Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

CHAPTER XVIII

She never once looked back in any sense, when she had passed out of the gates of the Manor. She had known that it was laid upon her to go through this ordeal of standing before the mother whom he loved, to be approved by her. She had faced the ordeal without shrinking, because she loved him. She was as sure of him and his love for her as she had been certain of the deceit of the wretch with whom she had gone through the empty ceremony of marriage in order that her mother might die happy—though the result was that she died of her misery.

She knew that if Mrs. Wingfield were pleased with her, Jack would be delighted and ask her to marry him the next time they met, if he did not force a meeting with her for the purpose; but if his mother did not approve of her, and called her heartless because her dress was white instead of black, and flippant because she had appeared several days at a sporting meeting within a couple of months of her husband’s death, he would be greatly downcast, but he would ask her to marry him all the same.

But she had set forth to face the ordeal by visit as firmly as she would have gone to meet the ordeal by fire or the ordeal by water, had she lived in the days of such tests of faith. She knew that, whatever should happen her faith in him would not be shaken and his faith in her would remain unmoved. But she had made up her mind to find favour in the sight of his mother, and she now felt that she had succeeded in doing so. If she had failed, she would have been miserable, but she would have promised to marry him all the same.

The sense of exultation which was hers was due to her knowledge of the fact that she had found favour in the eyes of the mother of the man whom she loved, not to her feeling that she would, as the wife of Jack Wingfield, occupy a splendid position in the county—such a position as her poor mother had never dreamt of her filling. Beyond a doubt, she found it quite delightful to think of owning that beautiful park through which she had been allowed as a great privilege to stray while the house was empty. Every part of the grounds was a delight to her—the deep glen with its well-wooded sides sloping down to the little stream that twinkled among its ferns and mosses and primroses—the irregular meadow where stood the tawny haystacks like islands in the midst of a sea of brilliant green—the spacious avenues of elm and oak that made her feel when walking in their shadow, that she was going through the nave of a cathedral—she loved everything about the place, and it would be the greatest joy to her to live all her life there—with love; without love she would as soon spend the rest of her life in one of the cottages on her father’s farm.

She felt exultant only in the thought that he was to be her companion when she went to that place. She had all her life been looking forward to a life of love; and it had been puzzling to her when she found that year after year went by without bringing her any closer to love. She was not conscious of being fastidious in her association with men; but the fact remained the same: she never had the smallest feeling of love for any of the men who had told her that they loved her—and she never had a lack of such men about her.

For the months of her engagement to that man, Marcus Blaydon, her thought was that this was the punishment that was laid upon her for the hardness of her heart—this prospect of living with a man who could never be anything to her but an object of dislike. He never awoke in her a slumbering passion—not even the passion of hate. She merely disliked him as she disliked a foggy day; and yet she was condemned to spend the remainder of her life with him with love shut out. Was that to be her punishment for having rejected the many offers of love which had been laid at her feet by men whom she liked well but could not love?

And then with the suddenness with which a great blessing or a great calamity is sent by Heaven (according to the Teachers) there had been sent to her the two best things in the world—Freedom and Love. She knew that if this man had been one of her father’s shepherds and had asked her to love him she would have given herself to him. Her sense of being on the way to fill a splendid position socially was overwhelmed by the feeling that she was beloved by a man whom she loved as she never thought it would be given to her to love any man. That was her dominant thought—nay, her only thought—while she walked through the lanes to her home.

And it never occurred to her that she was reckoning among her possessions a great gift which had not yet been offered to her. It never occurred to her that she might be mistaken in taking his love for granted. Even if weeks and months were to pass without his coming to her, she would still not entertain so unworthy a thought as that he was not coming to her. But she was not subjected to the ordeal of his absence. He came to her on Monday morning, the first thing. It was surely ridiculous for him to set out on this mission before the workers in the fields had left their beds; but so he did. He went forth and wandered for miles across the Downs. He went within sight of the sea, by a curious impulse, and he sat on the turf in the early sunlight, listening to the great bass of the breaking waves beneath him and to the exquisite fluttering flutings, of a lark in the sky above him. Then he turned and found the road that led down to the snuggest of villages—he owned every house, though he did not know it—and up again to a region of ploughed fields—enormous spaces of purple-brown surrounded by great irregular hedges of yellow gorse.

It might have been fancied that, with his heart so full of the great intention, he would be walking like one in a dream, taking no thought of the things about him; but so far from his being like this, he looked upon everything that he came across with an affection such as he had never known before. He felt that these things of Nature were closer to him than they had ever been—in fact, for some of them he felt as would an explorer in a strange land who suddenly comes upon a number of people and recognizes in each a relation of his own. He had never been in such close touch with Nature before, and every step that he took was one of rejoicing.