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.