Prudence leaned with her arms on the sill of her bedroom window, looking
out on the night-shadowed garden and the white line of the road beyond
its shrub-hidden walls. This was the best hour in the twenty-four--the
hour when she could be alone; for the bedroom, which once had been a
nursery, was all her own. The other Miss Graynors, with the exception
of Agatha, shared rooms; but the little half-sister who had occupied the
nursery alone for so many years was permitted to regard this haven as
still hers: no one sought to dispossess her, though the room was large
and had a south aspect, while Miss Agatha's room faced north. But Miss
Agatha was not averse from a northern aspect; and the room had the
advantage of commanding a view of the servants' quarters, so that she
was enabled to watch the coming in and, which was still more important,
the going forth of these dependants, whose seemly conduct she made her
particular care.
Many people besides the poet have discovered that the pleasantest place
in the house is leaning out of the window. Prudence knew that. From
early spring to late autumn, and occasionally on fine frosty nights, she
leaned from her window and thought, and felt, and dreamed dreams of
romance and beauty, and of a life that was fuller than the life of
Wortheton, a life beyond the seclusion of the walled garden, beyond the
white winding road, the tall chimneys, and the dull succession of busy
dreary days--days which commenced with morning prayers at seven-thirty,
followed by breakfast at eight, by work, by an hour's walk before lunch,
a little district visiting, the receiving and returning of calls, tea at
five, a dull formal dinner at seven, and family prayers at half-past
eight. 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. The dreams of youth are worth all the
philosophy, all the wisdom of the ages; and when they arise, as
Prudence's arose, out of a spirit of dissatisfaction with existing
things, they do not necessarily add to the dissatisfaction, but catch
one away from realities in a flight of golden thought.
To-night, however, Prudence's mind was not concerned so much with
personal matters as with the story of the girl of whose return she had
heard that morning, the girl who was not good, and who was to be
banished from Wortheton for fear that her example might contaminate
others. Prudence wondered whether Wortheton were more susceptible to
contamination than most places; otherwise the sending forth of the black
sheep, who after all belonged to Wortheton, were to inflict an injustice
on some equally respectable town. Black sheep cannot be banished to the
nether world; they have to reside somewhere.
The details of the girl's case were known to Prudence. All the secrecy
and silence of Miss Agatha's careful guardianship availed little against
an inquiring and sympathetic mind and somewhat unusual powers of
observation. Prudence at eighteen was not ignorant. To attempt to keep
an intelligent person ignorant is to attempt the impossible. Miss
Agatha did not shrink from impossible effort: furthermore she confused
the terms ignorance and innocence, and in her furtive avoidances
contrived to throw a suggestion of indelicacy upon the most simple of
elemental things. Many well-meaning persons bring disrepute in this way
on things which should be sacred, and utterly confuse the mind in
matters of morality with the disastrous result that, bewildered and
impatient, the individual not infrequently breaks away from conventional
caution and adopts a line of indifference in regard to decent
restraints. Life cannot be run on lines of suppression any more
successfully than on the broader gauge of a too liberal tolerance.
Restraint has to be practised; and it is the right of the individual to
be taught to recognise the necessity for this with the encouragement of
the practice.
Miss Agatha's narrow creed proclaimed that the girl had sinned, and must
therefore be thrust forth; Prudence, in her impulsive youth, felt this
decree to be ungenerous, and, had she dared, would have championed the
sinner's cause before all Wortheton. She did not fear Wortheton, but
she was afraid of Agatha--Agatha, who, at the time of Prudence's birth,
was older than Prudence's mother, and who had domineered over her mother
and herself until the former's death, which sad event occurred when
Prudence was five years old. She remembered her mother only dimly, but
she hated Miss Agatha on her mother's account as she would not have
hated her on her own. The mop of golden curls which, with the wide blue
eyes, lent to Prudence's face a guileless and childlike expression,
covered a shrewd little brain. It was no strain on the owner's
intelligence to discern that Agatha was jealous of her, had been jealous
of her mother before her, on account of their father's preference; and
it occasioned her much inward satisfaction to reflect that not even
Agatha had the power to lessen his love for her: she was the child of
his old age and the light of his eyes.
"I've half a mind," she said to herself, and rested her dimpled chin on
her hands and stared into the shadowy distance, "to tell him about
Bessie. If I asked him to interfere and let her remain, he--might."
She did not feel very positive on that head; Mr Graynor was after all a
male edition of Agatha. Nevertheless, she would at least make her
appeal.
"I wonder..." she mused, and thought awhile.
"I suppose she was very much in love," was the outcome of these
reflections. "I wonder what it feels like to be very much in love."
Prudence's world had not brought any of these experiences into her life.
She never met any men, save her father's friends and William's, none of
whom were calculated to awaken sentiment in the breast of a girl of
eighteen. The youngest of these was a man of forty, a nice kind old
thing, who brought her chocolates, and pulled her curls before she put
her hair up. Since the hair had gone up he had ceased to pull it, and
he did not bring her chocolates so often; his kindliness had become more
formal; but she liked him rather better on that account; the teasing had
sometimes annoyed her.
Like most girls, Prudence allowed her mind at times to dwell on the
subject of love and marriage. The older girls at school had discussed
these subjects freely: one of them had professed an undying passion for
the drawing-master, who was married, and had asseverated before an
admiring audience in the playing-field that she would cheerfully ignore
the wife and run away with him if he asked her. He had not asked her.
He had indeed been entirely unaware of her devotion, and had regarded
her as a rather dull pupil. Prudence had considered her silly. Also
she held a belief that emotional excitement was not love. She was not
very clear in her thoughts what the term love expressed exactly; but she
believed that when it did come love would be a big thing. She did not
consider it in relation with marriage: marriage was a contract, often a
convenience. She would have been glad herself to marry, merely to
escape from Agatha and Wortheton. When a girl was married she could at
least fashion her own life. And Prudence loved children. She envied
Bessie Clapp her coming motherhood more than she pitied her on account
of the social ostracism entailed thereby. Prudence's ideas on morality,
never having been wisely directed, inclined to exalt the beauty of
motherhood and to ignore the baser aspect of crude and illicit passions
selfishly indulged. It is not the maternal woman who brings children
into the world with a selfish disregard for the shame of their nameless
birth.
While Prudence leaned from her window and thought of love and
motherhood, she became abruptly and amazedly aware of a figure in the
road beyond the high wall--a man's figure, tall and straight in the
moonlight--walking with a purposeful air down the hill towards the town.
The man glanced up at the lighted window in which the girlish form was
brightly framed, and broke off abruptly in the middle of a bar he was
whistling softly, paused for the fraction of a second, and then went
swinging on down the hill. He was a stranger; Prudence recognised that;
there were no young men, except the factory employees and the tradesmen,
in Wortheton.
"I wonder," she murmured to herself, and leaned further out to look
after the vanishing figure, "what it feels like to be in love..."
A sudden sense of chill touched her. The moon vanished behind a cloud,
and a little cold breeze sprang up and played on her bare neck and arms.
The garden showed dark with the white light withdrawn, dark and
deserted. A shadowed loneliness had fallen on the spirit of the night.