Read Ebook: Phyllis of Philistia by Moore Frank Frankfort

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Ebook has 1765 lines and 87148 words, and 36 pages

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 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.

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.

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.

Well, then she threw herself upon her bed and wept for an hour one evening, and for two hours 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.

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 that she did not love George Holland; but she had not the courage to face Philistia as the girl who did not know her own mind. Philistia was very solid on such points as the sacredness of an engagement between a man and a woman. It was a contract practically as abiding as marriage, in the eyes of Philistia; and, indeed, Phyllis herself had held this belief, and had never hesitated to express it. So nothing was left to her but to marry George Holland. After all, he was a brilliant and distinguished man, and had not a score of other girls wanted to marry him? Oh, she would marry him and give up her life to the splendid duties which devolve upon the wife of a clergyman.

But just as she had made up her mind to face her fate, Mr. Holland's fate induced him to publish the book at which he had been working for some time. It came out just when the girl was becoming resigned to her future by his side, and it attracted even more attention than the author had hoped it would achieve.

The book was titled "Revised Versions," and it was strikingly modern in design and in tone. It purported to deal with several personages and numerous episodes of the Old Testament, not from the standpoint of the comparative philologist; not from the standpoint of the comparative mythologist, but from the standpoint of the modern man of common sense and average power of discrimination; and the result was that the breath of a good many people, especially clergymen, was taken from them, and that the Rev. George Holland became the best-known clergyman in England.

He dealt with the patriarchs in succession, and they fared very badly at his hands. He showed that Abraham had not one good act recorded to his credit, and contrasted his duplicity with the magnanimity of the ruler of Egypt whom he visited. He dwelt upon the Hagar episode, showing that the adulterer was also a murderer by intention, and so forth; while no words could be too strong to apply to Sara, his wife. Isaac did not call for elaborate notice. He could not be accused of any actual crime, but if he was a man of strong personality, he was singularly unfortunate in having failed to impart to his wife any of that integrity which he may have practiced through life. Her methods of dealing with him after they had lived together for a good many years were criminal, considering the largeness of the issue at stake as the result of his blessing. As for Jacob, not a single praiseworthy act of his long life was available to his biographer. His career was that of the most sordid of hucksters. Of eleven of his sons nothing good is told, but Joseph was undoubtedly an able and exemplary man; the only thing to his discredit being his utter callousness regarding the fate of his father, after he had attained to a high position in Egypt.

The chapter on the patriarchs was followed by one that dealt with the incidents of the Exodus. The writer said that he feared that even the most indulgent critic must allow that the whole scheme of Moses was a shocking one; but he was probably the greatest man that ever lived on the face of the earth, if he was the leader and organizer of a band of depredators who for bloodthirst and rapacity had no parallel in history. How could it be expected that a kingdom founded upon the massacre of men and cemented by the blood of women and children should survive? It had survived only as example to the world of the impossibility of a permanent success being founded upon the atrocious methods pursued by the worst of the robber states of the East. While civilization had been spreading on all sides of them, the people of Israel had remained the worst of barbarians, murdering the men who had from time to time arisen to try and rescue them from the abysses of criminality into which they had fallen,--abysses of criminality and superstition,--until they had filled their cup of crime by the murder of the One whom the world worships to-day.

Ruth was also dealt with incidentally. She was the woman who expresses her willingness to give up her God at the bidding of another woman, and who had entered into a plot with that same woman to entrap a man whom they looked to support them.

Then there was David. It was not the Bath-sheba episode, but the Abishag, that the author treated at length--one of the most revolting transactions in history, especially as there is some reason to believe that the unfortunate girl was, when it was perpetrated, already attached to one of the sons of the loathsome, senile sensualist.

Perhaps, on the whole, it was not surprising that after the publication of this book the Rev. George Holland became the best-known clergyman in England, or that the breath of bishops should be taken from them. So soon as some of them recovered from the first brunt of the shock, they met together and held up their hands, saying that they awaited the taking of immediate action by the prelate within whose see St. Chad's was situated. But that particular prelate was a man who had never been known to err on the side of rapidity of action. Nearly a week had passed before he made any move in the matter, and then the move he made was in the direction of the Engadine. He crossed the Channel with the book under his arm. He determined to read it at his leisure. Being a clergyman, he could not, of course, be expected to have examined, from any standpoint but that of the clergyman, the characters of the persons dealt with in the book, and he was naturally shocked at the freedom shown by the rector of St. Chad's in criticising men whose names have been held in the highest esteem for some thousands of years. He at once perceived that the rector of St. Chad's had been very narrow-minded in his views regarding the conduct of the men whom he had attacked. It occurred to him, as it had to Mr. Ayrton, that the writer had drawn his picture without any regard for perspective. That was very foolish on the part of a man who was a Fellow of his college, the bishop thought; and besides, there was no need for the book--its tendency was not to help the weaker brethren. But to assume that the book would, as some newspaper articles said it would, furnish the most powerful argument that had yet been brought forward in favor of the Disestablishment of Church, was, he thought, to assume a great deal too much. The Church that had survived Wesley, Whitefield, Colenso, Darwin, and Renan would not succumb to George Holland. The bishop recollected how the Church had bitterly opposed all the teaching of the men of wisdom whose names came back to him; and how it had ended by making their teaching its own. Would anyone venture to assert that the progress of Christianity was dependent upon what people thought of the acceptance by David of the therapeutic course prescribed for him? Was the morality which the Church preached likely to be jeopardized because Ruth was a tricky young woman?

The bishop knew something of man, and he knew something of the Church, he even knew something of the Bible; and when he came to the chapter in "Revised Versions" that dealt with the episode of Ruth and Boaz, he flung the book into a corner of his bedroom, exclaiming, "Puppy!"

And then there came before his eyes a vision of a field of yellow corn, ripe for the harvest. The golden sunlight gleamed upon the golden grain through which the half-naked brown-skinned men walked with their sickles. The half-naked brown-skinned women followed the binders, gleaning the ears, and among the women was the one who had said, "Entreat me not to leave thee." He had read that old pastoral when he was a child at the knee of his mother. It was surely the loveliest pastoral of the East, and its charm would be in no wise impaired because a man who failed to appreciate the beauty of its simplicity, had almost called Ruth by the worst name that can be applied to a woman.

The bishop said "Puppy!" once again.

But he made up his mind to take no action whatever against the Rev. George Holland on account of the book. If the Rev. George Holland fancied that he was to be persecuted into popularity, the Rev. George Holland was greatly mistaken, and the bishop had a shrewd idea that the rector of St. Chad's was greatly mistaken.

But so soon as Phyllis Ayrton had read the first review of the book that fell into her hands, she felt inexpressibly shocked. Great Heavens! Was it possible that she was actually at that moment engaged to marry the man who had written such a book--a book that held up Delilah to admiration, and that abased Ruth?

She did not pause to analyze her feelings--to try and find out if she was really so fond of Ruth as to make Ruth's insult her own; but without a moment's delay, without a word of consultation with her father, she sat down at her desk and wrote a letter to George Holland, asking him to release her from her promise to marry him; and adding that if he should decline to do so it would make no difference to her; she would consider the engagement between them at an end all the same.

She felt, when that letter was posted, as if a great weight were lifted from her mind--from her heart. Then a copy of "Revised Versions" arrived for her from the author, and with the ink still wet upon the pen with which she had written that letter to him, she caught up the book and covered it with kisses.

Had he seen that action her lover would have been thoroughly satisfied. A young woman must be very deeply in love with a man when she kisses the cover of a book which he has just published. That is what George Holland would have thought, having but a superficial acquaintance with the motives that sway young women.

Later in the day he had replied to her letter, and had appointed four o'clock on the following afternoon as the hour when he trusted she would find it convenient to see him, in order to give him an opportunity of making an explanation which he trusted would enable her to see that "Revised Versions," so far from being the dreadful book she seemed to imagine it to be, was in reality written with a high purpose.

She had not shrunk from an interview with him. She had sent him a line to let him know that she would be at home at four o'clock; and now she sat in her drawing room and observed, without emotion, that in five minutes that hour would strike.

The clock struck, and before the last tone had died away, the footman announced the Rev. George Holland.

SHE HAD NO RIGHT TO ACCUSE HIM OF READING THE BIBLE DAILY.

Phyllis shook hands with her visitor. He sought to retain her hand, as he had been in the habit of doing, as he stood beside her with something of a proprietary air. He relinquished her hand with a little look of surprise--a sort of pained surprise. She was inexorable. She would not even allow him to maintain his proprietary air.

"Do sit down, Mr. Holland," she said.

"What! 'Mr. Holland' already? Oh, Phyllis!"

He had a good voice, full of expression--something beyond mere musical expression. People said that his voice had soul in it, whatever they meant by that.

She made no reply. What reply could she make? She only waited for him to sit down.

"Your letter came as a great shock to me, Phyllis," said he, when he had seated himself, not too close to her. He did not wish her to fancy that he was desirous of having a subtle influence of propinquity as an ally. "A great shock to me."

"A shock?" said she. "A shock, after you had written that book?"

"I had only read one notice of it--that was enough."

"And you could write that letter to me solely as the evidence of one wretched print? Oh, Phyllis!"

Pain was in his voice. It may have been in his face as well, but she did not see it; his face was averted from her.

"Yes," she said quietly; "I wrote that letter, Mr. Holland. You see, the paper gave large extracts from the book. I did not come to my conclusion from what the newspaper article said, but from what you had said in your book--from the quoted passages."

"Ah, let me plead with you, Phyllis--not 'Mr. Holland,' I entreat of you."

"And my first thought on reading it was that I had not written to you so strongly as I should have done."

"My dear Phyllis, do not say that, I beg of you. You cannot know how you pain me."

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