On finishing his meal Mr Morgan expressed a desire to go to bed; he thought he could sleep for a couple of hours. Prudence accompanied him upstairs, and parted from him outside his bedroom door with a smile that was friendlier and more ready than any she had given him of late. He was puzzled. He could not understand her. It was as though they had gone back to the days of the courtship, when he had been diffident and awkward and had found her shy and a little difficult, but kind always. The wife who had left him in anger, who for years, it seemed to him on looking back upon the past, had felt entirely indifferent towards him, ceased to be a vivid memory with him; her place in his thoughts was blotted out by the sunshine of Prudence’s smile.
He did not understand what had worked this change in her, but he realised that in some subtle way she was changed. She had grown suddenly older, more self-contained and womanly. She was as a person who, after walking aimlessly for a long while, strikes the right road unexpectedly, and proceeds more surely, with a definite purpose in view.
Still puzzling over these things, he got into bed and soon forgot his perplexities and fatigue in sleep.
While Edward Morgan slept heavily, and the rest of the household slumbered on undisturbed by the early arrival, Prudence remained at her bedroom window, wakeful and deep in thought, looking out upon the new day, upon the garden drenched with the heavy dews and saddened looking in its mantle of unrelieved green. There were weeds upon the paths, which formerly had been weedless. It occurred to her that the disorder was significant of the disorder in their own lives. They had been careless of what they should have tended carefully, and had allowed things to fall into neglect. There was a good deal of weeding to be accomplished on her own account. She had let the disorder accumulate until it threatened to choke all the pleasant places in her mind and leave her just a discontented woman with no object in life, no mental outlook.
Many lives as they unfold reveal a less agreeable vista than anticipation has led one to expect. The philosophic mind makes the best of these disappointments, and sets to work to discover hidden beauties in the less alluring prospect ahead; it is the shallower mind which is dismayed by adverse conditions. The road upon which Prudence had set her feet was not the road of her inclination; it was none the less the road she must travel. To follow it finely was the desire of her heart, as she leaned from the window and thought sadly of the love she had let pass out of her life, and of the responsibilities she had undertaken, and so far neglected entirely. She had endeavoured to shape life to her purpose, and instead life was shaping her to certain definite ends.
Prudence leaned her chin on her hand and looked down upon the white riband of road beyond the walls. Love had appeared to her along that road, and love had parted from her there and gone on down the road out of her life. There were two sad hearts more in the world, that was all. But the road of life, like the road beyond the walls, remained to be trodden. One had to go on. It is better to travel with a brave confidence than to cherish vain regrets.
Prudence and her husband met and had their talk out in the library after breakfast. It was not so difficult a talk as she had imagined it would be. Mr Morgan was as eager to make concessions as Prudence. He had been doing a good deal of private thinking on his own account; and he saw very clearly that his young wife had never received fair treatment. He was anxious to make amends.
His insistence on taking the greater share of the blame left her with curiously little to urge. She scrutinised him, faintly amused. It occurred to her that this generous closing of differences resembled the impulsive overtures of two children who had quarrelled needlessly and were bent on making it up. On one point he was very decided: he refused to open up the cause of their quarrel. All that was past. He wanted to start afresh from that moment; he was not going to look back.
“I’ve been a fool, Prudence,” he said. “A man is apt to forget the value of even his dearest treasure, simply, I suppose, because of the assurance given by possession; but when he is in danger of losing it he discovers his need. My dear, I have been very unhappy.”
He was seated beside her on the sofa, and he moved as he finished speaking and put a hand upon hers, which rested on the seat beside her. She twisted her hand round and clasped his warmly.