Phyllis of Philistia. Frank Frankfort Moore

them have him—let them all have him—all—all!”

      That would have been absurd.

CHAPTER VI.

       Table of Contents

      IF A GIRL REALLY LOVES A MAN SHE WILL MARRY HIM, EVEN THOUGH HE SHOULD WRITE A BOOK.

      Phyllis meant the half hour which would elapse before her tea was brought to her to be a very grateful space. She meant to dwell upon the achievement of her freedom, for the feeling that she was free was very sweet to her. The fetters that had bound her had been flung away, and she now only had a splendid sense of freedom. So sweet was this sense that she made up her mind that in future it would never do for her to run any such risk as that to which she had just subjected herself. How could she ever have been such a fool as to promise to marry George Holland? That was what she was asking herself as she lay back on the pillows of the French sofa, and listened to the soft sound of the carriage wheels of the callers at the other houses in the square.

      What a singular wish that was of hers—to become the wife of a clergyman! It seemed very singular to her just now. Just now she did not want to become the wife of anyone, and she hoped that no one would ask her. She did not want the worry of it. Ah, she would be very careful in the future: she would take very good care that the fact of other girls wanting to marry one particular man would not make her anxious to have him all to herself.

      Before her resolutions on this very important point had been fully considered in all their bearings, her maid entered to ask if she was at home. The butler had sent a footman to her to make that inquiry, the fact being that her particular friend, Mrs. Linton, had called to see her.

      Phyllis jumped up, saying:

      “Of course I am home to Mrs. Linton. She will have tea with me.”

      She went to a glass to see if the tears which had been in her eyes—they had not fallen—had left any traces that the acuteness of Ella Linton might detect. The result of her observation was satisfactory; she would not even need to sit with her back to the light.

      Then Mrs. Linton was announced, and flowed into the arms of her friend Phyllis, crying:

      “Of course I knew that you would be at home to me, my beloved, even though you might be in the midst of one of those brilliant speeches which you write out for your father to deliver in the House and cause people to fancy that he is the wittiest man in place—so unlike that dreadful teetotal man who grins through the horse collar and thinks that people are imposed on. Now let me look at you, you lucky girl! You are a lucky girl, you know.”

      “Yes,” said Phyllis, “you have called on me. We shall have tea in a minute. How good of you to come to me the first day you arrived in town! How well you are looking, my Ella!”

      “So glad you think so,” said Ella. “I haven’t aged much during the eight months we have been apart. I have had a very good time on the whole, and so had Stephen, though he was with me for close upon a month, poor little man! But it is you, Phyllis, it is you who are the girl of the hour. Heavens! you were farsighted! Who could have imagined that he would become so famous all in a moment? I must confess that when you wrote to me that letter telling me of your engagement, and how happy you were, I was a little cross. I could not clearly see you the wife of a parson, even so presentable a parson as Mr. Holland. Oh, of course I wrote you the usual exuberant letter—what would be the good of doing anything else? But now that he has become famous—Oh, I want you to bring him with you to my first At Home—Tuesday week. It’s very short notice, I know, but you must come, and bring him. You are both certain to be in great demand. Why do you shake your head that way? You need not say that you are engaged for Tuesday week.”

      “I will not say that I am engaged at all, in any sense,” said Phyllis, with a very shallow laugh, at laugh that sounded like a ripple among pebbles; her usual laugh was like a ripple upon a silver sand.

      “In any sense—for Tuesday week?”

      Ella raised her eyebrows to the extent of the eighth of an inch. She lowered them in a moment, however, for the tea was being brought in. It required two able-bodied men (in plush) to carry in a dainty little silver tray, with a little silver tea-pot of a pattern that silversmiths, for reasons which have never been fully explained, call “Queen Anne.” One of the men, however, devoted himself to the care of the hot cakes of various subtle types which were inclosed in silver covered dishes.

      With the lowering of her eyebrows Mrs. Linton’s voice lost its previous inflection.

      “I have been fortunate enough to hit upon something distinctly new in that way”—she indicated the muffin dishes. “A cake that may be eaten hot without removing one’s gloves.”

      “What a boon!” cried Phyllis. “You got it at Vienna, of course.”

      “Of course. You will learn all about it when you come.”

      The able-bodied men withdrew, and before the door was quite closed behind them, Ella was gazing at her friend, her face alight with inquiry.

      “Now pray explain yourself,” she whispered. “Not engaged in any sense—those were your words. What do they mean?”

      “Take them literally, my Ella,” said Phyllis.

      “Literally? But you wrote to me that you had engaged yourself to marry Mr. Holland?”

      “And now I tell you by word of mouth that I have disengaged myself.”

      “Good Heavens! You, I fancied, would be the last girl in the world to promise to marry a man and then back out of it.”

      “That was what I myself fancied up till Monday last.”

      “But how can you have changed your mind? Isn’t it very unfortunate—just when the man has become famous?”

      “How could it be otherwise, Ella, when the man wrote so horrible a book as that?”

      “Horrible? Is it horrible? I had no idea. I’m no judge of what is horrible in theology, or metaphysics, or whatever it is. But I do profess to know when a man has made a hit, whether in theology or anything else; and I perceive quite clearly that your Mr. Holland—well, not your Mr. Holland, has made a distinct hit. What sort of face is that you’re making at me? Oh, I see. It’s the face of the orthodox at the mention of something not quite orthodox. Pshut! don’t be a goose, Phyllis.”

      “I don’t intend. Have I not told you that I’m not going to marry Mr. Holland?”

      “That is like one of the phrases which you give to your father, so that the people might think him clever. Orthodox! Who cares nowadays for what is dully orthodox? Who ever heard of a hero in orthodoxy nowadays? The thing is impossible. There may be, of course, thousands of orthodox heroes, but one never hears anything of them. The planets Jupiter and Saturn and Mercury and Mars and the rest of them come and go at their appointed seasons, and no one ever gives them a second thought, poor old respectable things! but the moment a comet appears in the sky everyone rushes out to gaze at it, and the newspapers deal with it from day to day, and the illustrated papers give its portrait. Nothing could be more unorthodox than your comet. Oh, Phyllis, my child, don’t talk nowadays of orthodoxy or the other—what do they call it?—heterodoxy. Mr. Holland’s name will be in everyone’s mouth for the next year at least, and if his bishop or a friendly church warden prosecutes him, and the thing is worked up properly, he ought to be before the public for the next five years.”

      “Oh, Ella!”

      “I’m not overstating the case, I assure you, my dear. A man was telling me about one Colenso—he was, so far as I could gather, a first-class man at algebra and heresy and things like that. He was Bishop of Zanzibar or Uganda or some place, and he wrote a book about Moses—showing that Moses couldn’t have written something or other. Well, he