Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“They have never misled a client by an over-sanguine opinion, I should say,” remarked Jack when he had read to her the letter of Messrs. Liscomb and Liscomb.

“And I am sure that they have found that plan to be the wisest,” said she. “But I think that they rather incline to the belief that we shall succeed.”

“From all that I have heard respecting them I feel that they have in this case expressed what they would consider to be an extraordinarily roseate opinion of our prospects,” said he. “I wonder what move the other side will make next, and I wonder also if his advisers will take a sanguine view of his prospects. Did you gather from anything your father said that the fellow had been with him?”

“He said nothing definite on that point; but how should my father know anything of what has happened unless he had seen Marcus Blaydon?” said Priscilla. “He is, as we knew he would be, on the side of Blaydon. Just think of it! He is on the side of the wretch who did his best to wreck my life—who shortened my mother’s life and made its last months to be months of misery instead of happiness—who allowed that false report of his death to go about uncontradicted so that I should run the chance of finding myself in the midst of the trouble that has come to me now—my father takes the side of that man against us, simply because of his superstition as to the sanctity of the marriage service according to the Church of England! He does not consider for a moment that the sacredness of marriage is to be found only in the spirit in which the marriage is entered into. He does not ask himself how there can be any element of a holy ordinance in a fraud.”

Jack Wingfield was a man. He had been wise enough to refrain from considering the question of marriage either from the standpoint of a sacrament—the standpoint assumed by the Church of Rome—or from the standpoint of a symbol of the mystical union of Christ and the Church—the standpoint assumed by the Church of England. He had, as a matter of fact, never thought about marriage as a mystery, or the symbol of a mystery. It had only occurred to him that these assumptions, though professed by the Church within the Church, were ignored by the Church outside the Church. The Church of Rome refused to recognize divorce; but had frequently permitted it. It called marriage between an uncle and a niece incest, but sanctified it in the case of a royal personage. The Church of England, with its reiteration about every marriage being indissoluble by man, having been made by God, smiled amiably at the Divorce Court and petted divorces. The Church did not attempt to assign a mystic symbolism to divorce; and though it had for years affirmed that the marriage of a man with the sister of his deceased wife was incest, yet Parliament and every sensible person had assured the Church that this view was wrong, and the Church, after a little mumbling, like giants Pope and Pagan at the mouth of their cave, had submitted to be put in the wrong.

Jack Wingfield being a student—a newspaper student—of contemporary history, was aware of the numerous standpoints from which marriage is discussed, with well-assumed seriousness, by people whom he suspected of having their tongues in their cheeks all the time; but, as has just been stated, he had never himself given a thought to the mysticism of marriage or the symbolism of a wedding. He felt that it was enough for him to know that when his time came to fall in love with a girl and to desire to make her his wife, if the girl consented, he would marry her according to the law of the land, and she would be his wife.

Well, this had all come about; he had fallen in love and he had married the girl according to the law of the land; and was there anyone to say that she was not his wife or that he was not her husband? Of course he knew that there were quite a number of people who would say so; but what was their opinion worth? If she was the wife of someone else, she should, in the opinion of these people, leave him and go to someone else—yes, go to live with that swindling scoundrel—go to be the perpetual companion of a felon and a trickster who had shown his indifference to her and to all that she had suffered as his victim. What was the value of the opinion of people who should, with eyes turned up, assert the doctrine of the sacredness of marriage, and the necessity of acting in the case of himself and Priscilla in sympathy with their doctrines? These were the people who regard the conduct of Enoch Arden with abhorrence. Was he not actually allowing his wife to “live in sin” with the man who had supplanted him?

No; Priscilla and he had married in good faith, and they should be regarded by all sensible and unprejudiced people as man and wife. There was no man living, worthy of the name of a man, who would not call him a cur if he took any other view of the matter than this.

The idea of his handing over that girl to be dealt with by a felon according to his will, simply because the rascal had succeeded in getting the better of her father and mother...

Jack Wingfield laughed.