Phyllis of Philistia. Frank Frankfort Moore

had no yearning to startle her neighbors. With a large number of young women, the idea that startling one’s neighbors is a career by itself seems to prevail just at present; but Phyllis had no taste in this direction. Writing a book and riding a bicycle were alike outside her calculations of a scheme of life. Hospital nursing was nothing that she would shrink from; at the same time, it did not attract her; she felt that she could dress quite as becomingly as a hospital nurse in another way.

      She wondered, if it should come to the knowledge of the heads of the government of Philistia that she had a yearning to become the wife of a clergyman, would they regard her as worthy to be conducted across the frontier, and doomed to perpetual expatriation. When she began to think out this point, she could not but feel that if she were deserving of punishment—she looked on expulsion from Philistia as the severest punishment that could be dealt out to her, for she was extremely patriotic—there were a good many other young women, and women who were no longer young, who were equally culpable. She had watched the faces of quite a number of the women who crowded St. Chad’s at every service, and she had long ago come to the conclusion that the desire to become the wife of a clergyman was an aspiration which was universally distributed among the unmarried women of the congregation.

      She knew so much, but she was not clever enough to know that it was her observance of this fact that confirmed her in her belief that it would be a blessed privilege for such a woman as she to become the wife of such a clergyman as George Holland. She was not wise enough to be able to perceive that a woman marries a man not so much because she things highly of marriage—although she does think highly of it; not so much because she thinks highly of the man—though she may think highly of him, but simply because she sees that other women want to marry him.

      In three months she considered herself blessed among women. She was the one chosen out of all the flock. She did not look around her in church in pride of conquest; but she looked demurely down to her sacred books, feeling that all the other women were gazing at her in envy; and she felt that there was no pride in the thought that the humility of her attitude—downcast eyes, with long lashes shading half her cheeks, meekly folded hands—was the right one to adopt under the circumstances.

      And then she saw several of the young women who had been wearing sober shades of dresses for some years—though in their hearts (and she knew it) they were passionately attached to colors—appearing like poppies once more, and looking very much the better for the change, too; and she felt that it was truly sad for young women to—well, to show their hands, so to speak. They might have waited for some weeks before returning to the colors of the secular.

      She did not know that they felt that they had wasted too much time in sober shades already. The days are precious in a world in which no really trustworthy hair dye may be bought for money.

      And then there came to her a month of coldly inquisitive doubt. (This was when people had ceased to congratulate her and to talk, the nice ones, of the great cleverness of George Holland; the nasty ones, of the great pity that so delightful a man did not come of a better family.)

      Why should she begin to ask herself if she really loved George Holland; if the feeling she had for him should be called by the name of love, or by some other name that did not mean just the same thing? Of course she had thought a good deal—though her father did not know it—of love. She had seen upon other people the effect of the possession of this gift of love, how it had caused them to forget pain and poverty, and shame, and infamy, and God, and death, and hell. Ah! that was love—that was love! and she had hoped that one day such a gift of love would be given to her; for it was surely the thing that was best worth having in the world! Once or twice she had fancied that it was at the point of being given to her. There had been certain thrilling passages between herself and two men—an interval of a year between each—and there had also been a kiss in an alcove designed by her dearest friend, Ella Linton, for the undoing of mankind, a place of softened lights and shadowy palms. It was her recollection of these incidents that had caused her to fumble with the blind cord when her father had been suggesting to her the disadvantages of inexperience in matters of the heart. But the incidents had led to nothing, except, perhaps, a week or two of remorse. But she could not help feeling, when that month of curious doubt was upon her, that the little thrill which she had felt when one man had put his arm around her for an instant, when another man—he was very young—had put his lips upon her mouth—it was a straightforward kiss—suggested a nearer approach to love than she had yet been conscious of in the presence of George Holland. (He had never done more than kiss her hand. Is it on record that any man did more when dressed with the severity of the cleric?)

      This was a terrible impression for a young woman to retain before her engagement to a man has passed into its third month. Then she began to wonder if all her previous ideas—all her previous aspirations—were mistaken. She began to wonder if this was the reality of love—this conviction that there was nothing in the whole world that she would welcome with more enthusiasm than an announcement on the part of her father that he was going on a voyage to Australia, and that he meant to take her with him.

      And then——

      Well, then she threw herself upon her bed and wept for an hour one evening, and for two hours (at intervals) another evening; and then looked up the old published speeches made by a certain cabinet minister in his irresponsible days, on a question which he had recently introduced. Her father was bitterly opposed to the most recent views of the minister, and was particularly anxious to confront him with his own phrases of thirty years back. She spent four hours copying out the words which were now meant by Mr. Ayrton to confound the utterer.

CHAPTER III.

       Table of Contents

      THE BISHOP KNEW SOMETHING OF MAN, AND HE KNEW SOMETHING OF THE CHURCH; HE EVEN KNEW SOMETHING OF THE BIBLE.

      Her father when he came in commended her diligence. He read over those damning extracts, punctuating them with chuckles; he would make an example of that minister who had found it convenient to adopt a course diametrically opposed to the principle involved in his early speeches. He chuckled, reading the extracts while he paced the room, drawing upon his stock of telling phrases, which were calculated to turn the derision of the whole House of Commons upon his opponent.

      Thus, being very well satisfied with himself, he was satisfied with her, and kissed her, with a sigh.

      “What a treasure you are to me, dearest one!” he said. There was a pause before he added, in a contemplative tone:

      “I suppose a clergyman has no need ever to hunt up the past deliverances of another clergyman in order to confound him out of his own mouth. Ah, no; I should fancy not.”

      Regret was in his voice. He seemed to suggest to her that he believed her powers would be wasted as the wife of a man who, of course, being a clergyman, could have no enemies.

      “Dearest papa!” she cried, throwing herself into his arms, and sobbing on his shirt front, “dearest papa, I will not leave you. I don’t want to be anyone’s wife. I want to be your daughter—only to be your daughter.”

      He comforted her with kisses and soothing smoothings of the hair. No, no, he said; he would not be selfish. He would remember that a father was the trustee of his child’s happiness.

      “But I know I can only be happy with you, my father!” she cried; but it was of no avail. He, being a father and not a mother, was unable to perceive what was in the girl’s heart. He considered it quite natural that she should be a trifle hysterical in anticipating her new life—that strange untraveled country! Ah, is there anything more pathetic, he thought, than a girl’s anticipations of wifehood? But he would do his duty, and he fancied that he was doing his duty when he put aside her earnest, almost passionate protestations, and told her how happy she would be with the man who was lucky enough to have won the pure treasure of her love.

      What could she do? The terrible doubts of that month of doubting broadened into certainties. She knew