Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“There was no help for it. I went over the place yesterday afternoon, and I saw with half an eye that he had allowed the whole farm to go to the dogs—to the greyhounds.”

“The greyhounds? You are coming on, Mr. Wingfield. We shall have you running a dairy farm yourself and taking away our bread and butter—certainly the butter—if we don’t look out.”

That was the sum of their conversation before the alert official had separated them, dragging him off to play in the M.D.s and get ignominiously beaten, for which he had apologized most humbly to his partner, and she went away affirming that he was a very nice man, only it was a pity he didn’t practise more. But she was careful not to let a whisper of this reach the ears of their successful opponents; she was not sure that they would not say that it was her silly play that had lost the game.

He had manoeuvred to get close to her at lunch, but in this he was not very successful. She was with the Gainsforth set, and they hadn’t invited him to their table; but afterwards he had managed to beat to windward of the party and to sail down upon her at the right moment. Unfortunately it was only for a moment that he was allowed to be beside her. He had only time to say, “I want to have a long talk with you,” and to hear her answer “You will find me a most appreciative listener, Mr. Wingfield,” when Lady Cynthia carried her off in one direction and the alert official carried him off in another to play a single. When he had beaten his man and set out to look for her, he saw that she was between Lady Gainsforth and another watching a paltry match in which Lady Cynthia was doing some effective work with a partner who tried to poach every ball that came to her.

He had strolled away, and had passed a dim halfhour by the side of Rosa Caffyn, who presented him to her mother, and her mother had asked him if he did not think Miss Wadhurst was looking extremely well, considering all that she had come through, poor thing! and she feared that a good many people would say that it was in rather doubtful taste for her to appear in a public place and not in mourning, though her husband had been dead scarcely more than two months; and he had replied that she had the doubtful taste to refrain from that form of etiquette known as hypocrisy; and Rosa had clapped her hands, crying “Bravo! That’s what I have said all along.”

His thoughts went over all the ground that he traversed during the day. It was when he was motoring to the Manor that he had made up his mind to mention her name to his mother, and she had replied to him. And what then?

What then?

That was the question which remained to be answered by himself to himself.

Why was he taking so much trouble to bring her and his mother together? Was it in order to give his mother the privilege of another acquaintance? or was he anxious to show Priscilla how charming a mother was his?

He had gone out upon the terrace with his cigar when his mother had left him, and now he sat in the long chair among some very well-disposed cushions. It was a night that lent itself with all the seductiveness of an English June, not to thought, but to feeling. One could feel the earth throbbing with the sensuousness of the season, although the stars of that summer night were but feebly palpitating out of the faint mystery of their grey-blue canopy. He had started thinking, but he was soon compelled to relinquish it in favour of feeling.