F. E. Mills Young

“ 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.
“You should not many a man you don’t love,” she said once. “You are young enough to wait.” ”

“ That night Prudence asked Edward Morgan for her release. The dance to which she had looked forward so gladly, and which she had not enjoyed, had galvanised her into a fixed determination to secure her freedom while yet there was time. The thought of marriage with a man so much older than herself, with whom she had nothing in common, whose every wish opposed itself in gentle opposition to her own, had become a nightmare to her. ”

“ You hate me to have any enjoyment. You never rest—you never have rested, from seeking to make my life colourless and dull. You are satisfied only when you keep me sewing, or working in the parish. Well, I won’t sew any more—for fear I prick my fingers, and I won’t work in the parish either from a nervous dread of having my morals contaminated. If I can’t do the things I like, I won’t do the things I don’t like either.”
Miss Agatha’s anger, if more controlled, was every whit as great as Prudence’s. She gazed down upon her sister where she lay upon the sofa with eyes of cold dislike. ”

“ Bobby agreed—“when you put it that way.”
Prudence was triumphant.
“There you are, you see. It’s just the way a thing is put. For the moment you almost convinced me that the discontent lay in myself, and now I convince you that there is substantial ground for discontent. No one should remain quiet under dissatisfying conditions; we should each strive for individual liberty. Youth is the time in which to do things, and youth passes quickly. When we are old we cease to strive because the spirit of adventure leaves us; but the hunger for the things which we have missed remains. ”

“ Prudence considered this.
“Possibly I want too much—I think I do,” she said after a while. “And so do you. We are the children of our age, Bobby; we’ve learnt to think for ourselves; when one begins to think one ceases to accept things unquestioningly. I’m alive to my finger tips. I want to enjoy. I am not satisfied merely to exist; a worm does that. I want to experience life to the full. ”

“ Yet the standard of physical courage, however loudly acclaimed, ranks no higher. To win a victory over one’s self demands greater strength of purpose than is required for the defeat of an ordinary foe. To obey a sense of right from motives other than discretion necessitates courage of a superior order. And it is through this courage, this quiet self-denial, that the world is kept a little better, a little sweeter, than would be possible if each individual set-out with the poor determination to gratify his every desire.
Prudence had won a victory; but she did not feel triumphant ”

“ The exchange from the girl-mother’s arms to the younger arms extended eagerly to receive their burden was effected silently. Prudence walked on proudly, bearing her unaccustomed charge with a sense of new responsibility suddenly acquired. She loved the feel of the little warm body against her heart; the nestling pressure of this soft helpless thing, which lay so confidingly within the shelter of her arms, roused in her the strong protective maternal instinct which is every woman’s heritage. ”

“ He drew a little nearer to her.
“Something,” he repeated—“subtle, intangible—an emotion, a memory... Call it what you will... Some recurring brightness which is to the human soul what the sunlight is to the earth—a thousand harmonies spring from the one source. My primrose will fade, but for me it can’t die; nor will the kind hand that gathered it and placed it where it is be forgotten either. There are things one doesn’t forget.”
“I suppose there are,” acquiesced Prudence, her thoughts by some odd twist reverting to William’s table manners. “Sometimes one would like to forget.” ”

“ He saw his children entering upon their autumn, and almost forgot the time when they, like Prudence, were in the springtime of life. When one reaches the winter of life one realises life’s sadness; for the hope of spring, and the contentment of summer belong to the days that are numbered. One lives necessarily in the present and looks back upon the past; the future belongs solely to youth. In Edward Morgan’s love for Prudence was repeated his own middle-aged romance. His married life with his young wife had been too brief to prove its unsuitability. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If I didn’t know that you love me I wouldn’t worry you. I shouldn’t want you if you did not want me. But you do. I don’t care a damn about your marriage. If you’ll trust me, and come to me, you shall never regret it. Oh! my little love!—my sweetheart! Don’t refuse what I ask. It means everything to me. Say you will, dear?”
“Oh, don’t!” she entreated him again, and shrank back from the passion in his eyes. ”

“ Marriage is one of two things, a realisation of life, or a compromise. Prudence had effected a compromise, with her eyes opened wide to what she had lost.
“That’s finished,” Edward Morgan said in satisfied tones, and kissed his wife heartily.
Every one showed an eagerness to kiss the bride. Even William raised her veil and laid a benedictory kiss upon her brow; but it was Bobby alone who felt her lips respond to his in warm affection; to the rest she remained a composed, unsmiling young woman, far too composed for a bride, Matilda thought. She never shed a tear. ”

“ But for that look, and the sullen expression in the brown eyes, the girl would have been beautiful, as the scene was beautiful, and the soft primrose light upon the uplands; but the buoyant elasticity, the hope, and the freshness of youth, these were lacking; there remained only the pitiful fact that in years the girl was in the springtime of life and in experience more matured.
As she walked, her sullen gaze shifted furtively from the township below to the fair open country, growing momentarily dimmer and greyer as the light in the sky paled. ”

“ At forty-three a man’s passion is no whit less ardent than that of a boy of twenty; but the man knows how to practise restraint. It was this knowledge which helped Edward Morgan over the difficulties of his courtship with a girl whose heart he had yet to win, and to whom passion was an unknown quantity.
Prudence was rather sexless in those days. The realities of love and marriage were mysteries to her. Marriage meant no more than the solution of a problem that had occupied her attention on and off for years. She saw no other way of obtaining her emancipation. ”

“ Prudence’s sense of justice was in arms, and her liking for Bessie, whom she had known from childhood, awoke anew at sight of the beautiful tragic face with its look of passionate antagonism. She halted in the girl’s path and accosted her with disarming friendliness.
“I’m so glad to meet you,” she said. “I thought you had left this neighbourhood altogether.”
“There are some as would like to make me leave,” said Bessie Clapp, her dark unsmiling gaze on the fair tranquillity of the younger, happier face. “I’ve been badgered enough. We’m living in the little village down over the hill.” ”

“ The meeting left Prudence with a feeling of depression. It did not decrease her pity, but it lessened her liking for the girl to discover her attitude of bitter resentment against the helpless mite she had brought into the world. And it set her thinking about marriage in a new light. Was it possible to cease to love a man one had loved once passionately? And could a woman grow to hate the children of a loveless marriage? If these matters were beyond the control of human will power, it seemed that it might be so. ”

“ Prudence murmured, and listened to the falling of the rain without—wet darkness everywhere, the dismal darkness of a winter world sodden with the sky’s incessant weeping.
She clenched her hands upon the wet sill, and felt the rain drops on her hair.
“He is out there in the sunshine,” she thought; “and I’m here in the dark and the rain alone. It is easy to forget when the sun shines always.” ”

“ Prudence reassured him. “You haven’t left much unsaid. You have filled my mind with a lot of new ideas that make it feel like a rubbish heap. If the roads are not safe for a girl to walk along, it is time some one saw to it that they were made so. As for being talked about, no one with a decent mind would make matter for talk where there was none. Are you quite sure, William, that your own mind doesn’t need a little tidying up? Your workpeople at least are your responsibility. If you have any dubious characters among them, turn them away—as you turned away Bessie Clapp.” ”

“ Then nine o’clock and merciful release, and that good hour, sometimes longer, when she was supposed to be in bed and which she spent leaning out of the window, dreaming her girlish dreams. We all know those dreams of youth, though some of us forget them. They are just dreams, nothing more; but none of life’s realities are half as good as those inspiring idle fancies which illumine the drabbest lives in the imaginative days of youth. ”

“ In the evening light, between the lengthening shadows flung by the hedges along the dusty road that leads to Wortheton, a girl walked listlessly, a girl whose youth was marred by a look of world-weary wisdom, as much at variance with the young face as the tall brick chimneys with the harmonious beauty of the landscape. ”