Imprudence Part 26

Old Mr Graynor put out a hand and felt for hers under the tablecloth, and pressed her fingers tenderly. His action, in its simple appeal, melted the ice that was closing about Prudence's heart. She turned to him swiftly, silently, and smiled into his understanding eyes with eyes as dim as his. The new antagonism broke down; he was again the one human being whom she greatly loved. And he was feeling every whit as lonely and sad at heart as herself. How stupid and unnecessary it all seemed, and yet how inevitable!

There followed the change into her travelling-dress, and the bustle of departure amid hurried farewells; and then Prudence entered the motor-- the fine new car which Edward had bought for her, and in which they would make the journey to London, _en route_ for the Continent, where the honeymoon was to be spent.

He had thought of everything that would conduce to her pleasure and comfort; and had sacrificed many an old-fas.h.i.+oned prejudice in planning a honeymoon that would appeal to her more youthful ideas of enjoyment.

He did not care about travelling himself, and he hated foreign places and people. But he enjoyed giving her pleasure.

When the car turned out of the gates and whirled down the white road, he took her in his arms and crushed her to him and rained ardent kisses on her unresponsive lips.

"My darling!" he murmured. "My own darling! How good it is to be alone with you at last!"

Thus Prudence left her girlhood behind her and started upon her married life.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

One sorry satisfaction attends on circ.u.mstance which admit no prospect of great happiness or pleasurable development, disappointment and disillusion are alike avoided. During five dull years of married life Prudence pa.s.sed from one stage to another of repugnance, remorse, and hostility, till she reached the final stage of apathetic resignation to the conditions of her life.

The years, and Prudence's lack of any response, had considerably altered Edward Morgan's feelings towards her. The ardour of his pa.s.sion had cooled, and a polite indifference mainly characterised his mental att.i.tude in regard to his girl-wife. He remained proud of her, proud of her youth and of her beauty; but they were in no sense companions, or even faintly interested in each other's concerns. They went their separate ways within the first two years of the ill-a.s.sorted union.

During the first year they quarrelled frequently. Mr Morgan, unaccustomed to opposition, found himself so constantly opposed to his young wife in small things that his temper suffered considerably. Their first serious difference was in the matter of open windows. Mr Morgan was unaccustomed to sleeping with his window open to the treacherous ills of the night air; Prudence was unaccustomed to sleep with them closed. She could not, she averred, sleep at all in an insufficiently ventilated room; she couldn't breathe without air. It transpired that Mr Morgan's respiratory organs worked better in a confined atmosphere.

He ought to have belonged to the toad, or other hybernating species, Prudence reflected, but forbore to frame her reflections in speech.

They spent some hours one cold night in the unprofitable exercise of jumping in and out of bed, alternately opening and shutting the window; until Prudence, recognising the absence of dignity in these proceedings, feigned slumber; and awoke in the morning with a headache, and the fixed resolve to have a separate sleeping apartment.

Quarrels were frequent after that decision, which she adhered to firmly; until finally they arrived at that state of mutual indifference to which most unsuitably married people attain in time, when they are not sufficiently spirited to part, or are deterred by other considerations from taking this step.

No children came to bless the union. The little hands which might have drawn them together, the little feet which alone could have bridged the distances, were destined never to gladden their hearts. It was a great grief to Prudence that she had no child. Had a little child been born to her it would have eased her heart hunger and filled her lonely life and satisfied her. It might possibly have reconciled her to her marriage. The mother instinct was strong in her. She desired a child with pa.s.sionate intensity, and she was denied this greatest wish of her life. She resented this. It widened the gulf between herself and her husband, and fed her discontent from the perennial springs of regret which occasionally submerge the barren woman's soul in bitter waters.

She wished to adopt a child; but Edward Morgan objected to the introduction into his quiet home of a child who was not his; and she let the matter drop. It would have caused dissension had she persisted.

Edward was seconded in his objection by old Mrs Morgan, who continued to live with them, her promise of a separate establishment having ended in a temporary absence from Morningside, to which she returned on a visit to her daughter-in-law, which prolonged itself indefinitely until her presence in the home was tacitly accepted as a matter of course.

Had she adopted a child, there would have been, Prudence foresaw, considerable disagreement in regard to its upbringing; she and the Morgans held such opposite views on subjects of hygiene and education and general discipline.

Mrs Henry was Prudence's sole refuge from unutterable boredom. The worldly-minded little woman proved a staunch ally. But her influence did not tend towards reconciling Prudence to her lot. Mrs Henry cordially detested her husband's people, and enjoyed nothing better than inciting her sister-in-law to rebellion.

"They would flatten you out, if you allowed them to," she declared, "until you felt like nothing in the world so much as a tired worm. They tried it on with me."

Prudence fell into the habit of seeking Mrs Henry's society whenever life at home proved more than usually trying; and Mrs Henry, whose house enjoyed the reputation of being a sort of free hotel, encouraged her visits, recognising in her pretty sister-in-law's presence an additional attraction to her successful parties.

The intimacy between the two women was a source of continual annoyance to Mrs Morgan; but Edward, who liked his brother's wife and trusted his own wife implicitly, saw no reason for objecting to the friends.h.i.+p.

Possibly he was wise enough to recognise that any objection to this harmless pleasure would be futile. The affair of the windows had left a lasting impression on his mind.

The beginning of the sixth year of her married life, when Prudence, at the age of twenty-five, outwardly very little altered since the day she married, had become resigned, if not reconciled, to a life in which she foresaw no possibility of change, witnessed the outbreak of war--the war which sprung so suddenly upon the world, and which was destined to change so many lives. Lives which were fitted into grooves so deeply that it seemed they had rusted there and could never be dislodged, were flung out of their ruts like lava spit from the mouth of a volcano by this greatest upheaval which the world had known. To Morgan Bros, as to Mr Graynor, the great disaster brought added prosperity. The works were engaged in the manufacture of khaki, which Bobby, afire with enthusiasm, and eager for release from a life that was irksome and uninspiring, donned speedily, to William's manifest satisfaction, and his grandfather's pride and grief.

That was the beginning of the changes in Prudence's life. Apart from her anxiety on Bobby's account, and the natural gravity which the appalling immensity of the disaster occasioned, Prudence in the early days witnessed only the lighter side of war. Mrs Henry, destined before those tragic five years ran their terrible course to lose both her young sons, worked hard in the early days--indeed, she worked unflaggingly to the end, and bravely strove to hide her sorrow from the world--to give the men she knew, and many who were strangers to her until the wearing of the uniform made them partic.i.p.ators in her hospitality, the best of times while they remained in England. Dances and entertainments of every description were organised on a princely scale for the benefit of the men who were out to defend the honour of the Empire.

Old Mrs Morgan looked upon all this festivity disapprovingly, and remonstrated with her, urging the unseemliness of feting in such frivolous fas.h.i.+on men who were about to face death, and many of whom would be called inevitably before long to meet their G.o.d. But Mrs Henry treated these remonstrances with smiling indifference.

"The heroes of Waterloo left a ball-room to defeat their enemies," she argued. "I expect the poor dears fought better and died happier by reason of those few bright hours. The boys like being amused, and they love flirting with the girls. Whatever does it matter? If one has to die one might as well have a good time first. It is the moment, after all, which counts. We have only the present to think for; there may be no to-morrow."

Which view of things did not tend to soothe her mother-in-law, who had arrived at an age which avoids reflecting on the uncertainty of the future.

"Rose has no spiritual outlook," she observed one evening, over the nightly gla.s.s of hot water which she sipped with an enjoyment a toper might evince while imbibing his grog. "Her att.i.tude towards the Hereafter is frankly pagan. She will perhaps be brought some day through suffering to recognise the vanity of this world, and the importance of the Future Life. No one can escape responsibility for his acts."

"Quite possibly Rose's record will be finer than the records of many people who lead seemingly exemplary lives," returned Prudence, to whom her mother-in-law's narrow views were particularly irritating. "'How strange it will be,' as Lewis Hind says, 'if, when we awake from the dream of death, we find that we are judged only by the good we have done.' That would cause a considerable readjustment of the balance."

"People who lead good lives do good by example," Mrs Morgan insisted; "those who spend their days in a feverish round of pleasure exert an evil influence."

"The warm impulses which make for kindly human acts and brighten life for others have for me greater virtue than any prayer," came the quick retort, which scandalised Edward Morgan as well as his mother, and provoked him into joining in the discussion.

"I don't like to hear any disparagement of prayer," he said quietly.

"Your training in a pious home should have taught you at least respect for such things. I say nothing against pleasure, except where it clashes with duty. In the lives of upright people duty ranks above everything."

"I've heard so much about the paramount importance of duty that I am a little weary of it. It seems good to turn instead to the more genial side of human nature. I think Rose's practical idea of a G.o.d-speed to the men by sending them off smiling is just splendid. They all kissed her in sheer grat.i.tude when they left her house the other night."

"I hope," Edward Morgan said stiffly, "that you don't allow them to take those liberties with you?"

Prudence laughed suddenly.

"I'd just love it, if they did," she said. "But I am too near their own age for them to attempt it. I've, promised to write to quite a number of them though. That includes parcels. They will all be glad of gifts from home. They are so young and jolly and full of life--just like Bobby."

Her eyes were a little wistful. She stood up, a graceful girlish figure in blue velvet, with the light falling softly on the gold of her hair.

Edward Morgan's gaze followed her movements, as she walked to the fireplace and stood leaning with her arm on the mantelshelf, looking down on the hearth. This free and frequent mixing with young life of the male s.e.x disturbed him. He was jealous. It seemed to him that this new stream of st.u.r.dy youthful masculinity flowed between them, and set them still further apart. If his love for Prudence had diminished, his sense of proprietors.h.i.+p had not abated in the least. His pride of owners.h.i.+p was in arms against this incursion of new interests, new friends.h.i.+ps, in which he had no share.

"Rose is giving another dance to-morrow night, isn't she?" he said. "I think I'll go with you and look on for a bit."

She lifted her head and glanced towards him, surprised, and not particularly overwhelmed with gladness at the prospect of his company.

Her reception of his proposal was not exactly flattering.

"You! You will be--bored. It's just a romp."

"Henry will be there, I suppose?"

"Oh, Henry! He likes that sort of thing. He romps too."

"Henry was always a fool," Mrs Morgan put in acidly. "He would not have married Rose if he had possessed ordinary common sense. It will be as well for you to go, Edward; it may lend a little dignity to the occasion."

Prudence laughed.

"Oh! there's plenty of dignity--of a joyous nature," she said. "We don't rag."

She crossed to old Mrs Morgan's side and laid a hand on the back of her chair, feeling remorseful, as she so often felt when she had been provoked into a show of ungraciousness.

"You come too," she said softly,--"just for an hour, and look on. You'd love it; and they would love to see you there. It's you, and others like you, that every mother's son of them is out to fight for. Come and show them you appreciate their sacrifice."

"I can better show my appreciation," Mrs Morgan answered, "by praying for them on my knees every night and morning of my life." She handed her empty tumbler to her daughter-in-law, and stood up. "It is time I went to bed," she said. "I find these talks very upsetting."

"I'm sorry," Prudence said, and suffered the distant good-night kiss, which was the customary parting between them, regardless of any feeling of antagonism that lay behind the caress.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

Having announced his intention of accompanying his wife to the dance which Mrs Henry was giving, Edward Morgan, despite a growing disinclination for spending an evening in this way, adhered to his purpose in much the same spirit in which a man will keep an appointment he has made with his dentist, not compulsorily, nor because he wants to, but because he has no definite reason to urge against keeping the engagement.