Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

But if Priscilla now found difficulty in understanding how she had had the resolution to face the world of Framsby as if nothing had happened, she did not fail to feel that her attitude was worthy of admiration, and she knew that it had received the admiration of Framsby in general, though the best set had felt scandalized by it. She had received many tokens of what she felt to be the true sympathy of the ordinary people of the town. A solicitor in the second set had offered to make an application to the courts of law—he was justifiably vague in their definition—to have her marriage rendered null and void, assuring her that he would do everything at his own expense. (He was well known to be an enterprising young man.) Many other and even more gracefully suggested evidences of the sympathy which was felt for her outside the jealously-guarded portals of the “right set” were given to her. In the eyes of the young men she had always been something of a heroine, and this matrimonial adventure of hers had not only established her claims to be looked on as a heroine, it had endowed her with the halo of a saint as well. And thus it was that, when she had appeared on the platform so fearlessly, and with a complete ignoring of the head-shakings and lip-pursings of the front rows, she had been received with the heartiest applause, very disconcerting to Mr. Kelton, who had never before in the whole course of his amateur experience known of an ordinary accompanist so “blanketing” a singer.

Her recollections of the various conflicting incidents and interests in her experiences of the year were quickly followed by some reflections upon her freedom and what she was to do with it. Thus she was led far into a bright if mysterious future; but presently she found her imagination becoming dazzled and dizzy, and down toppled the castle which she was building for herself after the most approved style affected by the architects of such structures in Spain—down toppled the castle, and she awoke from her vision, as one does from a dream of falling masonry, with a start.

What had she been thinking of? Was it all indeed a dream—this sense of Spring in the air—the rain-washed air—this sense of the peace of God?

She looked about her vaguely. Her hands fell on her lap, and came upon the still folded newspapers which remained there. She had forgotten all about the newspapers. (So the prisoner just released from gaol takes but the smallest amount of interest in the certificate of discharge.)

She read the account given in every one of the three of the wreck of the steel-built barque Kingsdale on the coast of Nova Scotia, in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth. The vessel had lost her rudder and become unmanageable, and she had been driven between the low headland and a sunken rock in the darkness. Boats had been stove in on an attempt being made to launch them; and then it was that the passenger whose name was Blaydon—“an unfortunate but well connected gentleman and a friend of Captain Lyman, of the ill-fated vessel”—had nobly volunteered to carry a line ashore. He was a powerful swimmer, and it was believed for some time by the wretched mariners whom he meant to save that his heroic attempt was crowned with success. Unhappily, however, this was not to be. On hauling upon the line after a long interval it had come all too easily. There was no resistance even of the man’s body at the end. It was plain that the brave fellow, about whose shoulders it had been looped, had been dragged out of the bight and engulfed in the boiling surge, perishing in his heroic efforts on behalf of the crew. Through the night’s exposure no fewer than eleven of the crew died within half an hour of being brought ashore by a fishing smack from St. John’s. The survivors, twelve in number, included Captain Lyman, the master, and the second and third mates; also an apprentice named Jarvis, of Hull.

“From information supplied by Captain Lyman, we are able to state that the heroic man who perished in his attempt to provide the crew with the means of saving themselves, had but recently been released from an English prison, having worked out his sentence for a fraud committed by another man whom he was too high-minded to implicate. He had, it was said, a young wife in England, for whom the deepest sympathy will be felt.”

Practically the same account appeared in all the papers; one, however, went more deeply into the past history of the man, giving—evidently by reference to some back files of an English paper—the date and particulars of the trial of Marcus Blaydon; but it did not introduce these details at the cost of the expression of sympathy with the young widow—all the accounts referred to the pathetic incident of the young widow and offered her the tribute of their deep sympathy.

And there the young widow sat at the open window, conscious of no impression beyond that which she had frequently acquired from reading a novel at the same window. She felt that she had been reading an account of a wreck in a novel, in which the hero lost his life in a forlorn hope to rescue his fellow creatures, and the hero had been a black sheep; the object of the writer being to show that even the worst man may have in his nature the elements of the heroic.

The man Blaydon seemed as legendary to her as Jim Bludso in Hay’s ballad. He seemed quite as remote from her life. She took no more than a novel-reader’s interest in the story. She was harder than the newspaper men, for she could not bring herself up to a point of sympathizing with the young widow.

“Good heavens!” she cried, getting to her feet so quickly that the papers fluttered down to the carpet. “Good heavens! have I allowed myself to be made miserable for so long by a person who was no more than a character out of a novel—one of the black sheep hero novels? Oh, what a fool I was—as foolish as the girls who cry copiously when their fustian hero gets into trouble.”