Phyllis of Philistia | Page 4

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 under any other form of
government than that which found acceptance in Philistia. She had no
yearning to startle her neighbors. With a large number of young women,
the idea that startling one's neighbors is a career by itself seems to
prevail just at present; but Phyllis had no taste in this direction. Writing
a book and riding a bicycle were alike outside her calculations of a
scheme of life. Hospital nursing was nothing that she would shrink
from; at the same time, it did not attract her; she felt that she could
dress quite as becomingly as a hospital nurse in another way.
She wondered, if it should come to the knowledge of the heads of the
government of Philistia that she had a yearning to become the wife of a
clergyman, would they regard her as worthy to be conducted across the
frontier, and doomed to perpetual expatriation. When she began to
think out this point, she could not but feel that if she were deserving of
punishment,--she looked on expulsion from Philistia as the severest
punishment that could be dealt out to her, for she was extremely
patriotic,--there were a good many other young women, and women
who were no longer young, who were equally culpable. She had
watched the faces of quite a number of the women who crowded St.
Chad's at every service, and she had long ago come to the conclusion
that the desire to become the wife of a clergyman was an aspiration
which was universally distributed among the unmarried women of the
congregation.
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 (and she
knew it) 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. (This
was when people had ceased to congratulate her and to talk, the nice
ones, of the great cleverness of George Holland; the nasty ones, of the
great pity that so delightful a man did not come