Phlegethon

“ Its mouthings of the past had become its mumblings of the present. The cave at the mouth of which this toothless giant sat was very dark; and intelligent people went by with a good-natured and tolerant laugh.
This article was published in the Review on Tuesday. Phyllis read it on the evening of that day. On Wednesday the newspapers were full of this further development of the theories of the writer, and on Thursday afternoon the writer paid a visit to Phyllis.
As he entered the drawing room he found himself face to face with Herbert Courtland, who was in the act of leaving. ”

“ My mind was a mad whirlpool, my pulse beat as the fleet wings of a dove; and when she stood upon the eyot I flung myself at her feet in the bracken.
'Phyllis,' I cried, 'be with me always as upon this passage. The world is planned upon this principle of dependence, Phyllis.'
She started and turned pale and red. ”

“ I had long lost sight of him, and thought that he had left Rome, or was dead. Syra, save him!’
‘Phlegon will be glad to save him, if it can be done undiscovered. He loathes stabbing the poor gladiators when they have not quite been killed. Yet, if it were discovered that he spared but one of them, he would certainly be torn to pieces or crucified.’
Junia’s mind was instantly made up. At all costs, Onesimus should have such chance of life secured to him as nature rendered possible. She told Syra to let Phlegon speak with her. ”

“ The professor stood back. He might have entered the lecture room by other doors, but he did not know it; and they were not visible from the spot where he stood. He had happened on the laboratory door, and that refused him. He staggered out to his cab, and sank down weakly.
"Drive me to my lawyer!" he cried. "Do not lose a moment—if you love her!"
It was eleven o'clock of the following morning; a dreamy June day, afloat with color, scent, and warmth, as gentle as the depths of tenderness in the human heart, and as vigorous as its noblest aspirations. ”

“ It was Phyllis who discovered that there was a narrow veranda, with iron-work covered with creepers, running halfway round the house from window to window; and when he suggested to her that they might drink their coffee on this veranda, she hailed the suggestion as a very happy one. How did it come that none of the rest of the people had thought of that? she wondered.
In another instant they were standing together at the space between the windows outside, the long-leaved creepers mingling with the decorations of her hat, and making a very effective background for his well-shaped head. ”

“ One is called Ned, and one Ralph; and there is a girl Susie, and another Rosie; and they adore me, and, oh, I am so happy!”
“You are very nearly late for dinner,” said Miss Fleet, “and you are in a most disgraceful mess; it will take half-an-hour to clean you and make you respectable; and you missed your music-master. In short, you are a very naughty girl.”
“I am a very happy girl,” said Phyllis in the most contented voice in the world. “Please don’t scold me, Miss Fleet; but I may as well say at once that I don’t greatly care whether you are angry or not.” ”

“ Pelham exclaimed fiercely. "With Miss Fielding I have nothing to do. Yet you had better understand this. If she be Phyllis Poynton she belongs to me, and not to you. She was mine before you heard her name. I have watched her grow up from a child, I taught her to ride and to shoot and to swim. I have watched her listening to the wind, bending over the flowers in her garden. I have walked with her over the moor when the twilight fell and the mists rose. We have seen the kindling of the stars, and we have seen the moon grow pale and the eastern sky ablaze. ”

“ Finkelstein, when he first noticed me poring over my school-books in the shop, expressed the liveliest kind of satisfaction with my conduct.
“Dot's right, Kraikory,” he cried. “Dot's maiknificent. Go ahead mit your education. Dere ain't nodings like it. A first-claiss education—vail, sir, it's de graindest advantage a feller can haif in de baittle of life. Yes, sir, dot's a faict. You go ahead mit your education, and you study real hard, and you'll get to be—why, you might get to be an alderman, no mistake about it. ”

“ Yet I ventured to offer my hand to Felicitas. I, an invalid, a student, and a hermit, with nothing to recommend me except my estate and my honourable intentions, to Felicitas, a creature so soft, and made for pleasure, so irresistibly open to every impression of the imagination and every sensuous charm, who repays the world in such full measure for what she receives from it. Surely it were a crime if I tried to interest her in my quiet abstract speculations. In allowing her every imaginable freedom, I purchase the right to live near her as her husband. She is fond of men's society ... ”

“ He would have had considerable difficulty in explaining this apparent discrepancy between his scheme of philosophy and his life as a man, had Phyllis asked him to do so; and Phyllis would certainly have asked him to do so had she become acquainted with the contents of his letter to her friend Ella; though Phyllis’ father, having acquired some knowledge of men as well as of phrases, would not have asked for any explanation, knowing that a man’s philosophy is, in its relation to a man’s life, a good deal less important than the fuse is to a bomb. ”

“ Under my guidance he must grow up a weakling and a milksop, and no man. In order that he should have a stronger hand over him, I advised Felicitas to engage your pastor's son as his tutor. And when that young gentleman began to demoralise my household, I winked at it for the boy's sake. Finally, Felicitas herself got sick of him, and sent him packing. For two or three weeks after that she taught the little chap herself, but Felicitas is not the person to stick long to that sort of thing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ella Linton’s laugh was smothered among the delicate floss of the feathers which she held up to her face.
CHAPTER X. IT IS THE PRICE OF BLOOD.
Phyllis had a good deal to think of after she had sat for half an hour with her father in the room where they worked together for the discomfiture of the opposite party, and had given him some account of the representation of the play at the Parthenon. Her father was delighted to find her in high spirits. ”

“ I mean—I mean,” said Phyllis as she sat on her father’s knee that evening—“I mean that I love them most awfully, but Fleetie did not wish me to love them. She would not have called them my friends; she did not until they got ill.”
“When they recover you shall see plenty of them,” said Mr Harringay; “and now, my darling, let us talk of something else.”
But Phyllis was not happy unless she was allowed to talk of the Rectory children. She told her father everything—all about that picnic tea in the attics, and poor Rosie’s longing for the rocking-horse and the baby-house. ”

“ Phyllis went out a good deal during the week, and everywhere she found herself looked at with interest; sometimes she found herself being examined through a pince-nez as if she were a curious specimen, and a woman or two smiled derisively at her. She did not know what was meant by their curiosity—their derision—until one day an old lady named Mrs. Haddon went up to her and kissed her, saying:
“I made up my mind that I would kiss you, my dear, the first chance I had. God bless you, my child! You have given your testimony as a woman should, in these days of scoffing at the truth.” ”

“ But Pedanius is a wretch, and once he treated Phlegon so cruelly that, in a fit of rage, the boy struck him. He might have been crucified for it, or flung to the lampreys; but, instead of that, Pedanius made him take to this work in the amphitheatre. How else could he live?’
‘There are some lives worse than death,’ said Junia.
‘Well,’ answered Syra; ‘many a time he has longed to stab himself with his own sword; but ... he loves me.’
‘I did not mean that he should have killed himself,’ said Junia; ‘none of us have a right to fling away the life which God gives us. ”

“ Phyllis was the kind of child to be easily touched by kindness—no one could drive her, but affection and love could always guide her. Miss Fleet almost caressed the small hand which Phyllis stole into hers. ”

“ So many people come back from the theater looking glum and worn out, yawning and mumbling when asked what they have seen and what it had all been about. Phyllis was not glum, nor did she mumble. She was able to describe scene after scene, and more than once she sprang from her seat, carried away by her own powers of description, and began to act the bits that had impressed her—bits the force of which could only be understood when described with gestures and pretty posturing. ”

“ The Professor saw the faces of his audience lengthen and fall; across the rude, red brows of the foreign sailors wonder flitted; then confusion; then dismay. Drunkards and reformed men and wretched girls, and the homeless, wretched people of a seaport town, stood packed in rows before the Professor of Theology, and gaped upon him. Restlessness struck them, and began to run from man to man.
“Shut up there!” whispered Job Slip, punching a big Swede. “Be quiet, can’t ye, for common manners! You’ll disgrace Mr. Bayard!”
“Be civil to the old cove, for the parson’s sake!” ”

“ The girl had sprung to her feet, and was speaking with white face and clenched hands. “Down into the earth”—she stamped upon the floor—“even if we have to throw our bodies into the grave into which we trample it. Woman, I tell you that the other love,—the love which is the truth,—is stronger than the love of the satyr.”
“Is it? is it, Phyllis? Yes, sometimes. Yes; it was a word that you spoke in his hearing that saved him—him—Herbert—and that saved me that night when I came to you—when I waited for you—you did not know anything of why I came. I will tell you now—”
“No, no, no! Oh, Ella! ”

“ Gale had been thinking over what Phyllis told her last night. What a struggle had been going on in Phyllis’ mind these past weeks and none of them had guessed! Just those few words on the night before had brought home to Gale the knowledge of what Phyllis was up against. The girl was afraid—terribly afraid that the miracle Doctor Elton had performed would not hold. Something must be done! The girls must do something to bring back Phyl’s self-confidence. But what? Only Phyllis herself could really go through this trial. She must try her own strength. ”

“ Does that seem natural to you?"
"It is capable of explanation; work is said to be a great consoler."
"That is most true," said Phellion; "but in Felix's whole personality there is something excited, and yet repressed, which is difficult to describe. You speak to him, and he hardly seems to hear you; he sits down to table and forgets to eat, or takes his food with an absent-mindedness which the medical faculty consider most injurious to the process of digestion ”

“ One night about half past ten, as I entered Pelegin's studio, I beheld him walking up and down the room as though his soul was in prison. He seemed strangely nervous and in his eyes there lurked a wild brilliancy which suggested insanity. At my entrance, he stopped abruptly in his walk and his face showed plainly that I was welcome.
"To be alone," said he, "at times, is maddening. I sometimes think that the one mistake of Creation was giving man the power to remember past occurrences. After all, when a thing is done, it's done. There matters should rest. ”

“ Or suppose she had gone right outside the fir plantation, and had been seen and appropriated by the gipsies who were camping in the field just beyond. Altogether poor Miss Fleet had a sad afternoon, while Phyllis, the naughty and the reckless, enjoyed herself immensely. It sometimes does happen like that even in the lives of naughty children: they have their naughty time, and they thoroughly like it for the present. ”

“ PHYLLIDA'S mother played bridge all day and until midnight and after, and Phyllida's father gambled in stocks, but Phyllida, trained by the nuns, and having spent most of her days in a rose garden, and most of her nights in a small white room with a crucifix over her bed, was a thing of fire and dew and ideals.
"In our home," she told the Poet, "we'll always burn candles and we'll have a sun dial in the garden."
"If we live in a flat there will be no garden," her lover reminded her. ”

“ Which does it catalogue, their theology or their intellects? Come, Papa!”
“I’ll never tell you!” laughed the Professor, shutting his thin, scholarly lips. And he never did. But the laugh had gained the point, as she intended. He took his German student lamp and started upstairs. Helen walked through the long, dim hall with her two hands clasped lovingly upon his arm.
“I am bothered,” admitted the Professor, stopping at the foot of the stairs, “about one of my boys. He is rather a favorite with me. There isn’t a finer intellect in the senior class.” ”

“ THE MANUAL-LABOR SCHOOL OF FELLENBERG. Of the Swiss associates and followers of Pestalozzi one of the most influential was Phillip Emanuel von Fellenberg (1771-1844) . The son of a Swiss official of high political and social position, possessed of wealth, having traveled extensively, Fellenberg, having become convinced that correct early education was the only means whereby the State might be elevated and the lot of man made better, resolved (1805) to devote his life and his fortune to the working- out of his ideas. ”