Priscilla and Charybdis. Frank Frankfort Moore
in a way that suggested she felt that she was not worthy of such an honour.
“You are a widow, and I hope that you will remember that,” he repeated. “Your marriage was quite regular. There was no flaw in it.”
“I suppose, then——”
“You may not merely suppose, you may be sure of it. Do you fancy that there would be a flaw in any business, that I had to do with?”
“I do not, indeed. This was, however, a bad bit of business for me, father. However, we need say no more about it. I don’t wish ever again to hear that wretched business alluded to. It has passed out of my life altogether, thanks be to God, and now it only remains in my mind as a horrid nightmare.”
“It was a legal marriage, and marriage is a holy thing.”
He spoke with the finality of the Vicar’s churchwarden—as if he were withstanding the onslaught of a professed freethinker. His last statement was, however, too much for the patience of his daughter—to be more exact, it was too much for her mask of humility which she had put on to save the trouble of discussion with him.
She turned upon him, speaking with a definiteness and finality quite equal in force to his display of the same qualities.
“Look here, father,” she said. “We may as well understand each other at once. You know as well as I do that there was nothing sacred about that marriage of mine. You know that the—the—no, I will not give him his true name, I will call him for once a man—he behaved like a man—once—you know, I say, that he married me simply because that foolish woman, Aunt Emily, gave him to understand that you would endow me handsomely on my wedding day, and he wanted the money to pay back all that he had embezzled. You also know that I never had the least feeling of affection, or even of regard, for the man—that I only agreed to marry him because my mother forced me to do so.”
“Do not speak a word against your mother, girl.”
“I am not speaking against her. She, I am sure, was convinced that she was urging me to take a step for my own good; she had always bowed down before the superior judgment of Aunt Emily. No matter about that; I married the man caring nothing for him, but believing that he cared something for me. It was proved at the church door that he never cared a scrap for me. That is the marriage which you tell me was sacred!”
“Marriage is a sacred ordinance. You can’t get over that; and every marriage celebrated in the church——”
“Sacred ordinance! You might as well talk of any Stock Exchange transaction being sacred because it is made in what I believe they call the House. Sacred! A sacred farce! I remember feeling when I was in the church that day how dreadful was the mockery of the whole thing—how the curate talked about the mystic union between Christ and the Church being symbolized by marriage—dreadful! … Never mind, what you know as well as I know is that that marriage of mine was not made by God, but by the Power of Evil; it was the severance of that marriage that came from God, and the coming of it so quickly makes me feel such gratitude to God as I cannot express in words. That is all I have to say just now; only if you fancy that I shall be hypocrite enough to pretend that I am mourning for that man who did his best to wreck my life, you are mistaken. You know that all rightminded people will say ‘What a happy release for the poor girl!’ and they will be right. It is exactly what the poor girl herself is saying, and what the father of the poor girl is saying in his heart, however he may talk about the sacredness of marriage.”
He looked at her for some moments, and the frown upon his face became more marked every moment. He seemed more than once about to make some answer to her impetuous speech, but he made none. When she had said her last word, he looked at her as though he meant to box her ears. Then he turned suddenly round and walked straight out of the room.
So that, after all, it may be said that he had answered her accusations.
She felt a great pity for him; she knew that she had treated him badly; but with the memory of the past year fresh upon her—the sense of having escaped from a noisome prison by the grace of God—she could no longer play the part which he was encouraging her to play.
She felt that, though a girl might marry a man whom she detested, solely to please, her mother, it was too much to expect that she should become a hypocrite solely to please her father.
She was aroused from a reverie by the unfamiliar sound of the throbbing of the passionate heart of a motor up the steep lane leading to the farm. The car appeared round the side of the house when she had got upon her feet to find out who the visitor was that had dared that tyre-rending track.
The car was a very fine one, but it carried only a chauffeur and a basket of primroses. They parted company at the door. Priscilla heard the man speaking a word or two to the maid at the hall door, and the machine was backed slowly in the segment of a circle away from the house to put it into position for taking the hill properly.
“Mrs. Pearce has told him who we were, and he found the baskets in the porch,” were the words that came to her mind at that moment.
And then she gave a little start, and it was followed by a little laugh, and then a little frown.
It had suddenly occurred to her that here was a basket of flowers sent by a kindly hand as a conventional tribute of respect; only it was impossible that any such sentiment should be pinned to it, written on paper with a black border.
Still, there was the obituary notice in that newspaper on the table, and there was the basket of flowers—they could easily be worked into a wreath.
The maid brought them into the room and laid them on a chair.
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