With Bobby's return to college, life for Prudence reverted to the old
dreary routine of ceaseless exasperating duties and increasingly
curtailed liberty. She had a strong suspicion that the sisterly
supervision which she was conscious was being exercised was carried out
at brother William's suggestion. Although there was no one, with the
exception of the curate, to tempt her to indiscreet behaviour it was
very obvious that she was not trusted to venture abroad without one of
her sisters to chaperon her.
Prudence found this irksome at first, and set herself, sometimes
successfully, to evade their united vigilance; but after one or two
apparently accidental encounters with the curate, who appeared
astonishingly in the most unexpected places and joined her on her stolen
walks, she accepted the new development with a meekness which agreeably
surprised her family, and discomfited the curate.
It was the curate's quietly resolved manner, his air of exaggerated
conspiracy, that drove Prudence to this unusual submissiveness. She
knew quite well that the little man was making up his mind to propose to
her, and she did not wish to give him the opportunity. Her decision was
taken abruptly, after meeting him one day on the high road along which
she was walking briskly with her back to the tall chimneys and her face
to the wind and the little village which lay half-way between Wortheton
and the junction town which connected it with the busier world from
which it held aloof. The curate was cycling from the opposite
direction. He was due to attend a meeting within the half-hour and had
barely time to arrive at the appointed place; but when he came face to
face with Prudence he alighted nimbly from his machine, and, pulling off
a heather mixture glove, extended an eager hand. For a moment she
allowed him to hold hers in his grip, and found herself wondering while
she faced him which of his admirers had knitted the gloves for him.
Then she withdrew her hand and remarked, for the lack of something more
interesting to say, that the wind was boisterous.
"Yes," he said; "you have it against you. Why not face about? It's a
great help at one's back."
This suggestion Prudence considered artful without being brilliant. She
had no desire for his company on the return journey.
"I love to feel it in my face," she said. "And since you prefer it
behind it is well we are travelling in opposite directions."
But the curate was not to be disposed of so easily. He turned his cycle
and fell into step beside her. Prudence was taller than he; he was
obliged to look up from under the wide brim of his hat when regarding
her, a reversal of the usual order which occasioned him secret vexation.
"One so seldom gets a chance of seeing you alone," he said. "I suppose
it is because you are so much younger that your sisters make so much of
you. They care for you tremendously. It is beautiful to observe their
devotion."
This view of her family's watchful mistrust as a manifest sign of their
devotion was new to Prudence and afforded her amusement. She wondered
whether he was altogether sincere in what he said, or if he were
indulging in unsuspected satire.
"I find it a little trying sometimes to be the family pet," she returned
demurely. "The position is rather like that of the cat of the house
which gets called indoors when it would prefer to remain in the garden.
I wonder myself at times why the cat obeys the summons."
He experienced a little difficulty in following her train of thought.
"It's thinking of the milk, I suppose," he suggested, whereat Prudence
laughed.
"I dare say that explains it--economic dependence explains many
uncomfortable things. I haven't much sympathy with the domesticated
cat," she added. "She should ignore the call, and remain in the garden
and eat birds."
"Surely," he said, a little pained, "you wouldn't wish it to do that?
It's so cruel."
"So is eating mutton," she answered flippantly; "but we all do it."
He digested this for a moment, found no adequate answer, and turned the
conversation.
"I was thinking of you as I rode," he said, in tones into which he threw
an inflection of tenderness which she could not fail to detect. "I
scarcely dared to expect so much happiness as to meet you like this.
You are a tremendous walker. Do you realise how far you are from home?"
He still hoped to induce her to turn and walk back with him. He would
be late for his meeting in any case. He was too mentally flurried to
decide how he should explain the defection: he was not very ready at
invention; but the sight of Prudence's fair indifferent face drove him
to the verge of recklessness; no consideration at the moment was strong
enough to tear him from her side.
"The farther the better," Prudence answered. "I am walking into the
sunset." She turned her face to the westering sun and the warm glow in
the sky that lit its declining glory. "When I turn about I see only the
chimneys; they blot out everything for me."
"But one can't see them from this distance," he insisted, and paused and
looked back to verify his statement.
Prudence smiled faintly.
"I can," she said. "I see them even in my dreams."
"I think myself they look rather fine," he said. "The red bricks
against the trees are arresting."
"Yes," she agreed, and smiled at him more directly. He felt that he had
struck a happy note and was unnecessarily elated.
"All great industries appeal to me," he continued as they walked on
again. "I'm tremendously interested in the factory--and in the
workpeople. They are so human and yet simple. I enjoy working among
them. And Mr Graynor is so generous. The workpeople think very highly
of him. I have been very happy in my labours since coming here."
Prudence, missing the guile in this, looked at him in astonishment.
"Really!" she said. "You are easily pleased."
"You think so?" He drew a little nearer to her; his disengaged hand,
hanging at his side, brushed lightly against hers. "I don't think that
myself. But you see I have met much kindness here, and--forgive my
saying so--it is such a happiness in itself to know you. I doubt
whether you understand what a priceless pleasure that is to me."
"It is very flattering of you to say so," Prudence broke in hastily, and
not so much turned the conversation as jerked it into an impersonal
channel. "Look at that gorgeous splash of red on those clouds. Isn't
it just as though they were catching fire?"
"Yes," he said in a flattened voice, feeling the rebuff; "it's very
fine."
"Isn't it? And that warm light on the trees... You can see it
spreading along the branches. They're all aglow. If it could only
last!"
"`The light of the whole world dies when day is done,'" quoted the
curate sentimentally, and gazed in rapt admiration upon her face which
was all aglow too, but owed nothing of its colour to the sunset. "You
look like one inspired," he added. "I wish I could sketch you as I see
you now."
Prudence made an impatient movement.
"I don't believe you care a bit for beautiful scenery," she said.
"I do," he assured her eagerly. "I admire everything beautiful. I...
Never mind the sunset now. I'm thinking of you. I can't think of
anything else. I want to--"
"Oh!" she interrupted, with a note of sharp relief in her voice, and
turned an embarrassed face in the direction of a solitary pedestrian,
who appeared opportunely round a bend in the road, and slowly advanced,
bearing a bundle in her arms, which at first the girl failed to
recognise for an infant, wrapped in an old shawl. "There's some one I
want to speak to," she said, and blessed Bessie Clapp for her timely
appearance--"some one I know."
"I'll wait," he said, still resolute though considerably ruffled at the
interruption.
Prudence regarded him frowningly.
"No," she insisted, "you mustn't wait. I want to see her alone. I
shall walk back with her."
"That isn't altogether kind," he said--"to dismiss me. But I may see
you another time?"
He held out his hand and waited. If he expected a direct answer to his
tentative suggestion, he was disappointed. Prudence shook hands
hurriedly, murmured a breathless good-bye, and left him to mount his
cycle and ride in unclerical mood to his neglected meeting, where he
accounted for his unpunctuality by confessing to a puncture which he
omitted to explain was caused by a thorn which he had painstakingly
placed in the road and ridden over when a quarter of a mile from the
town. Which proves what an amount of trouble a conscientious person
will take in the insincere evasion of a direct lie.
Prudence meanwhile advanced to meet the girl in the road. As the
distance between them decreased she discovered that what the other
carried in her arms was not an inanimate bundle, as she had supposed,
but a little child. Instantly her interest quickened. The unexpected
appearance of Bessie Clapp had seemed to her merely opportune at a
moment when any diversion would have been welcome, but the sight of
Bessie with a baby in her arms--presumably her own baby--caught her
attention away from her immediate concerns and brought the other's
affairs into greater prominence. She had always believed that this girl
had been hardly dealt by, and no one had ever considered it worth while
to enlighten her. 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."
"Just five miles away! And I never knew." Prudence bent suddenly over
the bundle in her arms. "Is this your child?" she asked.
"Yes; he's mine."
There was proprietorship but no pride in the admission. It was
Prudence's hand which pulled the covering away from the tiny face.
"Oh!" she said, and half drew back, and then bent again compassionately
over the ugly little mottled piece of humanity in the beautiful young
mother's arms. "I've never seen so young a baby before. What do you
call him?"
"He isn't christened," the sullen voice responded. "I've no patience
with those silly customs."
"But," began Prudence, and looked perplexed, "he'll have to have a name
of his own some time."
"We call 'im William," the young mother volunteered. "There's no need
for cold water splashing over that. If 'e don't like 'is name later on,
'e can change it."
Prudence, steering away from the subject, replaced the shawl over the
little face and impulsively held out her arms.
"Let me carry him," she said. "I'd love to; and you are tired. Where
were you taking him?"
"To the farm yonder, among the trees. I get milk for 'im there. 'E's
been weaned these three weeks."
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. In her pity for its puny helplessness she forgot the sense of
shock which the first glimpse of the repellently ugly wrinkled face had
occasioned her, forgot the circumstances of its unfortunate birth, and
the more recent revelation that it had not been received into the
Church, was not in any sense of the term a Christian; she realised only
that she held in her arms that most wonderful of all things, a new
generation; and felt in her heart the warm glow of protective love for
this weak little morsel of humanity, born into an unwelcoming world--a
love child who was denied love. The unfair conditions of the child's
birth awoke her utmost compassion. She felt resentful against its
unknown father, against the injustice of the world's judgment, which
throws discredit on maternity rather than on illicit love. The greatest
crime of this unwedded mother, Prudence recognised, lay in the fact that
she had brought a child into the world.
"He must be a great comfort to you," she said gently. "A baby makes up
for a lot."
Bessie Clapp laughed harshly.
"Ban't many as think like you," she said. "They wouldn't agree with you
at Court Heatherleigh."
And Prudence, thinking of Agatha, and Matilda's pink shocked face, of
brother William's austere principles, and her father's cold disapproval
at the mere mention of Bessie's name, could not contradict this. They
would have been scandalised, and she knew it, could they have seen her
walking with this outcast, and carrying the outcast's baby in her strong
young arms.