And these were the people for whose patronage Phineas Wadhurst’s wife pined all her life, and it was solely that her daughter might one day be received by some of the best set in Framsby that she agreed with her sister that Priscilla should be “finished” at a school the fees of which were notoriously exorbitant.
This was the point at which Priscilla’s review of the past began while she sat on her chair that afternoon, when for the first time for a year she had a sense of peace—a sense of her life being cleansed from some impurity that had been clinging to it. It was the sense of the rain-washed air that induced this feeling; and she smiled while she remembered how, even so long ago as the time of which she was thinking, she had been amused by the seriousness with which her pale mother and her aunt Emily discussed the likelihood there was that when the fact of her being “finished” at that expensive school should be reasonably presented to the right people at Framsby, it would prove irresistible as a claim upon their compassion, so that they would come to visit her in flocks.
Alas! she had gone to the expensive school and had learned when there a great number of things—some of them not even charged for in the long list of extras; but still she was only regarded by the great people of Framsby as a farmer’s daughter. Nay, several of the wrong set who had been on visiting terms with Mrs. Wadhurst took umbrage at the girl’s being sent to a school to which they could not afford to send their daughters; and they talked of the great evils that frequently resulted from a girl being educated “above her station”—Priscilla remembered the ridiculous phrase for many days. But whatever their ideas on proportionate education may have been, Priscilla was educated. She took good care that she had everything that her father’s money was paid for her to acquire. She did not mean to be over-exacting, but the truth was that she had a passion for learning everything that could be taught to her; and she easily took every prize that it was possible for her to take at the school.
But still the best set showed no signs of taking her up; and whatever chance she had of this form of rapture vanished on that day when, at a local bazaar, a young Austrian prince who spoke no English, was a visitor. He had been brought by Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst, but that lady, having another engagement in the town, had asked one of the best set to lead him to some person who could speak German. But a full parade of all the members of the best set failed to yield even one person who could speak one word of that language. They were all smiling profusely, but they smiled in English, and the prince knew no English. Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst was in despair, when suddenly Miss Caffyn, the daughter of the Rector of St. Mary’s in the Meadows, brought up, without a word of warning, Priscilla Wadhurst, offering the great lady a personal guarantee that she would have no difficulty with the prince.
Of course Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst was delighted. She saw that Miss Wadhurst was the most presentable girl in the hall, and she made no enquiry respecting her lineage or the armorial bearings of her father, but at once presented her to the young man, and noticed with great interest that she was not in the least fluttered at the honour; she was as much at her ease with him as if she had been in the habit of meeting princes all her life. She chattered to Prince Alex in his own language quite briskly, and for an hour and a half she had him all to herself, and delivered him up at the end of that time safe and sound to Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst, on that lady’s return.
This incident, taken in connection with its illustration in a London paper through the medium of an enterprising snap-shottist on the staff of the local Gazette, in which Priscilla “came out” extremely well, ruined whatever chance she might once have had of being visited by Framsby’s best. They ignored her existence upon every occasion when they might reasonably have been expected to notice her; and the failure of her plans was too much for her mother. The lingering Lily of Limborough took to her bed—she had taken to her sofa the year before—and never held up her head afterwards.
And all the time that she was complaining of the want of appreciation of Framsby for all those accomplishments which constitute a “lady,” she was imploring her daughter to make her a promise that she would not spend her future in so uncongenial a neighbourhood. Her aunt Emily, the wife of a prosperous brewer in a minor way in one of the largest cities in the Midlands, had joined her voice with that of Mrs. Wadhurst in this imploration; and with a view of giving her a chance of forming a permanent connection far away from the detestable place, had insisted on her paying several visits of some months’ duration to her own house, and had presented to her favourable consideration more than one eligible man.
Somehow nothing came of these attentions, and Mrs. Wadhurst became gradually more feeble. Then all at once there appeared on the scene a gentleman named Blaydon, who occupied a good position in one of the great mercantile firms of the Midland city, having come there some years before from his home in Canada. He was greatly “smitten”—the expression was to be found in one of Aunt Emily’s letters—with Priscilla, and there could be no doubt as to his intentions. There was none when he proposed to her, and was rejected.
He went away, sunk into the depths of an abyss of disappointment. And then it was that Aunt Emily threw up her hands in amazement. She wished to know whom the girl expected to marry—she, the daughter of a farmer—a wealthy and well-to-do farmer, to be sure, but still nothing more than a farmer. Did she look for a peer of the realm—a duke—or maybe a baronet or a prince? And Mr. Blaydon had eight hundred a year and a good situation. Moreover he had been told that her father was a farmer, and yet he had behaved as a gentleman!
What, in the face of all this impetuosity, was Priscilla’s plaint that she had no affection for the man—that she felt she could not be happy with him—that she was not the sort of wife that such a man wanted?
Aunt Emily ridiculed her protests. They were artificial, she affirmed. They were the result of reading foolish novels in foreign languages; and in a year or two she would find out the mistake she was making—yes, when it would be too late—too late!
Priscilla fled to her home, but only to find that the story of her folly, of her flying in the face of Providence—the phrase was Aunt Emily’s—had got there before her.
Within a week she had written accepting Mr. Blaydon. Her mother—her dying mother—backed up by her father, had brought this about. She had implored Priscilla to accept the man.
“My last words to you, my child—think of that,” she had said. “The last request of a dying mother anxious for her child’s happiness. I tell you, Priscilla, that I shall die happy if I can see you safely married to a man who will take you away from this neighbourhood. If you refuse, what will be your reflections so long as you live? You will have it on your soul that you refused to listen to the last prayer of your dying mother.”
The girl made a rush for the writing-table with her heart full of anger and her eyes full of tears. But she wrote the letter, and the ardent and eligible Mr. Blaydon came down to Framsby, and they were married one February morning in Athalsdean Church, and he was arrested on a charge of embezzlement when they were in the act of leaving the sacred building. The police officers had arrived ten minutes too late.
It was the sentiment of the young and innocent wife, dwelt on so pathetically by his counsel—“Was