Phyllis of Philistia | Page 3

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