Chapter Forty.
A bomb falling in their midst could scarcely have caused a greater sensation than was produced by Prudence’s request. The effect of her speech and of her action was electrical. Only the child remained unmoved; and he, reassured doubtless by the quiet composure of her bearing amid the general tension, which he realised without understanding it, and the sweet gentleness of her voice, ceased his plaintive whimpering and stared at her with round eyes filled with wonderment, and forgot his fear.
Bessie Clapp stared also, a solemn light in her dark eyes, and with a face grown tender and womanly, with all the hardness gone from its look. But William Graynor, flushed with anger, strode forward to intervene; and the old man, looking with disfavour upon the grouping, uttered: “No, no!” in tones of sharp protest, and put out a hand and touched Prudence’s sleeve.
“The child will be all right,” he said. “Leave this to me.”
She turned to him with a wistful smile.
“He’s nobody’s bairn,” she said. “Nobody wants him—except me.”
“Your husband wouldn’t like it,” he remonstrated. “You have to consider him. Take the child away,” he added, addressing Bessie Clapp. “I will communicate with you later.”
Prudence gave the boy into his mother’s charge and walked with them to the door.
“If I can arrange it, are you willing to give him up to me entirely?” she asked.
“Yes, miss,” Bessie answered in awed tones; and added, almost in a whisper: “It ’ud be a fine thing for ’im, any’ow.”
“’E’s good,” she said, with the door open and her hand upon it. “’E ban’t like ’is father; ’e ban’t mean.”
Prudence returned to confront her father and brother, both of them disturbed, though in different degrees, by her unlooked for interference. Mr Graynor regretted having allowed her to be present at the interview, while William resented deeply the fact that his double life should have been revealed to the young sister whom he had systematically snubbed and preached to all the years she had lived in the home. The knowledge that she wished to adopt his bastard son was insupportable.
“Let me beg, sir,” he said, crimson and spluttering for words, “that you won’t permit this. It’s indecent. It’s—unthinkable. I can’t agree to it.”
“It has nothing,” Prudence answered quietly, “to do with you.”
Mr Graynor fixed his dim angry eyes on his son’s face, the passion which he had kept under until now blazing up like a conflagration fanned by a sudden draught. He had never felt so humiliated and ashamed in all the years of his long life. For generations they had lived in Wortheton, honourable men and women, with an unsullied record which it remained for the present generation to smirch. It hurt him in his most vulnerable spot, his pride, that this base and sordid sin should be laid to his son’s charge.
“You despicable hypocrite!” he shouted. “How dare you question the right of any one to undertake a responsibility you are not man enough to shoulder? Had I known before of this low intrigue I would have compelled you to marry the mother of your child. Fortunately for her, she has found a better fate. As for the child—” He broke off abruptly, and turned in his seat and sat looking into the fire. “Prudence and I will settle that matter,” he added more quietly. “Leave it to us.”
Without uttering another word, William went heavily out of the room. Prudence approached the old man, who sat, a shrunken dejected figure, before the hearth, and kneeling on the carpet beside him, put her arms about him lovingly, and remained so in silence, while he looked steadily into the fire, thinking back—hearing again in imagination her indignant young voice speaking out of the past: “I will pray hard night and morning that God will befriend Bessie Clapp.” He put a hand upon her hair and smoothed it caressingly.
“This is a blow, Prue,” he said. “It hits me hard.”
He roused himself after a while and sat straighter in his chair and looked at her inquiringly.
“What makes you think you would like to have the child?” he asked.
“Because I have no little one of my own,” she answered. “And this little child’s life promises to be a sad one. He has a claim on our consideration; the same blood runs in his veins.”
“That is what makes your proposition impossible, as I see it,” he said. “Edward would not wish it. Think of the disgrace, my dear. One likes to hide these things.”
“That’s where I don’t see with you,” she replied gently. “In my opinion it is in refusing to accept our responsibilities that we merit disgrace. I’ve learned that quite lately. Let me try to explain.”
She clung closer to him and laid her head on his shoulder and was silent for a space, plunged in thought. The old man continued his occupation of stroking the bright hair, and was silent too, wondering what it was that needed explanation.
“You never asked me,” Prudence said presently, “what it was that brought me home so unexpectedly.”
“I was so glad,” he replied, “to see you. It never occurred to me to ask the reason of your coming. It’s sufficient for me that you are here.”
“Dear!” she said, and pressed his hand fondly. “I’m always glad to come. I’m sorry that ever I went away. I came home because of a quarrel with Edward. I left him in anger. I had thoughts of leaving him altogether. You see, dear, I too have behaved badly. I meant to shirk my responsibilities because they had grown irksome. Don’t grieve, daddy; that’s all past. I’ve come to see that life can’t be twisted to suit each person’s needs. We should make a hopeless tangle of it if we followed that principle. There’s one simple course for the straight and decent liver—to accept life as it is and make the best of it. I mean to write to Edward to-day and ask him to come down and fetch me. Then I will tell him about the child. If he consents to my adopting him, I shall take him back with me.”
“You will make Edward’s consent a condition to your reconciliation?” Mr Graynor asked.
“Oh, no!” Prudence looked swiftly into his face. “I am hoping that he will give it as a concession.”
She twined her arms about the old man’s neck and drew his cheek to hers and pressed hers against it.
“I’m just hungry for a little child,” she said. “I long to hear little footsteps about the house, to know the clinging feel of little hands. I’m just a sackful of motherhood tied down and repressed. I feel that I can’t go on like this much longer.”
“I wish you had a dozen babies of your own,” he said wistfully.
“My dear!” She was laughing now, though the tears shone behind the laughter. “Half that number would serve.”
“I still don’t like the idea of you adopting this child,” Mr Graynor said after a pause. “He comes of bad stock, Prue.”
“Not bad stock,” she contradicted. “I’ve known his mother all my life. She made a mistake. That was largely due to environment: many girls in her position would have done the same. And William... we won’t judge William. We don’t know—everything, do we? I am a great believer in training. I know the faults I have to watch for. I shall teach my child to be honest and generous and self-controlled.”
He smiled at her a little sadly. Youth is so hopeful and so sanguine. But experience had proved to him that there is something which strikes deeper than training, something which no training can overcome—the nature which lies at the root of every human being.
Chapter Forty One.
Edward Morgan came in immediate response to his wife’s letter. It was highly inconvenient with the press of business at the mills for him to leave; but he spent the night in travelling in order to save a day, and arrived at Wortheton, cold and stiff, in the early hours of the morning, risking chills and all the evils he was wont to avoid in his alacrity to respond to his wife’s unexpected summons.
It had come to him in a flash of unusual perceptivity that if he did not seize this moment which her softened mood generously offered for effecting a reconciliation, another opportunity might not present itself. Despite a certain narrowness of outlook, there was no smallness in Mr Morgan’s nature. Because he read in Prudence’s letter a sign of relenting, an earnest wish to close their differences, it did not occur to him to take a dignified stand and leave her to make all the advances, extending his forgiveness only when fully assured of her penitence. Such unequal methods, he realised quite clearly, never effected anything beyond a compromise. And he was very anxious for a complete understanding between himself and his young wife. Complete understanding and complete trust. Without these no married life could be congenial.
His own marriage had fallen far short of his expectations. He knew that he had not won Prudence’s love. Since the night of their quarrel, when she had confessed to loving Steele, the hope which he had fostered patiently through the disappointing years, that he might yet win it, had died utterly. But, oddly, that night with its ugly memories, its noisy wrangling and bitter recrimination, had revealed with a certainty beyond question that his own love for her, which he had believed was faded to insignificance, was still very much alive. He wanted her very earnestly. He missed her, missed her bright presence about the house, her youthful prettiness, her coming and going in her independent search for pleasure outside his home. She had brought a glimpse of the unexpected, the delightful irrelevance of pleasant trivial things, into the prosaic setting of everyday life which had caught him away insensibly from the dulness and the worries of his stupendous business undertakings, and brightened his home, very much, he often thought, as the swift appearance of the sun would brighten the prospect on a grey day. He had not realised, until she left him, how much he appreciated these things. It was some return anyway, if not the most adequate he could have desired, for the love he felt for her. He had made no particular concession, had not even attempted to adapt himself to her view of life. He had demanded a great deal of her and given little in return.
These thoughts floated through his mind as he drove up the hill to the house. He was seeing their case altogether differently from the days when he had taken his young wife home and quarrelled with her seriously over such unimportant matters as ventilation and the direction of household affairs. He was, he realised now, directly responsible for the beginning of the breach which had widened yearly and ended in an open rupture. It remained for him to make amends for those earlier mistakes which had broken up the peace of his home. He had led too self-centred a life. In future he would evince greater interest in his wife’s doings, show more sympathy with her aims. After all, a wife needs something more from her husband than board and lodging; she has a right to his confidence and companionship. He had never attempted to make a companion of her. He had treated her always as a child, a child to be spoilt and petted, until she refused the petting. Lately he had treated her with greater indifference, but still as a child, an unreasonable child towards whom kindness was misdirected. It was not surprising that the woman in her had rebelled.
It came as an agreeable surprise to Mr Morgan when he reached Court Heatherleigh in the grey dawn, weary and cold after his long journey, to be met on the doorstep by Prudence, who was the only member of the household awake at that hour.
Their meeting was somewhat constrained. He had not expected to see her and was at a loss for words. They faced one another a little self-consciously in the big empty hall; and then Edward Morgan bent down and kissed his wife, with an air of uncertainty as to how his caress would be received. Prudence flushed warmly, and, to cover her embarrassment, became actively helpful in disentangling him from his numerous wrappings.
“I didn’t expect to see any one at this hour,” he said, and struggled out of his heavy coat and hung it on a peg. Then he turned to her with quick unexpectedness. “Thank you for the kindly thought, dear. It is good to find a welcome awaiting one at the end of a journey.”
“You shouldn’t have travelled by the night train,” she said. “You know you hate it.”
“It saved time,” he explained.
Arrangements had been made for an early breakfast for the traveller. Prudence led him into the breakfast-room, and poured out the hot coffee which she had made. They did not talk much. Each was conscious of the strain of this meeting; and the remarks which passed between them were impersonal and confined to the business of the moment.
On finishing his meal Mr Morgan expressed a desire to go to bed; he thought he could sleep for a couple of hours. Prudence accompanied him upstairs, and parted from him outside his bedroom door with a smile that was friendlier and more ready than any she had given him of late. He was puzzled. He could not understand her. It was as though they had gone back to the days of the courtship, when he had been diffident and awkward and had found her shy and a little difficult, but kind always. The wife who had left him in anger, who for years, it seemed to him on looking back upon the past, had felt entirely indifferent towards him, ceased to be a vivid memory with him; her place in his thoughts was blotted out by the sunshine of Prudence’s smile.
He did not understand what had worked this change in her, but he realised that in some subtle way she was changed. She had grown suddenly older, more self-contained and womanly. She was as a person who, after walking aimlessly for a long while, strikes the right road unexpectedly, and proceeds more surely, with a definite purpose in view.
Still puzzling over these things, he got into bed and soon forgot his perplexities and fatigue in sleep.
While Edward Morgan slept heavily, and the rest of the household slumbered on undisturbed by the early arrival, Prudence remained at her bedroom window, wakeful and deep in thought, looking out upon the new day, upon the garden drenched with the heavy dews and saddened looking in its mantle of unrelieved green. There were weeds upon the paths, which formerly had been weedless. It occurred to her that the disorder was significant of the disorder in their own lives. They had been careless of what they should have tended carefully, and had allowed things to fall into neglect. There was a good deal of weeding to be accomplished on her own account. She had let the disorder accumulate until it threatened to choke all the pleasant places in her mind and leave her just a discontented woman with no object in life, no mental outlook.
Many lives as they unfold reveal a less agreeable vista than anticipation has led one to expect. The philosophic mind makes the best of these disappointments, and sets to work to discover hidden beauties in the less alluring prospect ahead; it is the shallower mind which is dismayed by adverse conditions. The road upon which Prudence had set her feet was not the road of her inclination; it was none the less the road she must travel. To follow it finely was the desire of her heart, as she leaned from the window and thought sadly of the love she had let pass out of her life, and of the responsibilities she had undertaken, and so far neglected entirely. She had endeavoured to shape life to her purpose, and instead life was shaping her to certain definite ends.
Prudence leaned her chin on her hand and looked down upon the white riband of road beyond the walls. Love had appeared to her along that road, and love had parted from her there and gone on down the road out of her life. There were two sad hearts more in the world, that was all. But the road of life, like the road beyond the walls, remained to be trodden. One had to go on. It is better to travel with a brave confidence than to cherish vain regrets.
Prudence and her husband met and had their talk out in the library after breakfast. It was not so difficult a talk as she had imagined it would be. Mr Morgan was as eager to make concessions as Prudence. He had been doing a good deal of private thinking on his own account; and he saw very clearly that his young wife had never received fair treatment. He was anxious to make amends.
His insistence on taking the greater share of the blame left her with curiously little to urge. She scrutinised him, faintly amused. It occurred to her that this generous closing of differences resembled the impulsive overtures of two children who had quarrelled needlessly and were bent on making it up. On one point he was very decided: he refused to open up the cause of their quarrel. All that was past. He wanted to start afresh from that moment; he was not going to look back.
“I’ve been a fool, Prudence,” he said. “A man is apt to forget the value of even his dearest treasure, simply, I suppose, because of the assurance given by possession; but when he is in danger of losing it he discovers his need. My dear, I have been very unhappy.”
He was seated beside her on the sofa, and he moved as he finished speaking and put a hand upon hers, which rested on the seat beside her. She twisted her hand round and clasped his warmly.
“Perhaps it was rather a good thing that I came away,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “I was growing nervy. A woman with nerves is difficult to live with. I have been thinking, and finding out things. It is astonishing what a lot I’ve learned about myself just lately. I want to do better.”
“It’s been my fault,” he insisted. “I never made sufficient allowance for your youth, dear. We’ll try again—make a fresh start. We’ll talk things out together and not bottle up grievances. We have never talked freely enough to one another.”
“No,” she said.
“I’m rather glad,” he said presently, “that things came to a head. It has opened up the way to a better understanding. You are the sort of woman a man learns to rely upon. You’re honest. When I recall the things I said to you that night I am ashamed of myself.”
“Never mind that now,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to think of that. We agreed not to talk of that.”
She got up suddenly and stood in front of him, looking down at him with softened, smiling eyes.
“I want to ask a favour,” she said, “and I feel that that isn’t quite honest just at the moment. It’s like taking advantage of our talk. That’s so like a woman, isn’t it?”
He sprang up from his seat and took her by the shoulders and kissed her.
“It’s the most generous response you could make,” he said—“to ask a favour. It’s a proof of your trust anyhow.”
“It’s something very big,” she said, with her earnest eyes lifted to his face. “If you are altogether against it I’ll not insist.”
“Tell me what it is,” he said, manifestly surprised by the seriousness of her manner, and entirely unsuspecting the nature of the request.
A faint increase of colour stole into her cheeks, but she kept her gaze lifted to his.
“I have discovered a little child,” she explained softly, “whom nobody wants; and I want to mother him. I want to take him home with me.”
“You’ve always wanted that,” he said, and waited for further enlightenment.
Briefly she confided to his scandalised ears the story of William’s illegitimate son, observing him closely while she unfolded the sordid tale in simple direct language, making no appeal to sentiment, merely relating the bald facts and leaving these to work their own effect. She was not in the least surprised that he was too shocked on hearing the story to feel any sympathy for the child in his deserted condition. That side of the picture left him unmoved.
“You couldn’t bring that child home,” he said, with more than a touch of firmness. “A child like that! ... In our home! My dear, how could you wish such a thing in view of his parentage?”
“It is on account of his parentage I wish it,” Prudence answered quietly. “He is a Graynor, Edward. I want to give him a chance—a chance to grow up honest and decent living, a chance to become a better man than his father.”
“You talk as though the child were your responsibility,” he complained. “It’s nothing to do with us.”
“Not directly, no,” she said.
“Nor indirectly,” he insisted. “There isn’t the faintest reason why you should assume responsibility.”
“There is every reason,” she urged. “He is a child launched evilly into a world which shows little sympathy for these children. His life will be a hard one with no good nor kindly influences surrounding it. There are numberless cases like this—little children brought into the world shamefully, and left to drift. It is not surprising that they grow up to become bad citizens; it would be surprising if they didn’t. I want to give one of these small citizens his chance. The knowledge that he is closely akin to me makes me more earnest in this wish. We are childless people, Edward; we could do this without injuring any one. Are you very set against it?”
She paused, and gazed inquiringly into his grave face, while he looked back at her for a long minute in silence, looked into the blue eyes, raised to his with a frank trustfulness he had never beheld in them before; and he knew that he could not refuse her her wish, however distasteful the idea of introducing this child into his home might be. Still gazing steadily into her quiet eyes, he said:
“You wish to give this child his chance? I don’t like the idea, but I have no doubt it is none the less right because it is objectionable to me. I withdraw my opposition. Give him his chance, Prudence. And in return let me ask a favour of you.”
“What is that?” she said.
He did not take his eyes from hers. He remained standing before her, observing her with such a yearning wistfulness in his face that her heart went out to him in pity because she had no love to offer in return for the love he still bore for her.
“What is the favour, dear?” she asked. “Give me also a chance,” he said hoarsely, and held out his hands to her, and waited.
Prudence put her hands into his, and the tears were in her eyes.