AN ASTRONOMER WITHOUT A TELESCOPE.
“After all,” said Mr. Ayrton, “what is marriage?”
“Ah!” sighed Phyllis. She knew that her father had become possessed of
a phrase, and that he was anxious to flutter it before her to see how it
went. He was a connoisseur in the bric-a-brac of phrases.
“Marriage means all your eggs in one basket,” said he.
“Ah!” sighed Phyllis once more. She wondered if her father really
thought that she would be comforted in her great grief by a phrase. She
did not want to know how marriage might be defined. She knew that
all definitions are indefinite. She knew that in the case of marriage
everything depends upon the definer and the occasion.
“So you see there is no immediate cause to grieve, my dear,” resumed her
father.
She did not quite see that this was the logical conclusion of the whole
matter; but that was possibly because she was born a woman, and felt
that marriage is to a woman what a keel is to a ship.
“I think there is a very good cause to grieve when we find a man like
George Holland turning deliberately round from truth to falsehood,” said
Phyllis sternly.
“And what’s worse, running a very good chance of losing his living,”
remarked the father. “Of course it will have to be proved that Moses and
Abraham and David and the rest of them were not what he says they
were; and it strikes me that all the bench of bishops, and a royal
commissioner or two thrown in, would have considerable difficulty in
doing that nowadays.”
“What! You take his part, papa?” she cried, starting up. “You take his
part? You think I was wrong to tell him--what I did tell him?”
“I don’t take his part, my dear,” said Mr. Ayrton. “I think that he’s a
bit of a fool to run his head into a hornet’s nest because he has come
to the conclusion that Abraham’s code of morality was a trifle shaky,
and that Samson was a shameless libertine. Great Heavens! has the man
got no notion of the perspective of history?”
“Perspective? History? It’s the Bible, papa!”
Indignation was in Phyllis’ eyes, but there was a reverential tone in
her voice. Her father looked at her--listened to her. In the pause he
thought:
“Good Heavens! What sort of a man is George Holland, who is ready to
relinquish the love and loveliness of that girl, simply because he
thinks poorly of the patriarchs?”
“He attacks the Bible, papa,” resumed Phyllis gravely. “What horrible
things he said about Ruth!”
“Ah, yes, Ruth--the heroine of the harvest festival,” said her father.
“Ah, he might have left us our Ruth. Besides, she was a woman. Heavens
above! is there no chivalry remaining among men?”
“Ah, if it was only chivalry! But--the Bible!”
“Quite so--the--yes, to be sure. But don’t you think you may take the
Bible too seriously, Phyllis?”
“Oh, papa! too seriously?”
“Why not? That’s George Holland’s mistake, I fear. Why should he work
himself to a fury over the peccadillos of the patriarchs? The principle
of the statute of limitations should be applied to such cases. If the
world, and the colleges of theology, have dealt lightly with Samson and
David and Abraham and Jacob and the rest of them for some thousands of
years, why should George Holland rake up things against them, and that,
too, on very doubtful evidence? But I should be the last person in the
world to complain of the course which he has seen fit to adopt, since
it has left you with me a little longer, my dearest child. I did not,
of course, oppose your engagement, but I have often asked myself what I
should do without you? How should I ever work up my facts, or, what
is more important, my quotations, in your absence, Phyllis? On some
questions, my dear, you are a veritable Blue-book--yes, an _edition de
luxe_ of a Blue-book.”
“And I meant to be so useful to him as well,” said Phyllis, taking her
father’s praises more demurely than she had taken his phrases. “I meant
to help him in his work.”
“Ah, what a fool the man is! How could any man in his senses give up a
thing of flesh and blood like you, for the sake of proving or trying
to prove, that some people who lived five or six thousand years ago--if
they ever lived at all--would have rendered themselves liable to
imprisonment, without the option of a fine, if they lived in England
since the passing of certain laws--recent laws, too, we must remember!”
“Papa!”
“Anyhow, you have done with him, my dear. A man who can’t see that crime
is really a question of temperament, and sin invariably a question of
geography--well, we’ll say no more about it. At what hour did you say he
was coming?”
“Four. I don’t think I shall break down.”
“Break down? Why on earth should you break down? You have a mind to
know, and you know your own mind. That’s everything. But of course
you’ve had no experience of matters of this sort. He was your first real
lover?”
Phyllis’ face became crimson. She retained sufficient presence of mind,
however, to make a little fuss with the window-blind before letting it
down. Her father stared at her for a moment, and there was rather a long
pause before he laughed.
“I said ‘real lover,’ my dear,” he remarked. “The real lover is the one
who talks definitely about dates and the house agent’s commission. As a
rule the real lover does not make love. True love is born, not made. But
you--Heavens above! perhaps I did an injustice to you--to you and to the
men. Maybe you’re not such a tyro after all, Phyllis.”
Phyllis gave a very pretty little laugh--such a laugh as would have
convinced any man but a father--perhaps, indeed, some fathers--that she
was not without experience. Suddenly she became grave. Her father never
loved her so dearly as when that little laugh was flying over her
face, leaving its living footprints at the corners of her eyes, at the
exquisite curve of her mouth. It relieved her from the suspicion of
priggishness to which, now and again, her grave moods and appropriate
words laid her open. She was not so proper, after all, her father now
felt; she was a girl with the experiences of a girl who has tempted men
and seen what came of it.
She spoke:
“It is a very serious thing, giving a man your promise and then----”
“Then finding that your duty to him--to him, mind--forces you to tell
him that you cannot carry out that promise,” said her father. “Yes, it
is a very serious thing, but not so serious as carrying out that promise
would be if you had even the least little feeling that at the end of
three months he was not a better man than you suspected he was at the
beginning. There’s a bright side to everything, even a honeymoon; but
the reason that a honeymoon is so frequently a failure is because the
man is bound to be found out by his wife inside the month. It is better
that you found out now, than later on, that you could not possibly
be happy with a man who spoke slightingly of the patriarchs and their
wives. Now I’ll leave you, with confidence that you will be able to
explain matters to Mr. Holland.”
“What! you won’t be here?”
Dismay was in the girl’s face as she spoke. She had clearly looked for
the moral support of her father’s presence while she would be making her
explanation to the man whom she had, a few months before, promised to
marry, but whom she had found it necessary to dismiss by letter, owing
to her want of sympathy in some of his recent utterances.
“You won’t be here?”
“No; I have unfortunately an engagement just at that hour, Phyllis,”
replied Mr. Ayrton. “But do you really think there is any need for me
to be here? Personally, I fancy that my presence would only tend to
complicate matters. Your own feeling, your own woman’s instinct, will
enable you to explain--well, all that needs explanation. I have more
confidence in your capacity to explain since you gave that pretty little
laugh just now. Experience--ah, the experience of a girl such as you
are, suggests an astronomer without a telescope. Still, there were
astronomers before there were telescopes; and so I leave you, my beloved
child--ah, my own child once again! No cold hand of a lover is now
between us.”
It was not until he was some distance down Piccadilly that it occurred
to him that he should have pictured the lover with a warm hand; and
that omission on his part caused him a greater amount of irritation than
anyone 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.