Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

Only when she had thought of these ways of anchoring a man to the county, the bower anchor of the hounds and the kedge anchor of the pheasant, did she think of the third way—The Girl. She had been thinking a great deal about the girl during the previous week; and already she was wondering if she might not pencil in some dates in her diary for mothers with nice—really nice, girls—they were getting scarcer and scarcer, she thought—to pay a visit to the Manor and so give Providence a chance of doing something for her son and incidentally for the girl: for would she not be a fortunate girl who should attract the attention of so eligible a man?

She had dreams of cosy house parties; and now, instead of making herself familiar with the stores of wisdom in the magazines on the table beside her, she was looking wistfully out from the terrace across the lawn to the water garden with its old stonework and its shrubberies and its many fascinating and secluded nooks. How happy she would be if she could but see her boy emerge from one of those romantic places with a charming roseate girl—if he would lead that girl to her side with a word or two to ask her to welcome a daughter!

And it was just when such a picture was presenting itself to her that the postbag arrived and was brought to her by a footman. She unlocked it, and found within half-a-dozen letters for herself, a large number of the inevitable tradesmen’s circulars, offering coal at the lowest summer prices and a fine choice of grates in which to consume it. She threw them to one side; but she did not so treat the two long envelopes with evidently bulky enclosures which remained among the contents of the mail. One had its origin printed right across it—“The East Indian Steam Ship Company”; the other was floridly embossed with a tropical scene, and the strap that enclosed it was stamped “The Madagascar Direct Route.” A sort of guide-book pamphlet entitled “Try Patagonia” had also come, addressed to her son, and a small volume purporting to be on “Tarpon, and How to Catch Them.”

She looked at each of them a second time, and read all the reading there was on the covers. Then she laid them on her table, and kept her hand on the topmost as though she were anxious to hide it from every eye.

It had come—she had seen it coming—she had seen the restlessness in his eyes that told her that the call had come to him out of the distance of dreams—those dreams which had always been his—dreams of a sea that he had never sailed on—a land that his feet had never trodden. The end of their life together at this house which she hoped would be their home, had come before it had well begun.

The poor woman lay back on her chair and closed her eyes, thinking her thoughts—asking herself how it was that she, a woman who cared about nothing in the world so much as a home, should be denied one, just when she fancied that the gift for which she had always yearned had been given to her. She knew all that a home meant—that it was not merely a well-appointed dwelling, but a place the tenure of which should be secure to her so long as she lived. Such had been denied to her all her life; for her husband had been a wanderer with no certainty in his wanderings except of their continuance; and now, when she fancied that the desire of her life had been given to her, it was snatched away before she had taken more than a sip of its sweetness. He was preparing to go away from her once more. He could not help it; the travel lust had taken possession of him, and once more she would be left alone.

She sat there asking herself if she had failed in her duty toward her son. Had she too easily yielded to him, letting him have his own way in the matter of travel? What had she left undone that might have prepared him for the “settling down” which was bound to come, she thought, when he really had a home to return to? Even now it might not be too late to do something that would make him not merely endure the home that he had inherited, but enjoy it as well.

She could think of nothing that had not been in her thoughts long ago; and so the day wore on, but the pain which she had at her heart was not outworn.

Oh, who could leave this place that was meant for that repose which is the sweetest part of life—this gracious land of woodland and park and meadow and paddock—the songs of the blackbird and the thrush—the glimpse of the quick swallows athwart the lawn—the melodious murmur of innumerable bees—the scent of the roses: who would choose to leave such a place for the dread uncertainties of other lands? She knew something of Jack’s travels; they had not been under the control of a personal conductor. He had slept with a rifle by his side and a revolver under his pillow, and when he was not suffering from a plague of mosquitoes he was having his toes cut open to expel the enterprising “jigger” that had made a burrow for itself and its progeny beneath his flesh.

That was a very fair synopsis of his travels, she thought—at any rate, those were the points that appealed most powerfully to her imagination; and yet she had imagination enough to perceive how, having once tasted of the excitement of living that wild life, he should feel the tameness of his new inheritance to be unendurable.