Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“I shall have to consider my position, Mr. Wingfield. I shall have to do so very seriously.”

“I will give you till to-morrow morning to consider it. If I don’t hear from you by the morning I will conclude that you have sent me in your resignation, and act accordingly. Six months’ notice, I suppose? But of course you will go into the books with the accountants.”

“I shall have to consider that point seriously also. I wish a couple of strangers luck if they try to make anything out of the books without me.”

“Oh, you will not desert me—I think I know better of you than to fancy that, Mr. Dunning. You must know what impression would be produced if you were to clear off at such a time.”

“Sir, my position in the county—your grandfather—he was high sheriff that year—he headed the subscription list for the presentation to my father.”

“That was before I was born. Somebody told me that your father’s name was in the county family list. I daresay the Dunnings were a power in the land when the Wingfields were making money in the West Indies. You are still a power in the land, Mr. Dunning, and you’ll let me know by the first post to-morrow without fail.” Mr. Dunning went forth into the sunshine without a word. He had an impression of awaking from a singular dream. He scarcely knew how he came to be outside the house which he had entered so jauntily half an hour before. He now felt not jaunty, but dazed—queer. He could not understand how he had left the house without saying what he had meant to say. He had meant to be very plain with that young Wingfield and to give him to understand once and for all what were their relative positions, but he had had no notion that it would be necessary for him to take the extreme step of threatening to resign. He had really no wish to resign. His position as agent of the Wingfield estates was worth something over a thousand a year to him, but what was he not worth to the property? Of course, juggins though that young Wingfield was, he had still sense enough to recognize the value of such an agent, and to know that without such an agent, he and his property would be in the cart.

No, he never thought that he should have to play that trump card of his—the threat of resigning; all that he meant to do was to bring the young man to his senses and to let him know that when all was said and done he was only the owner, and as such, he had no right to make such a decisive move as the removal of Verrall behind his agent’s back.

And yet now he was walking away from the Manor House feeling that he and Farmer Verrall were practically in the same boat—that they had both got a shove off from the solid shore by the rude boot of a youth who was really little better than an interloper, and that they were now adrift on a choppy sea.

But how it had all come about he could not for the life of him understand. He had not been in the house for more than ten minutes; and surely he had brought the young man within measurable distance of an apology to him for his high-handed conduct, and yet—what had he said?—accountants from London—books of the estate—the farm—the milk—the pheasants—the timber—the underwood—and with all this he, Mr. Dunning, J.P., the agent of the estates, the man whose father had received a presentation of plate—whose name was in the only authentic list of County Families—was to make up his mind by the next morning whether he would remain and give the accountants from London his help in going through the books or clear off with Verrall!

The whole business was extraordinary and not to be fully realized in the course of a morning stroll. He had reached the end of the paddock before he was able to summarize his feelings up to that moment. His summary assumed the form of an exclamatory sentence: