Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

Two days later the papers were full of the news of the reappearance of Marcus Blaydon.

Jack Wingfield had been very impatient of the delay. Every morning that he opened the newspapers, and drew them blank, he swore at the man. What the mischief was he waiting for? Was he such an idiot as to fancy that he, Jack Wingfield, was likely to give a more promising reply to his demands than he had already given him? Did he hope to gain anything by merely menacing him in regard to the publication of his story?

Priscilla was clever enough to see that the man had hoped much from the visit which her father had paid her, and perhaps even more from that of the Vicar of Athalsdean. She felt sure that she saw what was the sort of game he meant to play when he returned to England. He had meant to try the familiar game of blackmail in the first instance, being idiot enough to think that Priscilla would jump at the chance of being allowed to pay over some thousands of pounds for his promise to clear out of the country and tell no human being that he was her husband. Failing, however, to convince her or Wingfield that their position would be to any extent improved by the acceptance of his terms, he had gone to her father, knowing that he had a sheet-anchor in the enormous respectability of Farmer Wadhurst. He did not want Priscilla—if he had wanted her he would have hurried to her the moment he found himself free, if only to tell her that he meant to start life afresh, in order that he might win her love and redeem the past—no; he did not want her; but he was well aware of the fact that her father was a moderately wealthy man, and that Priscilla was his only child. These were the possibilities that appealed to him. Perhaps the father might show his readiness to pay a respectable price for the preservation untarnished of the respectability of the family; but failing that, he might still be able to make a good thing out of the connection, for his father-in-law would stand by him, could he be made to see that it would be for the good of the family to stand by him. But her father’s mission and the mission of the Reverend Osney Possnett having failed, the man had no further reason for delay in making public the romantic incidents in which he had taken a prominent part.

These represented the surmises of Priscilla and Jack, and they were not erroneous in substance, though in some particulars not absolutely accurate, as they afterwards found out.

What Jack confessed his inability to account for was the flight of the man across the Atlantic, when he had such good prospects opening before him as the husband of Priscilla, the daughter of that prosperous agriculturist, Mr. Wadhurst. To be sure, it was just on this point that he had allowed his imagination some play when he had that conversation with Marcus Blaydon. He had suggested that the fellow had gone across the Atlantic in order to be with some woman whom he had known before; but Jack was scarcely inclined to give the man credit for a disinterested attachment such as this, when he had such good prospects at home as the lawful husband of a beautiful young woman, whose society (post-nuptial) he had had but a very restricted opportunity of enjoying.

That was a matter which, he saw, required some explanation; but he felt sure that the explanation would come in good time; and it would be his, Jack Wingfield’s, aim to expedite its arrival; and he knew that the success of the nullity suit depended on his finding out all about that unaccountable attachment which had forced a mercenary trickster into an unaccountable position.

But here were the newspapers at last containing the information that Marcus Blaydon, who had been placed in the early part of the summer in the forefront of the rank of maritime heroes—by far the most picturesque of all heroic phalanxes—had returned to England, none the less a hero because he had by a miracle (described in detail) escaped the consequences of his heroism; and engaged—also without prejudice to the claims made on his behalf when his name was last before the eyes of the public—in the discharge of a duty so painful as to cause him to feel that it would have been better if he had perished among the rocks where he had lain insensible for many hours after doing his best to rescue his messmates from a watery grave, than to have survived that terrible night.

That is what the announcements in some of the newspapers came to. But they had the tone of the preliminary announcements of a matter which is supposed to contain certain elements of interest to the public later on, if the public will only have the kindness to keep an eye upon the papers. Some of the phrases—including that important one about the “watery grave,” appeared in all the accounts of the matter; but in a few cases the news did not occupy a greater space than an ordinary paragraph, while in others the attention of casual readers was drawn to it by the adventitious aid of some startling headlines—two of these introducing the name of Enoch Arden. Not once, however, in any newspaper, was the name of Mr. Wingfield introduced.

“They read like a rangefinder,” remarked Mr. Wingfield, when he had gone through every line of the paragraphs. “That is what the fellow is doing—he is trying to find out our position.”

But there was no need for the invention of such a theory to account for the guarded omissions in the paragraphs, the truth being simply that the professional correspondent of the Press agency who had handled the item understood his business. He had no wish to drag the name of a member of Parliament into a piece of news offered to him by a man whose trial for embezzlement he had attended professionally the previous year. In addition, he perceived how it was possible for him to nurse the information, if it stood the test of enquiry, until it should yield to him a small fortune. He understood his business, and his business was to understand the palate of newspaper readers.