Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

He burned the papers, having taken care that Priscilla never had a chance of looking at any one of the batch. He was in no way sensitive; but now and again he felt tempted to rush off with Priscilla to some place where they could escape for ever from this horror of publicity which was besetting them. He did not mind being made the subject of leading articles, if it was his incapacity as an orator or his ignorance of the political standpoint that was being assailed; but this intrusion upon his private life was as distasteful to him as it would be for anyone to see one’s dressing-room operations made the subject of a cinematograph display.

How could he feel otherwise, when almost daily he could espy strangers—men with knapsacks and women with veils (mostly green), all of them carrying walking sticks—coming halfway up the avenue and exchanging opinions as to the best point from which the house could be snapshotted? Such strangers were no more infrequent than the visits of men on motors—all sorts of motors, from the obsolete tri-car to the 60 h.p. F.I.A.T. He was obliged to give orders at the lodge gates that on no pretence was a motor to be allowed to pass on to the avenue, and that bicycling strangers, as well as pedestrians with kodaks, were also to be excluded. But in spite of these orders, scarcely a day went by without bringing a contingent of outsiders to the park; he believed that excursion trains were run to Framsby solely to give the curious a chance of catching a glimpse of the lady who figured as the heroine of “The Curious Case” column of the great daily paper.

But as far as Framsby itself was concerned, it did not contribute largely to the material of the nuisance. The truth was that the “sets” of Framsby, who had for some days made the road to the Manor suggest a picture of the retreat of the French from Moscow, owing to their anxiety to leave cards upon the young couple, now stood aghast at the information conveyed to them by the newspapers that Mrs. Jack Wingfield was not really Mrs. Jack Wingfield. They stood aghast, and held up their hands as if they were obeying the imperative order of a highwayman rather than the righteous impulse of outraged propriety. Some of them, who, through the strain put upon the livery stables, had been compelled to postpone their visit until a more convenient season, now affirmed that they had had their doubts respecting the marriage all along. There was some consultation among the “sets” as to the possibility of having their visits cancelled, as now and again a presentation at Court was cancelled. Would it not be possible to get back their cards? they wondered. The baser sort had thoughts of sending in the livery stables bill to Mr. Jack Wingfield.

But before a fortnight had passed it became plain to Jack and Priscilla that they were not going to remain without sympathetic visitors. Priscilla got a letter from Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst—a vivacious letter, and a delightfully worldly one into the bargain. The writer stated her intention of coming to lunch at the Manor House the next day, and of bringing a fire escape with her to allow of her getting in by one of the windows if she were refused admission by the door. And when she came and was admitted without the need for the display of any ingenuity on her part, she proved a most amusing visitor, showing no reticence whatever in regard to the “case,” and ridiculing the claims of Marcus Blaydon to conjugal rights, after the way he had behaved. Of course everyone with any sense acknowledged, she affirmed, that the marriage was between Jack and Priscilla.

When she had gone away Priscilla wondered if there was anything in what she had said on this point; and Jack replied that he was afraid that Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst was too notorious as a patron of notoriety for her opinion to have much weight. But as things turned out, that was just where he was wrong, for within the week several other ladies of considerable importance—county importance—called at the Manor, and were admitted. These were people who owned London houses and had a premonition that next season Mrs. Wingfield—they were sure that she would be Mrs. Wingfield by then—would be looked on as the most interesting figure in the world of drawing-rooms; and Priscilla found them very nice indeed, referring to her “case” as if it were one of the most amusing jests of the autumn season. They showed no reluctance in talking about its funniest features—its funniest features were just those which a rigid disciplinarian would have called its most serious features—and they promised faithfully that when she should appear in the court they would be present to offer her their support—their moral support. They seemed quite downhearted when she explained to them how it was her hope that the arbitrament of the Divorce Division would be avoided by a decree of a judge on the question of nullity. They had quite set their hearts on the Divorce Court, and had in their eye a toilet scheme which they felt sure would be in sympathy with the entourage of that apartment, and to which they thought they might be trusted to do justice.

But as the social position of these visitors was among the highest in the county, Priscilla began to feel that there was no chance of her becoming isolated even at the Manor House. The reasonableness of her attitude appealed, she saw, to some reasonable people. She had great hopes that it would appeal as well to one or more of His Majesty’s judges when the time came.

And she was not neglected by her dear friend Rosa Cafifyn; but this young woman came to her unaccompanied by her mother. The Caffyn household was divided against itself on this vexed subject of Priscilla’s attitude. Mrs. Caffyn, who had never encouraged her daughter’s friendship for Priscilla Wadhurst, was aghast at the publicity which her daughter’s friend had achieved.

“She was always getting herself talked about,” she remarked. “First there was that affair with the prince; everyone was talking about her speaking to him in French—in French, mind—for more than an hour.” (Mrs. Caffyn seemed to have acquired the impression that a conversation in French could scarcely fail to possess some of the elements of the dialogue in a French vaudeville, and she had heard enough about that form of composition to make her distrustful of its improving qualities.) “And then,” she went on, “there came all that horrid business about her marriage—the arrest of the man, you know, and all that. The next thing was the trial, where her name was mentioned in the hearing of all the common people—witnesses and people of that class—in the court. Later on there was the heroic drowning of the man, and then her marriage to Mr. Wingfield within a few months, and the electioneering business—I really think that she should have been more discreet than to get herself talked about so frequently. As for her present escapade, I can only say that it seems to me to be the crowning indiscretion of her life.”

But the Reverend Mr. Caffyn, who had been talking to his patroness, Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst, about Priscilla, was disposed to take the view of an easy-going looker-on at the world and its ways from a lesser altitude than that of his pulpit; and he smiled at Priscilla’s resolution to remain at the Manor. He did not think that it mattered much just then. Had she not married young Wingfield in good faith, and had they not been going about together ever since? he asked. He had in his mind, though his wife did not know it, the saying of the wicked witty Frenchwoman who had accepted the legend of the King’s making quite a promenade when deprived of his head, on the plea that, after all “c’est le premier pas qui coûte.” And so his daughter had no hesitation in paying her visit to the Manor.

It was when she was going through the gates that she recollected how Priscilla had talked to her upon that morning long ago at this same place. What had she said? Was it not that if she were to love a man truly she would not allow any considerations of morality or any other convention to keep her apart from him?