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 circumstances 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 reassuringly.
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.”
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 passed 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 blustering 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 pass. 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 rôle of sorrowful mentor, took her listless hand in his, and assumed a friendlier tone. He was beginning to believe his own assertion that her present mood was merely a phase that would pass 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 assurance 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.