Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

They remained in London that night, in order that they might tell Mr. Liscomb how they had fared on their visit to the prison. They had a good deal to discuss between themselves in the meantime. Upon one point they were in complete agreement, and this was with regard to Major Crosbie’s belief in the relationship existing between Marcus Blaydon and the woman who had signed herself ‘Lucy.’ He had endeavoured to be very cautious in all that he had said on this important point in their presence. He had been extremely careful not to commit himself in any way, or to leave them any chance of reproaching him afterwards for leading them to have false hopes that the marriage of Blaydon with Priscilla was a bigamous one. But in spite of his intelligent caution, the impression which he had produced upon them was that he at least was a firm believer that Blaydon and his Lucy were man and wife.

They tried to reconstruct the whole of Blaydon’s story so far as Priscilla was concerned. It was quite plausible that, after marrying his Lucy in Canada and living with her for some years, they had quarrelled—had not Major Crosbie said that the letters betray a very ill-balanced temperament—one page showing her going into an extreme of affection and the next flying into an excess of abuse? This was eminently the sort of woman with whom a husband would quarrel, and from whom he would eventually fly.

And then fancying that he had escaped from her, and being led to commit those frauds for which he was afterwards sentenced to imprisonment, was not his wooing of Priscilla just what might be looked for from such an unprincipled man? He had an idea, no doubt, that he would be able to squeeze a fortune out of her father, and when he had made his position secure, he would have cleared off, perhaps leaving Priscilla a message that he was not her husband.

They had no trouble whatever in piecing together such a story of fraud as was adapted, they felt sure, to the fraudulent tendencies of the man and the ill-balanced passions of the woman on the other side of the Atlantic—Priscilla could see her quite clearly—a tall, darkhaired and dark-skinned creature—a termagant—the sort of woman that a sort of man would love fiercely and desert with joy when the dust of the ashes of his passion began to make his eyes smart and to irritate his nostrils. And as she pictured her, this woman was not the one to let a man wrong her and remain unpunished. She would not be such a fool as to allow a man to approach her unless he meant marriage; and she would certainly be able to hold him captive until he was ready to marry her.

But while Priscilla believed what she wanted to believe—namely, that the man and the woman had been husband and wife before he had left her, she would have been sorry to allow herself to be so carried away by that impression as to believe that Marcus Blaydon might not have behaved to that woman as the scoundrel he had shown himself to be in regard to herself. She would have been sorry to think that he was not capable of deceiving his Lucy and running away from her; and being so obsessed by the certainty that the man was a villain, she could not feel so sure as she would have liked that he had actually married the woman who had been writing to him.

She and Jack agreed, however, that Major Crosbie, a man who had been associated with greater villains, and a greater number of them, than almost any living man, certainly believed that Blaydon and that woman were man and wife, and against the belief of a man so well qualified to judge, the impressions of ordinary people not moving in criminal circles must be held of small account. And Priscilla, feeling this, was quite satisfied to allow her belief in the persistent villainy of Marcus Blaydon to yield to such force majeure.

But these beliefs and impressions and speculations were, after all, of no importance in relation to the final issue of their visit to the prison, compared with what they had achieved in learning in what direction to begin their search for whatever Captain Lyman could tell them. When they had set out upon their journey to the prison, the only thing that they had before them was the discovery of the whereabouts of Captain Lyman, who might possibly be able to give them some information in regard to the woman whom Jack, with his acquaintance with the wickedness of men, had asserted, when face to face with Marcus Blaydon, that this same Blaydon had gone straight from gaol to meet. But from this rather indefinite quest they had come with some very definite information indeed, not respecting Captain Horace Lyman, but respecting the woman herself. They had no need of the help of Captain Lyman or the fulness of his knowledge just now. They were in a position to go direct to the woman, and then...

“We are going ahead a bit too fast,” said Jack, when they had got so far in their review of all that they had gained by their visit to the prison. “We would do well not to go just yet beyond the point when we set out for Canada.”

“We?” cried Priscilla. “Do you mean to say that you would take me with you?”

“I told you a long time ago that I meant to run no risks where you are concerned, and that’s my situation still,” replied Jack. “I do not intend to let you out of my sight until this business is settled. It is about time that you had a holiday, and there’s no better place for holiday-making than Canada in the Fall.”