Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

And the worst of it was that she had been foolish enough to allow her action in this matter to suggest that she was staking her reputation as a prophetess upon the event. That was very foolish on her part. No sibil worthy of the name would have done this. The sibil made her book with wisdom and caution, a safe hedging and an ambiguous phrase being the note of her advice.

Priscilla felt that by laying so much emphasis upon the necessity for his throwing his whole soul into his game of tennis she had jeopardized the success of her counsel to him in the matters that mattered.

She felt angry with herself when this reflection came to her; but a few minutes later she felt far angrier at the thought that she had been angry over something that was no business of hers. What did it matter to her if Jack Wingfield made a fool of himself over his tennis or anything else or everything else? How could his success affect her one way or another?

She really could make no satisfactory reply to this question that suggested itself to her; for clever and all as she was, she was as imperfectly acquainted with her own character as most other women are of theirs. The eagerness with which she had carried out her scheme of adopting the role of a retributory Providence in respect of Mr. Kelton had not given her a hint as to what was the dominant impulse of her nature; nor had her enthusiasm in regard to the working of her father’s farm and the reform of the dairy revealed it to her; though she had been on the brink of a discovery of the truth when she had had her conversation with her friend Rosa going a-primrosing, and had said that if a man sometimes was the means of a girl’s sudden development into a woman, she was equally sure that it was a woman who made a man of a man.

She did not know that in herself was so strongly developed the instinct of woman to be a maker of men—to put forth her strength in order that they may be strong. To be the mother of a man child, to give him of the sustenance of her body, to have him by her side and to have command over him until he breaks away, as she thinks, from her control, leaving her in tears, but always ready to advise him in the taking of a wife and to advise the wife, when she is chosen, how to conduct her household—that is the best part of the nature of a woman. But the exercise of the power to influence a man, to make herself necessary to the happiness and the prosperity of a man, is the most irresistible joy that a woman can know, though she does not know it.

Priscilla Wadhurst had felt a certain satisfaction in the thought that she had the destiny of Mr. Kelton under her fingers, so far as Framsby’s concerts were concerned; and she had been greatly gratified when her father had admitted that her reform of the dairy was a step in the right direction. But what were these triumphs compared to those that she longed to effect, though she might not have part or lot in the supreme tableaux in the procession of events?

And yet, in spite of the consciousness that she had exercised her influence upon another man for his benefit, she sat there asking herself why she should feel it as a personal matter whether Jack Wingfield made a fool of himself over his tennis or in any other way?

And then she saw once again the look that had appeared on his face for more than a moment when his eyes were upon her. It had startled her, and the recollection of it gave her a little fright. But her fright quickly subsided, and she sat there losing herself and all sense of her surroundings in the thoughts that came down upon her, not like a riotous throng of fantastic things, but like a silver mist shot through with a gleam of golden light here and there, but making everything about her seem blurred—indefinite as the future seems to any one landing on the shore of a strange land.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet—almost as suddenly as he had risen when in the midst of their little chat together; only the exclamation that she gave was not the same as his. Hers was derisive, contemptuous, impatient, and there was certainly something of impatience in her walk round the courts where play was going on. She had, however, recovered herself—she had walked herself outside the atmosphere, so to speak, of whatever thoughts had irritated her—before she had come opposite the court where Jack Wingfield was playing off the second set of the “Gentlemen’s Singles”; but even if she had not done so, a few minutes of watching the game that was in progress would certainly have cleared away any wisp of mist that might have remained with her on emerging from that atmosphere of conjecture into which she had allowed herself to stray.

She slipped into the only unoccupied chair at this court. It was at the end of the third row of the seats at the side from which Jack Wingfield was serving. An elderly visitor, wearing a velvet hat built up like a pagoda, sat immediately in front of her, so that she ran no chance of being seen by him. This was what, she thought when she took the seat; but before being in it many seconds she could not help smiling at the thought of how ridiculous it was to fancy that her coming might divert his attention for a single moment from the game, to the detriment of his play. The scheme of Oriental architecture in front of her effectually hid every inch of the court and the players from her, but her seat being at the end of the row, she had only to move a few inches to one side to command a complete and perfect view of the whole; and she perceived in a moment that the man who was serving with his back to her and to the whole world and all that is therein, had become compressed into the spheroid which he held in his left hand preparatory to launching it like a thunderbolt with a twist over the net. She smiled. If the German Emperor or Mr. Roosevelt or some other commanding personality had suddenly appeared on the court, Jack Wingfield would have seen nothing of him. He had eyes only for the ball.