Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

Of course Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst was delighted. She saw that Miss Wadhurst was the most presentable girl in the hall, and she made no enquiry respecting her lineage or the armorial bearings of her father, but at once presented her to the young man, and noticed with great interest that she was not in the least fluttered at the honour; she was as much at her ease with him as if she had been in the habit of meeting princes all her life. She chattered to Prince Alex in his own language quite briskly, and for an hour and a half she had him all to herself, and delivered him up at the end of that time safe and sound to Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst, on that lady’s return.

This incident, taken in connection with its illustration in a London paper through the medium of an enterprising snap-shottist on the staff of the local Gazette, in which Priscilla “came out” extremely well, ruined whatever chance she might once have had of being visited by Framsby’s best. They ignored her existence upon every occasion when they might reasonably have been expected to notice her; and the failure of her plans was too much for her mother. The lingering Lily of Limborough took to her bed—she had taken to her sofa the year before—and never held up her head afterwards.

And all the time that she was complaining of the want of appreciation of Framsby for all those accomplishments which constitute a “lady,” she was imploring her daughter to make her a promise that she would not spend her future in so uncongenial a neighbourhood. Her aunt Emily, the wife of a prosperous brewer in a minor way in one of the largest cities in the Midlands, had joined her voice with that of Mrs. Wadhurst in this imploration; and with a view of giving her a chance of forming a permanent connection far away from the detestable place, had insisted on her paying several visits of some months’ duration to her own house, and had presented to her favourable consideration more than one eligible man.

Somehow nothing came of these attentions, and Mrs. Wadhurst became gradually more feeble. Then all at once there appeared on the scene a gentleman named Blaydon, who occupied a good position in one of the great mercantile firms of the Midland city, having come there some years before from his home in Canada. He was greatly “smitten”—the expression was to be found in one of Aunt Emily’s letters—with Priscilla, and there could be no doubt as to his intentions. There was none when he proposed to her, and was rejected.

He went away, sunk into the depths of an abyss of disappointment. And then it was that Aunt Emily threw up her hands in amazement. She wished to know whom the girl expected to marry—she, the daughter of a farmer—a wealthy and well-to-do farmer, to be sure, but still nothing more than a farmer. Did she look for a peer of the realm—a duke—or maybe a baronet or a prince? And Mr. Blaydon had eight hundred a year and a good situation. Moreover he had been told that her father was a farmer, and yet he had behaved as a gentleman!

What, in the face of all this impetuosity, was Priscilla’s plaint that she had no affection for the man—that she felt she could not be happy with him—that she was not the sort of wife that such a man wanted?

Aunt Emily ridiculed her protests. They were artificial, she affirmed. They were the result of reading foolish novels in foreign languages; and in a year or two she would find out the mistake she was making—yes, when it would be too late—too late!

Priscilla fled to her home, but only to find that the story of her folly, of her flying in the face of Providence—the phrase was Aunt Emily’s—had got there before her.

Within a week she had written accepting Mr. Blaydon. Her mother—her dying mother—backed up by her father, had brought this about. She had implored Priscilla to accept the man.

“My last words to you, my child—think of that,” she had said. “The last request of a dying mother anxious for her child’s happiness. I tell you, Priscilla, that I shall die happy if I can see you safely married to a man who will take you away from this neighbourhood. If you refuse, what will be your reflections so long as you live? You will have it on your soul that you refused to listen to the last prayer of your dying mother.”