Phyllis of Philistia

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Servants came with restoratives.



CHAPTER XXXV.

IF GOD WOULD ONLY GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE!

"Poor creature! Poor creature!" said Mr. Ayrton. He had just returned
from the room to which they had carried Ella. Phyllis was lying on the
sofa with her face down to the pillow. "Poor creature! No one could have
had any idea that she was so attached to him! She will be one of the
richest women in England. He fell down in the club between nine and ten.
His heart. Sir Joseph was not surprised. He said he had told him a short
time ago that he had not six months to live. He cannot have let his wife
know. Well, well, perhaps it was for the best. His man came to me in a
terrible state. How was it to be broken to her? I just managed to catch
the last train. He must have been worth over a million. She will be
one of the richest women in England. Even in America a woman with
three-quarters of a million is reckoned moderately well off. Poor
creature! Ah! the shorn lamb!--the wind is tempered. 'In the midst of
life--' Dear Phyllis! you must not allow yourself to break down. Your
sympathetic nature is hard to control, I know, but still--oh, my child!"

But Phyllis refused to be comforted. She lay sobbing on the pillow, and
when her father put his arm about her and raised her, she put her head
on his shoulder, crying:

"He is gone from me forever--he is gone from me forever! Oh, I am the
cruelest woman on earth! It is not for her terrible blow that I am
crying, it is because I have lost him--I see it--I have lost him!"

Her father became frightened. What in the world could she mean by
talking about the man being gone from her? He had never heard of a
woman's sympathy extending to such limits as caused her to feel a
personal deprivation when death had taken another woman's husband.

"Oh, I am selfish--cruel--heartless!" sobbed Phyllis. "I thought of
myself, not of her. He is hers; he will be given back to her as she
prayed--she prayed so to me before you appeared at the door, papa. 'Give
him back to me! Give him back to me!' that was her prayer."

"My dearest child, you must not talk that way," said the father. "Come,
Phyllis, your strength has been overtaxed. You must go to bed and try to
sleep."

She still moaned about her cruelty--her selfishness, until the doctor
who had been sent for and had been with Ella in her room, appeared in
order to let them know that Mrs. Linton had regained consciousness. The
blow had, of course, been a terrible one: but she was young, and Nature
would soon reassert herself, he declared, whatever he meant by that. He
thought it strange, he said, that Mrs. Linton had not been aware of
her husband's weakness. To him, the physician, the condition of the
unfortunate gentleman had been apparent from the first moment he had
seen him. He had expected to hear of his death any day. He concluded by
advising Phyllis to go to bed and have as long a sleep as possible.
He would return in the morning and see if Mrs. Linton might travel to
London.

Phyllis went to her room, and her father went to the one which had been
prepared for him. For a minute or two he remained thoughtful. What could
his daughter have meant by those self-accusations? After a short time,
however, he smiled. The poor thing had been upset by the shocking news
of the death of the husband of her dearest friend. She was sympathetic
to quite a phenomenal degree. That sympathy which felt her friend's loss
as though it were wholly her own was certainly not to be met with every
day.

In the morning Phyllis showed traces of having spent a bad night. But
she spoke rationally and not in the wild way in which she had spoken
before retiring, and her father felt that there was no need for him to
be uneasy in regard to her condition. He allowed her to go to the side
of her friend, Ella, and as he was leaving them together in each other's
arms, he heard Ella say:

"Ah, Phyllis, I know it now. He was the man who had all my
love--all--all! Ah, if God would only give me another chance--one more
chance!"

Mr. Ayrton had heard that passionate appeal for another chance upon more
than one previous occasion. He had heard the husband who had tortured
his wife to death make a passionate appeal to God to give him another
chance. He knew that God had never given him another chance with the
same wife; but God had given him another wife in the course of time--a
wife who was not made on the spiritual lines of those who die by
torture; a wife who was able to formulate a list of her own rights, and
the rights of her sisters, and who possessed a Will.

The man who wanted another chance had no chance with such a woman.

He had heard the wife, who had deserted her husband in favor of the
teetotal platform, cry out for another chance, when her husband had died
away from her. But God had compassion upon the husband. She did not get
him back.

He pitied with all his heart the poor woman who would be one of the
richest women in England in the course of a day or two, and he said so
to Mr. Courtland when he called early in the morning. Mr. Courtland did
not remain for long in the house. It might have been assumed that
so intimate a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Linton's would be an acceptable
visitor to the widow; but Mr. Courtland knew better. He hurried away to
town without even asking to see her. He only begged of Mr. Ayrton to let
him know if he could be of any use in town--there were details--ghastly;
but he would take care that there was no inquest.

Phyllis went up to town with poor Ella, and remained by her side in that
darkened house through all the terrible days that followed. Mr. Linton's
death had an appreciable influence upon the quarter's revenue of the
country. The probate duty paid by the executors was a large fortune in
itself, and Ella was, as Mr. Ayrton had predicted she would be, one of
the richest women in England. The hundred thousand pounds bequeathed to
some unostentatious charities--charities that existed for the cause of
charity, not for the benefit of the official staff--made no difference
worth speaking of in the position of Mrs. Linton as one of the richest
women in England.

But the codicil to the will which surprised most people was that which
placed in the hands of Mrs. Linton and the Rev. George Holland as
joint trustees the sum of sixty thousand pounds, for the building and
endowment of a church, the character and aims of which would be in
sympathy with the principles recently formulated by the Rev. George
Holland in his book entitled "Revised Versions," and in his magazine
article entitled "The Enemy to Christianity," the details to be decided
by the Rev. George Holland and Mrs. Linton as joint trustees.

The codicil was, of course, a very recent one; but it was executed in
proper form; it required two pages of engrossing to make the testator's
desires plain to every intelligence that had received a thorough
training in legal technicalities. It was susceptible of a good deal of
interpretation to an ordinary intelligence.

When it was explained to Mrs. Linton, she also was at first a good deal
surprised. It read very like a jest of some subtlety: for she had no
idea that her husband had the slightest feeling one way or another on
the subject of the development of one Church or another; and as for the
establishment of an entirely new Church--yes, it struck her at first
that her solicitor was making a bold and certainly quite an unusual
attempt to cheer her up in her bereavement by bringing under her notice
a jest of the order _pachydermato_.

But soon it dawned upon her that her husband meant a good deal by this
codicil of his.

"I am getting to understand him better every day," she said to Phyllis.
"He knew that I loved him and him only. He has given me this work to do,
and with God's help I will do it thoroughly. You did not believe in
the value of George Holland's doctrines. Neither did I: I never thought
about them. I will accept my husband's judgment regarding them, and
perhaps I may think about them later on. Our Church will be the most
potent influence for good that the century has yet seen. Yes, I will
throw myself heart and soul into the work. After all, it must be
admitted that the Church has never done its duty as a Church."

Phyllis said nothing.

But the Rev. George Holland had a good deal to say on the subject of the
codicil, when he was alone with Mrs. Linton, a few days later. He had
by no means made up his mind to sever his connection with the dear old
mother Church, he said. He could not see that there was any need for
his taking so serious a step--an irrevocable step. It was his feeling at
that moment, he declared, that he might be able to effect the object
of his life--which was, of course, the reform of the Church--better by
remaining within its walls than by severing himself from it. He must
take time to consider his position.

He left Mrs. Linton greatly disappointed. It had been her belief that
Mr. Holland would jump at the chance--that was the phrase which she
employed in expressing her disappointment to Phyllis--of becoming the
founder of a brand-new religion.

She was greatly disappointed in Mr. Holland. If Buddha or Edward Irving,
or some of the other founders of new religions had had such a chance
offered to them in early life, would they not have embraced it eagerly?
she asked.

And it was to be such a striking Church! She had made up her mind to
that. It was to be a lasting memorial to the largeness of soul of her
husband--to his appreciation of the requirements of the thinking men and
women of the age. She had made up her mind already as to the character
of the painted windows. The church would itself, of course, be the
purest Gothic. As for the services, she rather thought that the
simplicity of the Early Church might be effectively combined with some
of the most striking elements of Modern Ritualism. However, that would
have to be decided later on.

But when the bishop heard of the codicil he had another interview with
George Holland, and imparted to that young cleric his opinion that he
should avail himself of the opportunity offered to him of trying what
would undoubtedly be a most interesting experiment, and one to the
carrying out of which all true churchmen would look forward most
hopefully. Who could say, he inquired, if the larger freedom which would
be enjoyed by an earnest, sincere, and highly intellectual clergyman,
not in immediate contact with the Establishment, might not avail him to
perfect such a scheme of reform as would eventually be adopted by the
Church?

That interview was very helpful to George Holland in making up his mind
on the subject of the new Church. He resigned his pastorate, greatly to
the regret of the churchwardens; though no expression of such regret was
ever heard from the bishop.

But then a bishop is supposed to have his feeling thoroughly under
control.

This happened three weeks after the death of Stephen Linton, and during
these weeks Herbert Courtland had never once asked to see Ella Linton.



CHAPTER XXXVI.

MARRIAGE IS THE PICTURESQUE GATEWAY LEADING TO A COMMONPLACE ESTATE.

So soon as Phyllis Ayrton had returned home, she got a letter from
Herbert Courtland, asking her if she would be good enough to grant him
an interview. She replied at once that it would please her very much to
see him on the following afternoon--she was going to Scotland with her
father in a week, if Parliament had risen by that time.

He came to her. She was alone in the drawing room where she had always
received him previously.

The servant had scarcely left the room before he had told her he had
come to tell her that he loved her--to ask her if he might hope to have
some of her love in return.

He had not seated himself, nor had she. They remained standing together
in the middle of the room. He had not even retained her hand.

"Why have you come to me--to _me_?" she asked him. Her face was pale and
her lips, when he had been speaking to her, were firmly set.

"I have come to you, not because I am worthy of the priceless gift of
your love," said he, "but because you have taught me not merely to love
you--you have taught me what love itself is. You have saved my soul."

"No, no! do not say that; it pains me," she cried.

"I cannot but say it; it is the truth. You have saved me from a
degradation such as you could not understand. Great God! how should I
feel to-day if you had not come forward to save me?"

He walked away from her. He stood with his back turned to her, looking
out of the window.

She remained where he had left her. She did not speak. Why should she
speak?

He suddenly faced her once again. The expression upon his face
astonished her. She had never before seen a man so completely in the
power of a strong emotion. She saw him making the attempt to speak, but
not succeeding for some time. Her heart was full of pity for him.

"You--you cannot understand," he managed to say. "You cannot understand,
and I cannot, I dare not, try to explain anything of the peril from
which you snatched me. You know nothing of the baseness, the cruelty, of
a man who allows himself to be swayed by his own passions. But you saved
me--you saved me!"

"I thank God for that," she said slowly. "But you must not come to me to
ask me for my love. It is not to me you should come. It is for her who
was ready to sacrifice everything for you. You must go to her when the
time comes, not now--she has not recovered from her shock."

"You know--she has told you?"

"I knew all that terrible story--that pitiful story--before I heard it
from her lips."

"And yet--yet--you could speak to me--you could be with me day after
day?"

"Oh, I know what you would say! You would say that I led you on--that I
gave you to believe that I loved you. That is what you would say, and
it would be the truth. I made up my mind to lead you on; I gave you to
understand that I cared for you. But I confess to you now that I did so
because I hoped to save her. You see it was a plot on my part--the plot
of one woman anxious to save her sister from destruction. I succeeded.
Thank God for that--thank God for that!"

"You succeeded--you succeeded indeed." He spoke slowly and in a low
tone, his eyes fixed upon her burning face. "Yes, you led me on--you led
me from earth to heaven. You saved her--you saved me. That is why I am
here to-day."

"Oh, it is not here you should be, Mr. Courtland." She had turned
quickly away from him with a gesture of impatience and had walked to the
other end of the room. There was more than a suspicion of indignation in
her voice. "You should be with the woman whom you loved; the woman
who showed you how she loved you; the woman who was ready to give up
everything--honor--husband--God--for you. Go to her--to her--when the
numbness has passed away from her, and there is no barrier between you
and her. That is all I have to say to you, Mr. Courtland."

"Is it indeed all, Phyllis?" he said. "But you will let me speak to you.
You will let me ask if Ella alone was ready to sacrifice herself? You
say that you led me to love you in order to save her. How did you lead
me on? By giving me to understand that you were not indifferent to
me--that you had some love for me. Let me ask you if you were acting a
lie at that time?"

"I wanted to save her."

"And you succeeded. Were you acting a lie?"

She was silent.

"You were willing to save her?" he continued. "How did you mean to save
her? Were you prepared to go to the length of marrying me when I had
been led on to that point by you? Answer me, Phyllis."

"I will not answer you, Mr. Courtland--you have no right to ask me to
answer you. One terrible moment had changed all the conditions under
which we were living. If she had been free,--as she is now,--do you
fancy for a moment that I should have come between you--that I should
have tried to lead you away from her? Well, then, surely you must see
as clearly as I do at the present moment that now our relative positions
are the same as they would have been some months ago, if Ella had been
free--if she could have loved you without being guilty of a crime? Oh,
Mr. Courtland do not ask me to humiliate myself further. Please go away.
Ah, cannot you see that it would be impossible for me to act now as I
might have acted before? Cannot you see that I am not a woman who would
be ready to steal happiness for myself from my dearest friend?"

"I think I am beginning to see what sort of woman you are--what sort of
a being a woman may be. You love me, Phyllis, and yet you will send me
away from you lest you should do Ella a wrong?"

"I implore of you to go away from me, because if Ella had been free a
month ago as she is to-day, she would have married you."

"But she fancied that she loved me a month ago. She knows that she does
not love me now. You love me--you, Phyllis, my love, my beloved;
you dare not say that when you led me to love you, you were not led
unthinkingly to love me yourself. Will you deny that, my darling?"

He had strode passionately up to her, and before she could resist he
had put his arms about her and was kissing her on the face. For a moment
only she resisted, then she submitted to his kisses.

"You are mine--mine--mine!" he whispered, and she knew that she was. She
now knew how to account for the brilliant successes of the man in places
where every other civilized man had perished. He was a master of men.
"You love me, darling, and I love you. What shall separate us?"

With a little cry she freed herself.

"You have said the truth!" she cried; "the bitter truth. I love you! I
love you! I love you! You are my love, my darling, my king forever. But
I tell you to go from me. I tell you that I shall never steal from any
sister what is hers by right. I would have sacrificed myself--I did
not love you then--to keep you from her; I am now ready to sacrifice
myself--now that I love you--to give you to her. Ah, my love, my own
dear love, you know me, and you know that I should hate myself--that I
should hate you, too, if I were to marry you, now that she is free. Go,
my beloved--go!"

He looked at her face made beautiful with tears. "Let me plead with you,
Phyllis. Let me say--"

"Oh, go! go! go!"

He put out his hand to her.

"I am going!" he said. "I am leaving England, but from day to day I
shall let you know where I am, so that you can send to me when you want
me to return to you. Write on a paper, 'Come to me,' and I will come,
though years should pass before I read those words. I deserve to suffer,
as I know I shall suffer."

He held out his hand. She took it. Her tears fell upon it. She did not
speak as he went to the door. Then she gave a cry like the cry of a
wounded animal. She held out her hands to him.

"Not yet! Not yet!" she said.

She flung herself into his arms, kissing him and kissing him, holding
him to her with her arms about his neck.

"Good-by! Good-by, my darling, my best beloved. Oh, go! Go, Herbert,
before I die in your arms. Go!"

She was lying along the floor with her head on the sofa.

He was gone.

She looked wildly around the room, wiping the tears from her eyes. She
sprang to her feet, crying:

"Come back! Come back to me, my beloved! Oh, I was a fool! Such a fool
as women are when they think of such things as heaven and truth and
right! A fool! A fool!"

An hour afterward Ella called to say good-by to her. She was going to
Switzerland first, she said, to a quiet spot that she knew, where she
might think out some of the details of the Church. Mr. Holland would
meet her in Italy in the winter to consider some of the architectural
details.

When the hour of her departure was at hand she referred to another
matter--a matter on which she spoke much more seriously than she had yet
spoken on the subject of the Church.

"I could not go, my dear Phyllis," said she, "without telling you that I
know Herbert Courtland will come to you."

"No!" said Phyllis. "He will not come to me. He has been with me. He is
now gone."

"Gone? That would be impossible!" cried Ella. "You would not send him
away. He told you that he loved you."

"Yes, he told me that."

"And yet you sent him away? Oh, Phyllis, you would not break my heart. I
know that you love him."

"Do I?"

"You do love him. Oh, my Phyllis, I told him months ago that it was
the dearest wish of my heart to see you married to him. At that time he
laughed. Oh, it is horrible to me to recall now how he laughed. Shall I
ever forget that terrible dream? But now he loves you. I know it. What!
you think him unworthy of you because of--of that dream which was upon
us? Phyllis, don't forget that he fought with the sin and overcame it.
How? Ah! you know how. He overcame the passion that is of earth by the
love that is of heaven. It was his pure love for you that gave him the
victory. Why should you send him away?"

"He knows. He understands. He is gone."

"But I do not understand."

She held Phyllis' hand and looked into her face. She gave a sudden
start--a little start.

"Oh, surely, my Phyllis, you don't think that I--I----Oh, no! you cannot
think that of me. Oh, my darling, if you should be so foolish as to
think that I--that I still----Ah, I cannot speak about it. Listen to me,
Phyllis: I tell you that as he conquered himself by the love which is of
heaven, so have I conquered by the same Divine Power. The love which is
in heaven--the love which is mine--has given me the victory also.
Dear Phyllis, that man is nothing to me to-day. I tell you he is
nothing--nothing! Ah, I don't even hate him. If I should ever speak to
him again it would be to send him back to you."

Phyllis said nothing, and just then her father came into the room, and
after a few minutes' conventional chat Ella went away.

Mr. Ayrton remarked to Phyllis that her dearest friend was looking
better than she had looked for many months, and then he laughed. Phyllis
did not like his laugh. She looked at him--gravely--reproachfully.

"Pardon me, my dear," said he; "but I was only thinking that--well--that
she----Ah, after all, what is marriage?"

Phyllis did not reply. She saw by his eyes that he had found another
phrase. What were phrases to her?

"Marriage is the most honorable preliminary to an effective widowhood,"
said he.

She went out of the room.


During the next eight months Phyllis received many letters from
Ella--some from Switzerland, some from Italy, and one from Calcutta.
Ella had gone to India to make further inquiries on the subject of
Buddhism. At any rate, no one whose heart was set upon building up a New
Church could afford, she said, to ignore Buddhism as a power.

Mr. Holland agreed with her, she said. He had gone through India with
her.

She returned to England in April, and of course went to see Phyllis
without delay. Some men had wanted to marry Phyllis during the winter,
as everybody knew, but she had been pleasantly irresponsive. Some of
her closest friends (female) laughed and said that she had found out how
silly she had been in throwing over Mr. Holland.

It was not, however, of these suitors that Ella talked to her. It was of
Herbert Courtland.

Had she heard from him? she asked.

Yes; he occasionally sent her his address, Phyllis said--that was all.

"You will write to him to come back to you, Phyllis?" said Ella
entreatingly.

Phyllis shook her head.

"Dearest child," continued Ella, "I know the goodness of your heart. I
know the high ideal of honor and faith which you have set before you.
I saw Herbert when our steamer stopped at Port Said. He had been in
Abyssinia--you know that?"

"I knew that."

"I talked with him for an hour," said Ella. "He told me a great deal
about you--about your parting from him. You will write those words to
him before I leave this room."

Phyllis shook her head.

"Oh, yes, you will, when I tell you what I did not tell him--when I tell
you that George Holland and I have agreed that our positions as joint
trustees of the New Church will be immeasurably strengthened if we are
married."

"What?"

Phyllis had risen.

"We are to be married in three months. The matter is, of course, to
remain a secret--people are so given to talk."

Phyllis fell into her arms and kissed her tearfully--but the tears were
not all her own.

"Now you will write those words," said Ella.

Phyllis ran to a little French escritoire and snatched up a sheet of
paper.

"Come to me, my beloved," she wrote upon it; then she leaned her face
upon her arm, weeping happily.

Ella came behind her. She picked up the paper and folded it up. She
pressed the bell.

"Please give that to Mr. Courtland in the study," she said to the
servant.

Phyllis sprang up with a cry.

"I forgot to tell you, my dearest, that I brought back Herbert Courtland
in that steamer with me, and that he came with me to-day. He is coming
to you--listen--three steps at a time."

And that was just how he did come to her.


"Bless my soul!" cried Mr. Ayrton, ten minutes later. "Bless my soul! I
always fancied that----Ah, after all, what is marriage?"