“You’ve done the right thing at last, old girl,” he wrote. “It would have been better had you done it before; but it’s no use wailing about that. Don’t let them bully you into retracing your step.”
Advice that was easier to give than to follow, in view of the general displeasure. There were moments when Prudence felt that if something did not speedily relieve the tension she would be unable to hold out against the combined pressure of her family’s disapproval and her father’s sorrowful anger. The latter hit her hard. She had not known what it was to be really estranged from him before.
“I wish you would try to understand,” she pleaded with him once. “I can’t bear it when you never speak. I want to talk to you about—things. I want to make you understand my point of view. You can’t really think it right I should marry a man I do not care for.”
“I do not think it right that you should jilt an honourable man like Edward Morgan,” he said.
“But if I don’t love him?” she insisted. “You married for love.”
“Yes,” he answered. “And there was as great a difference between the ages of your mother and me as between you and the man you have promised to marry. But your mother was happy with me.”
“Because she loved you,” Prudence replied.
“Yes,” he allowed, and shifted uneasily in his chair and shaded his eyes with his hand. “I think your mother’s sense of duty would have kept her to her promise in any case,” he added quietly. “There is a code of honour. Prudence, which we, who would keep our own respect and the respect of others, must uphold. In urging the plea for your own happiness you are opposing a selfish consideration against the happiness of a good and just man. You have to think of him as well as of yourself—of his happiness and your honour. I beg you not to jilt him in this heartless manner. It is not right, Prudence. I must continue to set my face against it.”
That was the last time she attempted to plead her cause with him. He was past being able to appreciate her point of view. The only member of the family who sympathised with Prudence, and who in unobtrusive fashion sought to show a kindly understanding and to invite her confidence, was Matilda. Marriage had not lessened Matilda’s love for romance, though there was little that was romantic in her own life. Ernest was sternly opposed to sentiment; and his wife, beautifully submissive to his prejudices, restrained her sentimental yearning in his presence, and in his absence fed her emotional mind on erotic literature and dreams. He was absent from Wortheton at the time of Prudence’s amazing return. The expected living had fallen vacant, and he had gone in advance of his wife to prepare the new home for her reception. That she might like a voice in the furnishing and decoration of the dilapidated vicarage which her money was to restore did not seem to have occurred to him. He felt indeed quite generous and important while spending her money lavishly, according to his own idea of what was needful and agreeable for their mutual comfort. The enlargement and improvement of his study gave him much pleasurable thought.
Matilda, as well as Prudence, felt relieved that he was away. The breaking of Prudence’s engagement would have afforded him many opportunities for making unfavourable comments on his sister-in-law’s character. Matilda on this subject held views opposed to the rest. The engagement had always been a matter for wonderment to her. Her mind strayed continually back to the days of Steele’s visit, and harped with reflective persistence on the more vivid events of that time. She pictured his strong, good-looking face, and the admiration in his eyes when they had rested upon Prudence. She recalled the night when he had entered the garden and talked stealthily with her young sister under her window. She felt puzzled to understand how, after knowing Philip Steele, Prudence could have engaged herself to marry any one else. Matilda would have lived solitary, wedded to the memory of romance, rather than shut romance out of her life.