Chapter Thirty Six.
It was strange that in this bitter crisis of her life the old home, from which she had longed so impatiently to escape in the days of her impulsive girlhood, should seem to Prudence a refuge from the distresses which now overwhelmed her. She wanted to return to her childhood’s home, to her father, to the bedroom with its window facing south and the roses lifting their heads to the sunlight below the sill. These familiar pleasant things in their quiet beauty appealed to her irresistibly. There was a suggestion of peace in the homely picture, of escape from misunderstanding and worry and the near danger of a presence which she feared to face.
Edward Morgan raised no objection to her going. Relations between himself and his wife were so strained since his unusual outburst of passion that he was relieved to be spared the awkwardness of daily intercourse for a time. A brief separation might more readily effect a reconciliation between them than the present hostile conditions of life together promised. His attitude of cold courtesy towards her, her silent aloofness, threatened to widen the distances irrevocably; and Mr Morgan had no desire for an open breach. It was his intention to patch up the quarrel. Prudence had not arrived at this stage. Her thought was solely for the present. She realised the urgent need to get away, to escape from Morningside, and from her husband and this life which had grown so painful to her.
The return to her old home stuck in her memory by reason of the sense of change here as elsewhere. The influence of the times had its grip on Wortheton, on Court Heatherleigh and its inmates. William, whose manner was oddly unwelcoming towards his sister, was much occupied at the works, and troubled with labour discontent, and the threatened invasion of the Trades Union. Some of his workpeople had struck for increased wages. The increase had been granted after considerable delay; but the strikers had been compelled to apologise before they were allowed to resume their places. That was the beginning of the end of William’s autocracy. Higher wages were given elsewhere, and the workpeople spoke sullenly among themselves of going in quest of better pay and fairer treatment. The Wortheton factories were fated to come into line with the rest.
At Court Heatherleigh the family had decreased in numbers, the younger Miss Graynor being absent on war work. And Agatha had developed the knitting habit, and was never to be seen without a ball of wool and needles in her hands. Even during meals she occupied herself with knitting between the courses. The irreproachable butler was somewhere in France behind the lines, and his place had not been filled; the eminently respectable, severe-looking parlourmaid carried on unaided for the present. Eventually the war engulfed her also; and she drifted from Wortheton to a munition factory with the settled purpose of bringing the war to a close.
Prudence observed these changes with wonderment. Somehow she had not supposed that a war even could alter the course of life in Wortheton—that lichenous spot, which seemed to have detached itself from the general progress and fallen into contented slumber for all time. But the booming of the guns had effectually disturbed its repose. The booming of those guns in France penetrated everywhere and found their echo in every heart.
Old Mr Graynor alone stood apart from these things. He was too old and feeble to feel a great interest in anything beyond the personal aspect of the great upheaval. He was concerned at his daughters leaving home, and was anxious for Bobby’s safety; but the war between the nations, which he was fated never to see ended, was too amazing and too vast to hold his attention. The discussions in the home circle provided all the information he gleaned of the progress of events.
He was glad of Prudence’s company. She, as well as himself, stood outside the general activity, and conveyed by her presence something of the atmosphere of the past. He accepted her reappearance in the home without question. He was growing forgetful and, save when Edward Morgan’s name was mentioned, did not appear to remember his existence. The changes which had taken the others away had brought Prudence home; that was how he saw things; and he liked to have her there.
“I’m getting old, Prue,” he told her. “I’ve taken to falling asleep in my chair, and my memory plays me tricks. It is good to have you back. They are all so busy; the old man gets overlooked and forgotten. You’ll stay with me?”
“Yes,” Prudence answered, responding to the wistful tone in his shaky voice; “as long as you want me.”
He was the only person in all the world, she reflected, who really had need of her. His dependence on her comforted her greatly. They were both of them lonely souls, whom the rush of events left stranded beyond reach of the changing tides.
It was early spring, and the depression of those first months of war brooded like a dark cloud over everything. The garden, which in former years had blazed with bloom, seemed to have taken on an air of mourning with the rest. Only a solitary bulb here and there, left in the soil from a past season, lifted its defiant head among the empty borders. The Court was short-handed; and Agatha had deemed it unfitting to waste time and money over the planting of unnecessary flowers. But below Prudence’s window the gloire de Dijon roses were opening slowly, bringing their golden promise of warmer days to come.
In the evenings, when her father had retired early as his custom was of late, Prudence would stand at her old place and lean upon the sill and look out over the shadowy stillness upon the white riband of road beyond the walls. And her thoughts would travel back to the days when she had leaned there as a girl and watched a man go striding down the hill, whistling as he walked. She had dreamed of love in those days, and of romance: but these things too had passed her by and gone down the road of life, following the man’s destiny out of her sight. When one has voluntarily accepted the lesser gift it is vain to hunger after what might have been. There are two philosophies in life, and they both lead to definite points, and each has its followers: the one is to accept one’s lot, whatever it may be, and bear it courageously; the other is to cast off responsibility and take what offers agreeably as the opportunity presents itself. The individual can resolve for himself alone which is the better course. Temptation assails people differently. The prudent nature is not necessarily always the higher; but discretion is a wise virtue, and restraint is a proof of strength.
Not until the night of her unexpected meeting with Steele had Prudence’s fortitude been really tried. She had felt it to be unequal to battle, and had not stayed to test its strength. Safety for her lay in flight. Yet had she paused to reflect she might have realised that by her flight she betrayed her weakness to the man who had avowed in passionate terms his determination to meet and have speech with her again.
Prudence had sought only to avoid a further meeting; but while she stood at her window a few nights after her return to Court Heatherleigh a sudden conviction seized her that Steele would make inquiries, would discover her movements, might even follow her. He had been in earnest when he had said: “We’ve got to meet and talk this matter out... It’s not going to end like this. Now that I know you love me nothing else counts.”
Nothing else counts! ... So many things counted; so many conflicting interests stood between her and this reckless reasoning. It was not in his right, nor in hers, to set aside every consideration that baulked his desire.
Prudence rested her elbows on the sill and sunk her chin in her hands and remained still, lost in thought. It was late. The big clock in the hall had chimed the hour of midnight; but still she lingered there—lingered in the windy moonlight, which the dark clouds, hurrying athwart the sky, intermittently obscured. A fever of pain and unrest fired her blood, and sent the warm colour to her cheeks where it burned, two brilliant spots of crimson, that defied the cooling breath of the wind. A sense of something impending held her breathless. All that day she had felt an influence at work, an intangible something which oppressed and oddly disquieted her; the prescience of some unexpected event armed her against surprise. She stood at the window as one who watches and waits for the event to befall. She did not know what she expected, what she waited for in the silent room, that room in which she had lived through so many emotions, none more disturbing than those which swayed her now. She felt that something was about to happen. The suggestion of a presence near her was so real that she could not rest. She had no thought of going to bed. Something in the night called to her imperatively and kept her at her post.
Suddenly while she leaned there her attention was caught by a sound below her window, a sound which brought with it a rush of memories which were a part of the past. Some one moved swiftly out from the shadows of the bushes and stood under her window and called to her softly by name. The quiet authority of that voice set her pulses beating rapidly, till the thudding of her heart sounded loudly in her ears. For a long moment she remained motionless, looking down through the shadowy moonlight upon a man’s upturned face, a strong determined face with purposeful eyes raised to meet her shrinking gaze.
Prudence half drew back, and put a hand over her breast with a quick involuntary movement; at the same moment the man below drew himself a foot or so nearer to her by grasping at the trellis against which the rose-bush was trained.
“If you don’t come down, I will come up to you,” Steele said.
“Oh! wait,” she cried.
She remained for awhile irresolute; then, as if in answer to an impatient movement from below, she said quietly:
“Please be cautious. I will join you in a minute.”
And the next moment the light of the moon was eclipsed and the stars paled to insignificance—or so it seemed to Steele—as her form vanished from above him, and he was alone in the windy darkness with the clouds trailing drearily across the face of the moon.