Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“I should be reluctant to say one word that might lead you to expect too much,” said he. “My experience leads me to look for the worst and not the best in men; but I should be reluctant to say that the letters signed ‘Lucy’ did not come from a woman who was the legal wife of Marcus Blaydon.”

“That is so much, at any rate,” said Jack; “and now if you can give us any clue as to how it would be possible to be brought in touch with Horace Lyman, we will be evermore indebted to you.”

“The woman is his sister—so much I gathered,” said the Governor. “And I learned that he was waiting for Blaydon at the prison gate when Blaydon was released. That is all I know. But the sister’s address is, as I mentioned just now, London, in Canada—at least, that was her address when she was in communication with Blaydon. Her letters were not illiterate, though of course they were not carefully written. They showed what critics would possibly call an ill-balanced mind—extremes of blandishments on one page, and threats of the wildest nature on the next. I can give you copies if you would care to see them.”

Priscilla shook her head. She could not see herself sitting down to read the confidential letters of the poor woman.

“I am quite willing to accept your judgment on them, Major Crosbie,” she said.

“I think that you are right to do so,” said he. “If you were to, read them they would certainly convey more to you, who have fortunately had no experience of this form of correspondence, than would be good for your future peace of mind. You would say at once when you saw the address ‘My dearest husband,’ and the reiteration of the same word, ‘husband’ with various vehement adjectives—you would undoubtedly feel confident that the pair were married, but you must think of that possibility with great suspicion.”

“You have suggested it, at any rate, and for that you have our heartiest thanks,” said Jack. “Why, only to be able to put that name ‘Lucy Lyman’ on Sir Edward’s brief means an enormous gain to us.”

“But you will, of course, send someone out to Canada to make the thing sure,” said Crosbie. “You may be able to find the woman herself, and to bring her to England to confront the man. Whether she’s his wife or not, that will be a help to your case.”

“I should rather think that it will be a help,” cried Jack. “If it can be shown that the man went straight from this place to the side of that woman in Canada, I don’t see how any judge could refuse us a verdict. I shall start for Canada to-morrow.”

“For Heaven’s sake consult with your solicitors first,” said Crosbie. “They may think that one of their own agents is the best person to pursue the necessary enquiry in Canada. And now that we have gone as far as we are likely to go into this matter, even though we should confer together for a week, we shall have lunch. My wife and daughter are unfortunately still in Paris—I left them starting on a round of shops—but you will make allowances for a household run for the present en garçon.” The lunch was, however, so excellent as to leave no need for any allowance to be made by either of the visitors; and when it was over their host offered, as they expected he would, to show them over the prison. Jack knew that governors of prisons, as well as commanders of cruisers and vergers of cathedrals and superintendents of lunatic asylums, take it for granted that every visitor is burning to be “shown over the place”; and he felt too deeply indebted to Major Crosbie not to afford him an opportunity of exhibiting his hobby at this time. So for the next hour and a half he and Priscilla gave themselves up to this form of entertainment. The Governor spared them none of the interesting horrors of the “system.” They were shown the handsome young bank clerk who, on a salary of one hundred and twenty pounds a year, had managed to keep a motor and to go to a music hall every night of his life for three years without once arousing the suspicion of the directorate; the ex-Lord Mayor (not of London) who had made a fortune by insuring people’s lives (in an American office) and then encouraging them to drink themselves to death; the soldier who, after winning the Victoria Cross twice over, and saving two batteries of field artillery, had taken to beating women in Bermondsey, and had one day gone a little too far in this way; the great financier who had done his best to save the life of the King by standing by in his 300-ton yacht when his Majesty was in no danger, and had a little later been sentenced at the Old Bailey for another audacious fraud; the young man of “superior education” who had done several very neat forgeries, and was now making pants in the tailor’s shop; the ex-officer of Engineers who had lived in a mansion on the Cromwell Road for several years on the profits of writing begging letters, and was now, by the irony of Fate, engaged in sewing canvas, mail-bags in which probably, when he came to be relieved of this obligation, his own compositions would be conveyed to their destination—all of these interesting persons the visitors saw, with many others of equal distinction. And they went away fully satisfied, and with a consciousness of having cancelled a good portion of whatever debt they owed to the Governor.