Imprudence Part 24

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 pa.s.sed 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 bl.u.s.tering 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 pa.s.s. 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 role of sorrowful mentor, took her listless hand in his, and a.s.sumed a friendlier tone. He was beginning to believe his own a.s.sertion that her present mood was merely a phase that would pa.s.s 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 a.s.surance 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.

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 un.o.btrusive 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 pa.s.sing cloud darkening the blue of her eyes.