than any prayer,” came the quick retort, which scandalised Edward Morgan as well as his mother, and provoked him into joining in the discussion.
“I don’t like to hear any disparagement of prayer,” he said quietly. “Your training in a pious home should have taught you at least respect for such things. I say nothing against pleasure, except where it clashes with duty. In the lives of upright people duty ranks above everything.”
“I’ve heard so much about the paramount importance of duty that I am a little weary of it. It seems good to turn instead to the more genial side of human nature. I think Rose’s practical idea of a God-speed to the men by sending them off smiling is just splendid. They all kissed her in sheer gratitude when they left her house the other night.”
“I hope,” Edward Morgan said stiffly, “that you don’t allow them to take those liberties with you?”
Prudence laughed suddenly.
“I’d just love it, if they did,” she said. “But I am too near their own age for them to attempt it. I’ve, promised to write to quite a number of them though. That includes parcels. They will all be glad of gifts from home. They are so young and jolly and full of life—just like Bobby.”
Her eyes were a little wistful. She stood up, a graceful girlish figure in blue velvet, with the light falling softly on the gold of her hair. Edward Morgan’s gaze followed her movements, as she walked to the fireplace and stood leaning with her arm on the mantelshelf, looking down on the hearth. This free and frequent mixing with young life of the male sex disturbed him. He was jealous. It seemed to him that this new stream of sturdy youthful masculinity flowed between them, and set them still further apart. If his love for Prudence had diminished, his sense of proprietorship had not abated in the least. His pride of ownership was in arms against this incursion of new interests, new friendships, in which he had no share.
“Rose is giving another dance to-morrow night, isn’t she?” he said. “I think I’ll go with you and look on for a bit.”
She lifted her head and glanced towards him, surprised, and not particularly overwhelmed with gladness at the prospect of his company. Her reception of his proposal was not exactly flattering.
“You! You will be—bored. It’s just a romp.”
“Henry will be there, I suppose?”
“Oh, Henry! He likes that sort of thing. He romps too.”
“Henry was always a fool,” Mrs Morgan put in acidly. “He would not have married Rose if he had possessed ordinary common sense. It will be as well for you to go, Edward; it may lend a little dignity to the occasion.”
Prudence laughed.
“Oh! there’s plenty of dignity—of a joyous nature,” she said. “We don’t rag.”
She crossed to old Mrs Morgan’s side and laid a hand on the back of her chair, feeling remorseful, as she so often felt when she had been provoked into a show of ungraciousness.
“You come too,” she said softly,—“just for an hour, and look on. You’d love it; and they would love to see you there. It’s you, and others like you, that every mother’s son of them is out to fight for. Come and show them you appreciate their sacrifice.”
“I can better show my appreciation,” Mrs Morgan answered, “by praying for them on my knees every night and morning of my life.” She handed her empty tumbler to her daughter-in-law, and stood up. “It is time I went to bed,” she said. “I find these talks very upsetting.”
“I’m sorry,” Prudence said, and suffered the distant good-night kiss, which was the customary parting between them, regardless of any feeling of antagonism that lay behind the caress.
Chapter Thirty Three.
Having announced his intention of accompanying his wife to the dance which Mrs Henry was giving, Edward Morgan, despite a growing disinclination for spending an evening in this way, adhered to his purpose in much the same spirit in which a man will keep an appointment he has made with his dentist, not compulsorily, nor because he wants to, but because he has no definite reason to urge against keeping the engagement.
It was a matter of indifference to Prudence whether he went or not. His presence would not add to the general hilarity; and he would probably want her to leave early; apart from that, it would be good for him to look on at the harmless fun with which youth took its fill of enjoyment in the presence of tragedy. There was something fine and inspiriting in the gay manner in which these young people enjoyed themselves with the dark cloud of war overshadowing their lives.
Prudence’s thoughts dwelt upon these things as she entered Mrs Henry’s house with her husband, and left him at the foot of the stairs and went up to take off her wrap. They were everywhere, these khaki-clad figures; the sound of their voices, of their gay laughter, filled the rooms and passages. She talked to them, when she descended, and met their admiring glances with the quiet self-possession which characterised her always, talked easily and pleasantly with men whom she had never met before, to whom she had not been introduced. The uniform was an introduction; and she was there to help them to have a good time. Mrs Henry demanded that of her. But this lapse from the conventions struck Edward Morgan unfavourably. He perceived disrespect in the eager push of these unknown young men to secure a dance with his wife. And she gave her dances readily to any one who solicited the favour, a sweet and gracious-looking figure in a dress of white and gold, with a wreath of gold leaves in her hair.
“Don’t tell me your name,” he heard one laughing voice exclaim, as its owner scribbled something on his card. “I’ve written it down as Queen of Hearts. That’s what you are—to me for to-night. I want to think of you as just that.”
Mr Morgan, restraining a desire to interfere, turned abruptly and moved away. He did not at all approve of this sort of thing. The licence permitted by the times struck him as very objectionable. He took up a position near the door, where he could command a view of the dancing and be out of the way. He did not like the modern dances; they were awkward, and lacked the dignity of the dances familiar to his youth.
“Come and open the ball with me,” Mrs Henry said graciously, pausing beside him while the band played the opening bars of a two-step.
“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly; “but these rag-time airs are unfamiliar to me.”
“We can waltz to this,” she said good-naturedly. “You waltz divinely. Come on, old dear!”
She put her hand on his arm, and he found himself to his amazement dancing with his sister-in-law and enjoying it. He had not danced for years, not since the night when he danced in that same room with his fiancée, who, at the finish of the evening, had asked him to release her from her engagement. The memory of that humiliating experience was with him when, at the finish of the dance, he found his way back to the quiet corner near the doorway, from whence he watched Prudence come and go with her different partners, always animated and gay and tireless in her enjoyment. What, he wondered, would his life have been like, and hers, had he not turned a deaf ear to her request?
He hated to see her enjoying herself thus independently of him; and he was powerless to interfere. She would have accused him justly of jealousy of her youth. He was jealous of her youth; he was still more jealous of the youth of the men who surrounded her.
A late arrival, entering unobtrusively while the dancing was in full swing, seeing Mr Morgan standing disconsolately in the doorway, came to a halt beside him, and noting the heavy boredom of his look, was moved to address him, though he had no particular liking for the man he accosted, and was not sure how his advances would be received.
“Something of a crush inside, sir,” he observed. “There doesn’t appear to be any room for me.”
Mr Morgan turned his head and surveyed the speaker. A light of surprised recognition flashed into his sombre eyes, and, after a slight show of hesitation, he held out his hand.
“Steele!” he exclaimed. “The last man I expected to see. Where do you spring from?”
Steele laughed quietly.
“The war brought me back,” he said. “I arrived two days ago, and of course came home. Mrs Henry met me yesterday outside the bank—and so I’m here. She told me she was short of men. The shortage isn’t apparent.” He stared into the densely packed room and smiled. “One can’t imagine Mrs Henry short of anything. It looks ripping.”
“Beastly crush!” Edward Morgan muttered. “I hate this sort of thing.”
The smile in the young man’s eyes deepened, but the rest of his face was grave. He was wondering why Mr Morgan put himself to the inconvenience of attending an entertainment against his inclination.
“It doesn’t look as though my chance of securing partners was rosy,” he remarked. “I’m horribly late.”
He had not made any great effort to get there earlier. He had felt no particular interest in the dance to which he had been so urgently and unceremoniously bidden. But he deplored his lateness sincerely when, as the music slowed down before finally ceasing, he caught an amazingly unexpected vision of soft white and gold, with cheeks flushed like a wild rose, and with wide blue eyes opened to their fullest as they encountered his eager gaze. Prudence’s eyes looked into his; and the lights and the music and the crowd melted magically away. She was back in the past, with the scent of gloire de Dijon roses filling the air, and one voice only breaking across immeasurable distance, and falling on her ears like a note, lost and now recalled, the dear familiar sound of a voice to which her heart responded and which flooded the universe with the music of the spring.
Whether Prudence broke away from her legitimate partner, or whether it was Steele who effected the change, she never afterwards remembered. She was conscious at the moment only of the eager welcome in his eyes, the surprised satisfaction of his voice speaking her name, the glad assurance with which he took her hand and placed it on his arm and steered her with dexterous swiftness through the crowd about the doorway, leaving Mr Morgan staring after them in stupefied amazement, and her late partner frowning with annoyance at the slight which bereft him of the most sought after partner of the evening.
It all happened so quickly. Before she had recovered fully from the first surprise of the encounter, she found herself alone with Steele in a little room off the hall, that was all in confusion with an overflow of furniture from the rooms which had been cleared. He drew her inside and closed the door and stood looking down at her with a laugh in his grey eyes.
Chapter Thirty Four.
“What luck!” he ejaculated. “Whoever would have thought of finding you here? This saves me a journey.”
“I thought you were abroad,” she said, her face irradiating happiness. “It’s just a dream, I can’t believe you are real.”
He stooped over her, and laid his hands on her shoulders and held her, looking into her upturned face. “I thought myself at first you were a dream,” he said—“a vision which the longing in my heart had conjured up. And then your voice—the touch of your hand...” He bent lower and kissed her lips. “That is no dream,” he murmured, and drew back, smiling at her. “How good it is to be with you again! All the way home on the ship I’ve had you in my thoughts. For that matter, I’ve had you in my thoughts right along ever since I went away. I came home, I think, just to see you.”
“I thought you had forgotten,” she said, and turned aside her face to hide the regret in her eyes. “I waited to hear from you. I waited, and waited. And then—I thought surely you must have forgotten.”
“You might have known I couldn’t forget,” he said. “You told me not to write. I did write several times, but I didn’t send the letters for fear they might get you into trouble at home. But all that doesn’t count now. I’ve come back.”
There was a ring of triumph in his voice, a joyous inflection that seemed not only to invite, but to confidently expect, a sympathetic response. Prudence, who in the first flush of her gladness at being with him again, had forgotten everything else for the moment, gave herself up to the pleasure of this unexpected encounter: her marriage, everything outside the immediate present, every one save themselves, was blotted out like patterns on the sand which the incoming tide obliterates. She was as a person whose mind swings abruptly backward, with every event which has befallen in the interval wiped from her memory for the time.
“You’ve come back!” she repeated, and smiled happily. “I’m so glad. Why did you go abroad?”
“Because there didn’t seem much chance of getting on here,” he replied. “I couldn’t afford to waste the years. You see, I wanted to make a home. Well, I’ve done that.”
“Oh! but that’s splendid!” she cried, her eyes shining with excitement. “You’ve got on quickly.”
He laughed with her, and seated himself on the arm of her chair and laid a hand upon one of hers.
“I’ve been lucky,” he said.
He lifted his hand to her neck and slipped his arm around her shoulders. It did not seem to occur to him that she might resent or feel surprised at this familiarity. They were in love with one another; he took that for granted; he was so certain about it that it did not appear necessary even to raise that point.
“So now, you see,” he added, “I can afford to marry.”
She looked at him with a quick darkening of her blue eyes, a sudden gravity chasing the smiling happiness from her face. She knew quite well whom he wished to marry. And she loved him. She had no doubt about that at all. She loved the feel of his nearness, the clasp of his arm about her: the touch of his lips had caused her a thrill of happiness, deeper and sweeter than any emotion she had felt or imagined. He wanted her; she wanted him; and she was not free to go to him.
“Yes,” she said, with, to him, unaccountable nervousness. “Yes. That’s wonderful. It’s great news. Tell me more—something about your life out there. Where was it you went? South Africa! Funny! I didn’t even know where you were. You’ll go back, I suppose, after the war?”
“Yes, I’ll go back. I don’t think I’d care to live in England again. It’s jolly out there—always summer. You’d like it. Say you’ll like it—the jolly warmth and the brightness. The scenery knocks spots out of Wortheton. Do you remember that day in the woods, Prudence?—and the primroses we gathered and threw away? I’ve often thought of that day, when I’ve been lonely and wanting you, and comparing the blue of your eyes with the blue of the African sky. Dear, waking and dreaming, I have pictured you continually—leaning out of a window with the roses beneath the sill.”
He bent lower over her and clasped her closely, smiling at the reluctance, which he realised, and attributed to shyness; it was not because she did not love him that she shrank from his embrace.
“Little girl,” he said, “dear little girl, I didn’t come over only to fight for the old country, I came for the purpose of fetching you and taking you out with me, if I am spared. You’ll go with me, Prudence—as my wife? You know how I love you.”
“Oh!” she said. And suddenly she was clinging to him sobbing, with her face hidden against his sleeve. “I can’t. I can’t.”
He was surprised, but manifestly unconvinced. He supposed it was family opposition she feared, and he set himself to the business of sweeping this difficulty aside.
“We’re up against a lot, of course,” he said, and smoothed her hair with his ungloved hand. “Who cares? If I go back to Africa I’m going to take you with me, if all the blooming family rolls up to prevent me. You trust me? You love me, Prudence dear?”
Prudence lifted her head, and sat back, looking at him with drenched, dismayed blue eyes. The realisation that she must tell him of her marriage, that she ought to have told him sooner, came to her with startling abruptness. A distressful certainty that she was about to give pain to this man whom she loved better than any one in all the world gripped her tormentingly. She felt ashamed at the confession which she must make. Horror of her marriage seized her. She wanted to hide her eyes from the tenderness in his.
“You don’t understand,” she said, and clenched her hands on the chair arm, her face strained and weary and her eyes full of a humiliated appeal. “It’s not the family. Their attitude wouldn’t matter. If I had only known! I thought you had forgotten, and I was so unhappy at home.” Her head drooped suddenly; she hid her eyes from his gaze. “I can’t tell you,” she faltered. “I can’t tell you.”
He seized her hands almost roughly and held them in a grip which hurt. His face, set and stern and paler than her own, seemed suddenly to have aged. His voice was hoarse.
“You aren’t going to tell me that you are married?” he said. “For God’s sake, don’t tell me that!”
Prudence did not answer, did not raise her head; she dared not meet his eyes. He loosened her hands abruptly and stood up.
“Some one’s got before me,” he said in odd constrained tones. “Is that it?”
He turned deliberately away, and remained rigid and outwardly composed, staring at a hideous old print on the wall, without consciously seeing what he looked at. Prudence stood up also, and approached him, a white-robed quiet figure, in the stillness of the dimly-lit room. She put one hand to her throat and nervously fingered the pearls which Edward Morgan had given her.
“Yes, I’m married,” she said, “to Mr Morgan.”
“That man!” He turned on her angrily. “He’s old enough to be your father.”
“My mother married a man much older than herself,” she answered quietly. “They were very happy.”
He emitted a short hard laugh.
“So that’s the end of my hopes,” he said. “Fool that I was! I thought you cared for me.”
She moved nearer to him, and something of her forced control left her in that moment of intense emotion. She laid a hand swiftly on his arm; and he read the despair and the longing in her saddened eyes.
“You know I cared,” she said. “You know I care still. I didn’t understand. I thought you had forgotten. I was not sure how much you really meant. You went away; and life was very difficult. I had to get away from it all—I had to. You had gone. I believed that I should never see you again. If I’d known you remembered, I would have borne with things; I would have waited all my life, if necessary, until you came back to me. And now you’ve come—and it’s too late. It’s too late.”
He looked down at her long and steadily, with a hint of something in his eyes which she did not understand, which she instinctively feared. She put a hand before her eyes to shut out that look in his; and he seized the hand and dragged it aside and compelled her to meet his gaze.
“Look here,” he said quickly. “We’ve got to meet and talk this matter out. We can’t talk here. They’ll miss you presently, and search for you.”
They had missed her already. Mr Morgan was even then on his way to discover their retreat. He approached the door while Steele spoke. Steele continued speaking rapidly and with vehement insistence.
“It’s not going to end like this, you know. It can’t. Now that I know you love me, I’m not reckoning anything else. Nothing else counts. I’ll win you, if I have to break every law under the sun. You are mine. I’ll have you, whoever stands in my way. Yours is no better than a forced marriage. You belong to me. You belonged to me first. I went abroad to make a home for you. I’ve done that. Now I’ve come back to fight for you—in a double sense. If I come through this war, you go back with me. I won’t go without you. Think it over. I’ll see you somehow, and learn your decision later. We’ll bolt. Don’t be frightened. It’s a bit of a muddle, but it will all come right.”
At which moment the door opened, and Mr Morgan, ruffled and large and important, with an air of refusing to see what was altogether painfully obvious, advanced with an exaggeration of dignity and offered Prudence his arm.
“Your partner is looking for you,” he said. “You have overstayed the interval.”
Prudence placed her hand on his sleeve, and, with her face averted from Steele, walked silently out of the room.