Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“Gloriana!” cried Jack. “Is this for us? And I fancied we had been done with all that sort of thing until the next general election.”

“Of course it’s for us,” said Priscilla. “I had no idea that Framsby would rise equal to the occasion.”

“Framsby is rather more than equal to the occasion,” growled Jack. “What I want to know is, what has Framsby got to do with the election?”

“This isn’t an election demonstration. Can’t you see that it’s only a welcome home?”

“Dammitall!” murmured Jack.

It is part of the penalty which people have to pay for being popular that when they are trying to get into the church where a clergyman is waiting to marry them, their admirers prevent them from entering; when they are leaving a public meeting where they have made a stirring speech, they have to fight their way to their carriage, and when they are met at the railway station they are all but deafened first and suffocated afterwards. Jack and his wife tried to stem that sea of faces that roared in front of them, but they found it impossible. The platform exit was narrow, and now it was choked with human life. But this circumstance did not affect the enthusiasm of the people beyond. They cheered and waved and quite prematurely broke into the “Jolly Good Fellow” chorus which, properly speaking, should only find its vent when Mr. Wingfield should announce from the porch of his house that he hoped his good friends would honour him by drinking to the health of his bride.

It was not until the railway authorities had admitted a force of police that Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield were able, following in the hollow of the wedge which they inserted between the masses at the barriers, to reach the outer atmosphere, which was resonant and throbbing with the fifes and drums of “See, the Conquering Hero Comes,” though the moment they put in an appearance, the strains were overwhelmed by cheers as completely as the flame of a candle is overwhelmed when the extinguisher is dropped over it. The whole space in front of the station and the streets to the right and left were crammed with warm human life, cheering in battalions.

It was all very flattering and overpowering, and unless a man had gone through a fortnight’s electioneering he would not know what to do to restore the status quo ante. Happily Mr. Wingfield was such a man. He sprang upon a trunk—a weight-carrier of the Saratoga type—and taking off his cap, raised his hand. At once the cheers began to wane and then they ceased altogether in the region of the station, though further away they died hard.

“My friends,” said Jack, in strident tones. “My friends—” and so on. Everyone knows what he said—everyone present knew what he was going to say, and he said it. It lasted just three minutes, and before the crowds had recovered from the effects of that spell of silence, he was in the carriage with Priscilla by his side. The coachman had taken good care to send the horses that had been taken out of the traces, back to their stables, so as to prevent the possibility of a mistake being made by the crowd. He had heard of enthusiasts taking the horses out of a carriage upon a similar occasion and failing to return them.

It was a triumphal progress of Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield from the railway station to the Manor. Never could such a home-coming have been looked for by either Jack or Priscilla when, in accordance with the terms of an agreement which they had entered into at the office of the registrar of marriages, they had left that station a couple of months earlier, she having returned to Framsby for one day only from her visit to her Dorsetshire friends, and he from his interesting interview with his promising agent.