Phyllis gave a very pretty little laugh—such a laugh as would have convinced any man but a father—perhaps, indeed, some fathers—that she was not without experience. Suddenly she became grave. Her father never loved her so dearly as when that little laugh was flying over her face, leaving its living footprints at the corners of her eyes, at the exquisite curve of her mouth. It relieved her from the suspicion of priggishness to which, now and again, her grave moods and appropriate words laid her open. She was not so proper, after all, her father now felt; she was a girl with the experiences of a girl who has tempted men and seen what came of it.
She spoke:
“It is a very serious thing, giving a man your promise and then——”
“Then finding that your duty to him—to him, mind—forces you to tell him that you cannot carry out that promise,” said her father. “Yes, it is a very serious thing, but not so serious as carrying out that promise would be if you had even the least little feeling that at the end of three months he was not a better man than you suspected he was at the beginning. There’s a bright side to everything, even a honeymoon; but the reason that a honeymoon is so frequently a failure is because the man is bound to be found out by his wife inside the month. It is better that you found out now, than later on, that you could not possibly be happy with a man who spoke slightingly of the patriarchs and their wives. Now I’ll leave you, with confidence that you will be able to explain matters to Mr. Holland.”
“What! you won’t be here?”
Dismay was in the girl’s face as she spoke. She had clearly looked for the moral support of her father’s presence while she would be making her explanation to the man whom she had, a few months before, promised to marry, but whom she had found it necessary to dismiss by letter, owing to her want of sympathy in some of his recent utterances.
“You won’t be here?”
“No; I have unfortunately an engagement just at that hour, Phyllis,” replied Mr. Ayrton. “But do you really think there is any need for me to be here? Personally, I fancy that my presence would only tend to complicate matters. Your own feeling, your own woman’s instinct, will enable you to explain—well, all that needs explanation. I have more confidence in your capacity to explain since you gave that pretty little laugh just now. Experience—ah, the experience of a girl such as you are, suggests an astronomer without a telescope. Still, there were astronomers before there were telescopes; and so I leave you, my beloved child—ah, my own child once again! No cold hand of a lover is now between us.”
It was not until he was some distance down Piccadilly that it occurred to him that he should have pictured the lover with a warm hand; and that omission on his part caused him a greater amount of irritation than anyone who was unaware of his skill in phrase-making could have thought possible to arise from a lapse apparently so trifling.
It was not until he had reached the Acropolis and had referred, in the hearing of the most eminently dull of the many distinguished members of that club, to the possibility of a girl’s experiences of man being likened to an astronomer without a telescope, that he felt himself again.
The dull distinguished man had smiled.
CHAPTER II.
HE KNEW THAT IT WAS A TROUBLESOME PROCESS, BECOMING A GOOD CLERGYMAN, SO HE DETERMINED TO BECOME A GOOD PREACHER INSTEAD.
Phyllis sat alone in one of the drawing rooms, waiting until the hour of four should arrive and bring into her presence the Rev. George Holland, to plead his cause to her—to plead to be returned to her favor. He had written to her to say that he would make such an attempt.
She had looked on him with favor for several months—with especial favor for three months, for three months had just passed since she had promised to marry him, believing that to be the wife of a clergyman who, though still young, had two curates to do the rough work for him—clerical charwomen, so to speak—would make her the happiest of womankind. Mr. Holland was rector of St. Chad’s, Battenberg Square, and he was thought very highly of even by his own curates, who intoned all the commonplace, everyday prayers in the liturgy for him, leaving him to do all the high-class ones, and to repeat the Commandments. (A rector cannot be expected to do journeyman’s work, as it were; and it is understood that a bishop will only be asked to intone three short prayers, those from behind a barrier, too; an archbishop refuses to do more than pronounce the benediction.)
The Rev. George Holland was a good-looking man of perhaps a year or two over thirty. He did not come of a very good family—a fact which probably accounted for his cleverness at Oxford and in the world. He was a Fellow of his college, though he had not been appointed rector of St. Chad’s for this reason. The appointment, as is well known (in the Church, at any rate), is the gift of the Earl of Earlscourt, and it so happened that, when at college together, George Holland had saved the young man who a year or two afterward became Earl of Earlscourt from a very great misfortune. The facts of the case were these: Tommy Trebovoir, as he was then, had made up his mind to marry a lady whose piquant style of beauty made the tobacconist’s shop where she served the most popular in town. By the exercise of a great deal of diplomacy and the expenditure of a little money, Mr. Holland brought about a match between her and quite another man—a man who was not even on a subsidiary path to a peerage, and whose only connection with the university was due to his hiring out horses to those whom he called the “young gents.” Tommy was so indignant with his friend for the part he had played in this transaction he ceased to speak to him, and went the length of openly insulting him. Six years afterward, when he had become Earl of Earlscourt, and had espoused the daughter of a duke—a lady who was greatly interested in the advance of temperance—he had presented George Holland with the living at St. Chad’s.
People then said that Lord Earlscourt was a lesser fool than some of his acts suggested. Others said that the Rev. George Holland had never been a fool, though he had been a Fellow of his college.
They were right. George Holland knew that it was a troublesome process becoming a good clergyman, so he determined to become a good preacher instead. In the course of a year he had become probably the best-known preacher (legitimate, not Dissenting) in London, and that, too, without annoying the church-wardens of St. Chad’s by drawing crowds of undesirable listeners to crush their way into the proprietary sittings, and to join in the singing and responses, and to do other undesirable acts. No, he only drew to the church the friends of the said holders, whose contributions to the offertory were exemplary.
His popularity within a certain circle was great; but, as Lord Earlscourt was heard to say, “He never played to the pit.”
He was invited to speak to a resolution at a Mansion House meeting to express indignation at the maintenance of the opium traffic in China.
He was also invited by the Countess of Earlscourt to appear on the platform to meet the deputation of Chinese who represented the city meeting held at Pekin in favor of local option in England; for the great national voice of China had pronounced in favor of local option in England.
Shortly afterward he met Phyllis Ayrton, and had asked her to marry him, and she had consented.
And now Phyllis was awaiting his coming to her, in order that he might learn from her own lips what he had already learned from the letter which he had received from her the day before; namely, that she found it necessary for her own peace of mind to break off her engagement with him.
Phyllis Ayrton had felt for some months that it would be a great privilege for any woman to become the wife of a clergyman. Like many other girls who have a good deal of time for thought—thought about themselves, their surroundings, and the world in general—she had certain yearnings after a career. But she had lived all her life in Philistia, and considered it to be very well adapted as a place of abode for a proper-minded young woman; in fact, she could not imagine any proper-minded young woman living