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.