CHAPTER TEN.

"I've been thinking," Bobby remarked one evening to Prudence, when they strolled up the road together in the dusk, "about our talk the other afternoon; and I've come to the conclusion that it's not the fault of the place, it's our own fault, that we find life dull. One place is much like another. Either we want too much, or else we are dull in ourselves and can't get the enjoyment out of life that is there for our taking. That's what I make of it anyhow."

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. Don't you?"

"I suppose I do," 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 pa.s.ses 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. And that makes us bitter."

"How do you know?" demanded Bobby, with a cynical smile for her youth.

"Know!" she repeated, and faced him, her eyes alight and scornful. "One has only to look around and note the disappointed, dull, sour people one meets; people who have had their chance and missed it, because they reasoned as you do; people who have not possessed courage or initiative, but in whose blood the desire for enjoyment has worked as surely as it works in ours. Do you suppose Agatha has never wanted to marry and manage a man and a home of her own? Do you suppose Matilda doesn't hunger for children, and Mary for a lover? Didn't daddy desire love?

He married twice, and the second time at least was not merely a matter of expediency. I'm colder perhaps, harder anyway. I don't want anything but just to get away from Wortheton and live my own life independently, and order my days as I please."

Bobby stared at her open-mouthed, bereft in his astonishment of the power of speech. Prudence suddenly laughed.

"You old thing!" she cried. "I've properly scandalised you. Why do you set my thoughts working along these lines? You are just a boy."

"Oh, shut it!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "You aren't much older."

"A girl is a lot older than a boy," she said. "She apprehends life more fully; your s.e.x, until you are a responsible age, is just out for fun.

But there's a time limit to one's capacity for enjoyment. In a few years I shall settle down to the routine, whatever it is that offers; and if I haven't had my good time, I'll just be a discontented dull reflection of the others. I know. And I'm going to guard against that."

"But how?" he persisted. "What do you mean to do?"

"I haven't thought that out," Prudence answered after a moment for reflection. "I don't know that I should confide in you if I had."

He smiled at that, and stopped and lighted himself a cigarette.

"I don't care what you do," he said, and added cheerfully: "I only hope you will have a good time. You know you're awfully pretty, Prue, and-- and interesting, and all that."

"Am I?" Prudence laughed again, and there was a note of satisfaction in her mirth. "I thank Providence that I am pretty; it makes things easier. But if I were plain I should still insist on my good time. It doesn't necessarily include the homage of man. That's a side issue. It is sometimes a means to an end, but the end is the thing which matters.

I want my own individual life."

"I don't want any own individual life like that," Bobby confessed in thoughtful seriousness. "I want a home of my own, of course, and--a wife, and all those jolly things."

"At seventeen?" she scoffed.

And then he confided to her that he had met the divinity he hoped to marry at the home of a school chum. She was nearly as old as he was, and she was quite prepared to marry him as soon as circ.u.mstances permitted. She was a ripping good sort and very high spirited.

"You had better invite her to stay at Wortheton before the ceremony,"

Prudence advised him. "If that doesn't put her off, you'll be sure of her genuine affection anyway."

"I'm sure of that now," he returned confidently.

"You've made good use of your time," was all she said.

His words, the ring in his young voice, called up a mental picture of a strong clear-cut face looking up at her in the uncertain light of a moonlit night in May. She felt that somehow Bobby had outdistanced her.

"Here we are," she exclaimed abruptly, "you and I, mooning, as we've mooned for years whenever the vacation came round. When we were children we mooned along and talked of splendid things--the things we meant to do, the positions we could create for ourselves in a world that was open and defenceless to our attacks; and now we moon sentimentally and talk of love instead."

"But that's splendid too," he affirmed with young enthusiasm.

"Is it? ... I wonder. I think perhaps it's just a little disappointing also... moonshine, like the rest."

"Rot!" said Bobby elegantly. "Something's changed you, Prue--or some one... Which?"

"The curate perhaps," Prudence returned flippantly. "Marriage with him would not be moonshine exactly, but it would be a trifle dull--just the distractions which the parish offered, and on Sundays his sermons to listen to."

"There would be stimulation in the way of jealousy," Bobby suggested helpfully. "Think of all those women who work braces for him and lounge slippers. You'd have to compete, you know."

"They cease all that when the curates marry," Prudence returned with disgust. "If they only kept it up there would be some excitement offering; but they don't."

She turned and began to retrace her steps.

"Goodness knows how we got on this topic! Your brain is love-sick, Bobby, and you're infecting me. If my memory serves me, there have been three ideal girls in your life already--and one of them was Mabel North."

"Oh! that," said Bobby, colouring, "was all rot. This is the real thing."

"It's always the real thing till the newer attraction comes along. You needn't resent that; it's true not only in your case. We are unstable as the waters which start from infinitesimal raindrops and run down in flood to the sea."

Bobby chuckled.

"Your image doesn't apply aptly to every one," he said. "One can't think of Uncle William in connexion with all that broiling strife."

"Oh!" Prudence made a gesture which conveyed fairly adequately her contempt for the person referred to. "Some raindrops form into puddles, and the puddles cheat themselves into believing that they are the sea, and ridicule the idea of any expansion beyond their own muddy limits.

William's is a complete little destiny in itself. And he never suspects the mud at the bottom because he never stirs it up."

"How can you be sure of that?" Bobby inquired. "You are taking it too much for granted that the old boy's life is lived on the surface. He takes his annual holiday."

"Well!" said Prudence, and turned her head and surveyed his grinning countenance with mixed emotions. "That's the most evil suggestion I've heard from you. I'm not fond of brother William, but I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

He only laughed.

"There's a bit of the old Adam in him as well as in the rest of us, I imagine," he said, and drew her hand within his arm affectionately.

Thus, walking closely, they pursued their way along the dim country road which their childish feet had trodden and made familiar in its every aspect; which knew too the steadier tramp of their adolescent youth, and which in the near future was to know but seldom the lighter tread of the girl, whose feet stirred the unconscious dust that in the years ahead would lie undisturbed by her pa.s.sing, when, in the pursuance of her destiny, the confined vista of her childhood, with its sense of security and dulness, should have become an elusive memory of drab and peaceful things.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

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.