Phyllis of Philistia

by Frank Frankfort Moore

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.