Imprudence Part 22

Mrs Henry did not appear to resent this remark. She and her mother-in-law never met without an interchange of polite hostilities.

"Now you know where to place me," she said to Prudence. "I'm the little lump of leaven amid the dough of Morgan responsibility. You and I have got to be friends. I've been blessing Edward ever since he broke the amazing news for introducing something youthful into the firm. We didn't expect it of him."

The gong broke in on these indiscretions with its booming summons to the dining-room. Prudence went in with her fiance, and faced Henry Morgan and his wife at table. Henry was a younger edition of his brother, and not much more animated. It occurred to Prudence that Mrs Henry struck a bright note of contrast amid the semitones of the Morgan household.

Mrs Henry could on occasions make herself peculiarly offensive to her mother-in-law; but it suited her to cultivate Prudence's acquaintance, and so she exercised for that evening a certain tact in fencing with Mrs Morgan that gave no substantial ground for disagreement. She contrived none the less to reveal Edward's mother to his fiancee in an altogether unfavourable light.

"Mother is such an autocrat," she remarked once laughingly. "I suppose that is due to the fact that she has never had a daughter."

"If I had had a daughter," Mrs Morgan replied, "I would have brought her up to respect authority."

"You'll be able to practise on Prudence," Mrs Henry suggested pleasantly, giving the old lady, who was more shrewd than she suspected, an insight into her game. She was trying to prejudice Prudence against her.

Mrs Morgan said nothing; but she determined to counterstroke that move.

With the laudable desire of getting on to easier ground, Edward Morgan spoke of the coming dance and Prudence's antic.i.p.atory pleasure. Mrs Henry discussed it happily.

"I love dancing," she confessed to Prudence. "And of course I knew you would. It's one way of giving you a glimpse of the aborigines. They are a dull lot on the whole. And I'm afraid we'll be short of dancing men. I shall have to import a few. I'm glad you approve of the idea; mother, of course, doesn't."

"You could scarcely expect dancing to appeal to me at my time of life,"

Mrs Morgan observed, her short-sighted eyes scrutinising her daughter-in-law's face with unflattering attentiveness. "I confess to surprise that it should still attract you so strongly. But for Prudence it is a different matter. At her age dancing is quite suitable. Since Edward is willing to accompany her, I am sure she will enjoy it." She smiled agreeably at Prudence. "I shall enjoy hearing all about it afterwards."

Mrs Henry had not calculated on this neat turning of her weapon of offence, and was temporarily at a disadvantage. But she recovered from her surprise with astonis.h.i.+ng quickness.

"She will be able to tell you of her many conquests," she said. "It will amuse you to hear of her triumphs."

"I pay Prudence the compliment of believing her to be neither silly nor vain," Mrs Morgan returned. "If she made conquests she would not boast of them."

"I'm unfortunate," Mrs Henry remarked plaintively. "I am always saying the wrong thing." She glanced at Prudence with a swift upward lift of her eyelid, and added: "I shall have to borrow a leaf from your book of deportment. You don't look as good as they would have me believe; but,"

and she turned her eyes to where Edward Morgan sat beside his fiancee, and let them rest contemplatively on his solid figure, "I suppose you really are seriously inclined."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

During the days which followed Prudence strove continually to overcome her prejudices and adapt herself to Mrs Morgan's ways. She tried, too, to blind herself to what she now realised for an unalterable fact, that her engagement was a mistake. She did not love Edward Morgan. She did not like his mother, nor his home, nor the life they led. Mrs Henry's humorously sarcastic criticisms of the Morningside establishment did not annoy her. She was often amused by them, and allowed Mrs Henry to see it. Afterwards, removed from Mrs Henry's influence, her conscience rebuked her for disloyalty.

She liked Mrs Henry on account of her brightness, and spent more time with her than old Mrs Morgan approved of. Mrs Henry kept open house for her bachelor friends, of whom she had a number, and she took a malicious pleasure in getting Prudence to help in the business of entertaining.

"You'll meet these men at my dance," she said. "I want you to know them first; it makes it so much more agreeable."

Prudence thought so too. She failed to understand old Mrs Morgan's objection. It was absurd to suppose that she must avoid all other male society on account of her engagement.

These brief lapses into an almost Bohemian gaiety under Mrs Henry's chaperonage, made the Morningside household more noticeably dull. The evenings were particularly dreary. Mrs Morgan insisted upon playing patience after dinner, three-handed to include Prudence, and necessitating the use of three packs of cards which made for confusion in dealing. Prudence was dense in learning the game, and would have preferred to sit out, but was not allowed to; it was imperative that she should share in the amus.e.m.e.nt. It did not amuse her; and the concentration necessary in following the play made conversation impossible.

"Edward and I play every night," Mrs Morgan explained. "When he is absent I play a single-handed patience. But that isn't so interesting.

Now when he has to leave home you will be able to play with me. That will cheer us during his absences, and will be nicer for me."

Prudence began to feel very much as a fish must when caught in a net.

The desire to escape was imperative; but the net tightened hourly; there appeared no weak places in it. And Edward Morgan himself was so amazingly kind, and equally amazingly obtuse. He appeared entirely unaware of the vain longing for escape which dominated Prudence's mind, and made her increasingly restless because of that gradual closing of the net which made retreat day by day more seemingly impossible.

Old Mrs Morgan gave a dinner party for the purpose of introducing Prudence formally as her son's betrothed wife to his and her immediate friends. Prudence was obliged to stand beside her with Edward and receive these guests as they arrived, and listen to their congratulations and utter little stereotyped phrases in acknowledgment of their good wishes.

There was no way out of the muddle that she could see. She had sealed and ratified her engagement by this visit to her fiance's home.

The dinner party produced a curious state of reaction. Apathetic resignation to the inevitable followed upon this amazingly dull ceremony. She must go through with what she had undertaken and make the best of the bargain. The hope of keeping a separate establishment from Mrs Morgan was as forlorn as the hope of escape had been. Neither mother nor son, she knew, would suffer the arrangement. They would wear down her opposition with the firm kindliness with which those in authority overrule the undisciplined complainings of youth. None the less, she felt that the imposition of a mother-in-law was unfair. Had Mr Morgan raised this condition at the time of his proposal she would not have agreed to it.

The night of Mrs Henry's dance was to witness another reaction.

Prudence's mood varied so continually during the brief visit to Mr Morgan's home that it might be said to s.h.i.+ft like the compa.s.s with each fresh breath of criticism that greeted the intelligence of her engagement. She was painfully sensitive on the subject.

She had looked forward to this dance, the success of which in regard to partners was secured in advance, with much pleasure. It was a new experience for her. She dressed that evening with unusual care, and was conscious on surveying the finished result in the gla.s.s of looking her best. When she went downstairs old Mrs Morgan's dim eyes noticed only that she appeared extraordinarily young and immature; there was a suggestion of the ingenue in the fresh girlish prettiness, emphasised by her white dress and the childlike expression in the wide blue eyes.

At sight of her, flushed and happy, and wearing his pearls about her throat, Edward Morgan was moved to an infinitely tender admiration. The thought of the appraising eyes of other men resting upon her, of her being held in familiar closeness by the partners who would claim the privilege of dancing with her, gave him a queer stab of jealousy. He would have preferred that she should dance only with himself.

"You look like a bride," he said, and bent over her and kissed her lips.

Both speech and manner disconcerted Prudence. Her glance fell, and the flush in her cheeks deepened.

"I'm glad you think I look nice," she said.

He put her into the motor, and sat beside her, a silent abstracted figure, enveloped in a heavy fur-lined coat. Concern for the thinness of her attire and fear of draughts occupied him during the brief drive.

Prudence was relieved when they reached the house and she was free from his fussy guardians.h.i.+p.

He was waiting for her when she emerged from the cloak-room, and he tucked her hand under his arm with an air of conscious proprietors.h.i.+p and led her through an admiring group of men to where the hostess stood with her husband receiving their guests.

"How sweet you look. Prudence!" Mrs Henry said.

"How do? Awfully glad to see you," murmured Mr Henry, repeating his formula parrotwise to each arrival.

Edward Morgan pa.s.sed gravely on into the ball-room with his fiancee. He felt nervous and out of his element. Functions of this description always bored him; he possessed no small talk, and dancing seemed to him a foolish pastime. Nevertheless he claimed two dances from Prudence, whose programme filled rapidly; and, having danced the first dance with her, retired to the outskirts, and leaned against the doorpost, watching the moving scene with eyes that looked with jealous insistence for Prudence's figure among the gay throng of dancers. Mrs Henry, who found time among her distractions to observe him, drew her husband's attention to the lounging figure, with the whispered injunction:

"For goodness' sake take him into the card-room! He is making himself ridiculous."

But Mr Morgan refused to be beguiled into the card-room. He maintained a determined stand near the door; and Prudence, whenever she left the room with her partner in search of rest at the finish of a dance, was conscious of his hungry watchfulness and the look of grave dissatisfaction in his eyes. She wished that he would not watch her; it was embarra.s.sing.

"He doesn't look much like the hero of the evening," one unconscious partner remarked to her as he steered her carefully through the press of people. "I wonder which is the lucky lady?--Some one with her eyes wide to the main chance, I imagine. I've been amusing myself with trying to pick her out. She is not conspicuous through attentiveness to him, anyhow. Do you know her?"

"Yes," Prudence admitted, with face aflame.

"Oh, I say! Point her out to me, will you? I am a new-comer, and out of the know."

"No; I don't think I will."

"That's the reproof courteous," he returned, slightly nettled. "You consider my remarks in bad taste."

"I think them indiscreet," she answered. "You wouldn't feel very happy for instance if I laid claim to the honour."

It never occurred to him to treat this speech seriously. He laughed as though it were a huge joke.

"I'm not such a fool as I look," he said. "It was because I knew it was safe that I spoke so unguardedly to you."

Later on in the evening he had cause to remember his indiscretion and to regret it. He noticed her with Edward Morgan, and observed with amazement the intimacy of the terms that held between them. It flashed into his mind with disconcerting conviction that what he had believed to be a joke was no jest after all. He had seen Mr Morgan speak to no one else, dance with no other partner. He pushed his inquiries further, and learned to his ever-increasing discomfiture that it was to Mr Morgan's fiancee he had made his unguarded remarks.