Imprudence Part 23

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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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. .h.i.therto 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, m.u.f.fled in his greatcoat, a big ungainly figure, which nevertheless seemed shrunken, possibly on account of the loss of that air of successful a.s.surance 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 circ.u.mstances 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 rea.s.suringly.

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."