Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

So it was with cricket and polo. He never took every ounce out of himself in fighting for anything.

Framsby’s lawn tennis week begins on the first Monday in June, and the tournament being an open one, and several champions and ex-champions coming to take part in it, some good play was certain to be seen when the Framsby folk were got rid of, which was usually during the first day’s play. Moreover, there was a “gate” during this week, so that the ground, sacred for the rest of the year to the members, was invaded by outsiders with shillings in their hands—five shillings for the week.

And that was how it came that Priscilla Wadhurst contrived to put in an appearance at the club from the membership of which she was excluded by the engineering of the select and the elect.

This was the first time she was seen by the Framsby people since her name had appeared in the local papers in brackets at the foot of the account of the loss of the barque Kingsdale; and there was a consensus of opinion in the pavilion that she showed rather more than doubtful taste in exhibiting herself to the public—the phrase was Mrs. Gifford’s. Mrs. Gifford was the senior member of the select, the wife of the colonial gentleman with a pension. “But it was just what might be expected from her,” another of the set whispered to her when Priscilla passed in front of the pavilion. The pair took good care to be so engrossed in conversation together that even an ambitious young woman like Priscilla could hardly have looked for a recognition from them. (She was on nodding terms with the most exclusive ladies in Framsby, but only when they met her in the street—not upon special occasions when important strangers were present, who might go away with the notion that they were intimate with her.)

But whatever bad taste Priscilla showed in appearing in a public place so soon after the death of the man who had tried to wreck her life, no one could suggest that any detail of her dress was not tasteful. All that people might have found fault with was her dress as a whole. And a good many of her own sex availed themselves of such a chance. She was undoubtedly a widow, and yet she bore no token of widowhood in her dress; and so the right set either turned their eyes toward each others’ faces as she passed, or gazed at some point in space a considerable distance above her head. Thus they avoided hurting her feelings by letting her see how shocked they were.

But all the same she knew that they wished it to be known that they were shocked; and she also knew that they would not have been so greatly shocked if her dress had not fitted so extremely well. A chastened spirit and a misfit invariably go together in some people’s minds.

Priscilla knew what it was to dress well, and she was quite aware of the difference there is between a garden party and a lawn tennis meeting. She wore the simplest hat and the simplest frock; both white, and neither relieved by the least touch of colour. But the hat and the frock and the shoes and the gloves and the sunshade were the best that money could buy. They were the sort of things that owed their distinction to the wearer, and only when she had served them in this way did they show their generosity by conferring distinction upon her.

“Who is that exquisite creature?” said one of the strangers in the front row of the pavilion seats, as Priscilla moved past without so much as casting a glance at the occupants of any of the seats.

“An exquisite creature, indeed!” said the one to whom the remark was addressed. “She walks like a goddess; and what hair!”

The two of the right set smiled each in the other’s face, with the corners of their lips turned down. They could hardly resist giving the strangers the information that she was not an exquisite creature, but only a farmer’s daughter.