Phyllis. Duchess
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I lean my back against the old tree, and, clasping my hands loosely before me, begin to piece past events. I have not gone far in my meditations when I become aware that Mr. Carrington has closed the locket, has turned, and is steadfastly regarding me. My hat lies on the ground beside me; the wanton wind has blown a few stray tresses of my hair across my forehead. Involuntarily I raise my head until our eyes meet. Something new, indefinite, in his, makes my heart beat with a sudden fear that yet is nameless.
"Phyllis," whispers he, hurriedly, impulsively, "will you marry me?"
A long, long pause.
I am still alive, then! the skies have not fallen!
"What!" cry I, when I recover breath, moving back a step or two, and staring at him with the most open and undisguised amazement. Can I have heard aright? Is it indeed me he is asking to marry him? And if so—if my senses have not deceived me—who is to tell Dora. This thought surmounts all others.
"I want you to say you will marry me," repeats he, rather disconcerted by the emphatic astonishment of my look and tone. As I make no reply this time, he is emboldened, and, advancing, takes both my hands.
"Why do you look so surprised?" he says. "Why will you not answer me? Surely for weeks you must have seen I would some time ask you this question. Then why not to-day? If I waited for years I could not love you more utterly, more madly, if you like, than now. And you, Phyllis—say you will be my wife."
"I cannot indeed," I reply, earnestly; "it is out of the question. I never knew you—you cared for me in this way—I always thought—that is, we all thought—you—"
"Yes?"
"We were all quite sure—I mean none of us imagined you were in love with me."
"With whom, then?—with Dora?"
"Well"—nervously—"I am sure mamma and papa thought so, and so did I."
"What an absurd mistake! Ten thousand Doras would not make one Phyllis. Do you know, ever since that first day I saw you in the wood I loved you? Do you remember it?"
"Yes," I say, blushing furiously. "I was hanging from the nut tree and nearly went mad with shame and rage when I found I could not escape. It puzzles me to think what you could have seen to admire about me that day, unless my boots." I laugh rather hysterically.
"Nevertheless I did love you then, and have gone on nursing the feeling ever since, until I can keep it to myself no longer. But you are silent, Phyllis. Why do you not speak? I will not remember what you said just now; I will not take a refusal from you. Darling, darling, surely you love me, if only a little?"
"No, I do not love you," I answer, with downcast lids and flaming cheeks.
Silence falls upon my cruel words. His hand-clasp loosens, but still he does not let me altogether go; and, glancing up timidly, I see a face like and yet unlike the face I know—a face that is still and white, with lips that tremble slightly beneath the heavy fair mustache. A world of disappointed anguish darkens his blue eyes.
Seeing all this, and knowing myself its cause, my heart is touched and a keen pang darts through my breast. I press his hands with reassuring force as I go on hastily:—
"But I like you, you will understand. I may not love you, but I like you very much indeed—better than any other man I ever met, except Roland and Billy, and he is only a boy." This is not a very clear or logical speech, but it does just as well: it brings the blood back to his face, and a smile to his lips, the light and fire to his eyes.
"Are you sure of that?" he asks, eagerly. "Are you certain, Phyllis?"
"Quite sure. But then I have never seen any men except Mr. Mangan, you know, and the curate, and Bobby De Vere, and—and one or two others."
"And these one or two others,"—jealously—"have I nothing to fear from them? Have you given them none of your thoughts?"
"Not one," return I, smiling up at him. The smile does more than I intend.
"Then you will marry me, Phyllis?" cries he, with renewed hope. "If you like me as you say, I will make you love me when you are once my own. No man could love as I do without creating some answering affection. Phyllis," he goes on, passionately, "look at me and say you believe all this. Oh, my life, my darling, how I have longed for you! How I have watched the hours that would bring me to your side! How I have hated the evenings that parted you from me! Say one little kind word to me to make me happy."
His tone is so full of hope and joy that almost I feel myself drifting with the current of his passion. But Dora's face rising before me checks the coming words. I draw back.
"Phyllis, put me out of pain," he says, entreatingly. I begin to find the situation trying, being a mere novice in the art of receiving and refusing proposals with propriety.
"I—I don't think I want to get married yet," I say, at length, with nervous gentleness. I am very fearful of hurting him again. "At home, when I ask to go anywhere, they tell me I am still a child, and you are much older than me. I don't mean that you are old," I add anxiously, "only a good deal older than I am; and perhaps when it was too late you would repent the step you had taken and wish you had chosen a wife older and wiser."
I stop, amazed at my own eloquence and rather proud of myself. Never before have I made so long and so connected a speech. Really the "older and wiser" could scarcely have done better. The marrying in haste and repenting at leisure allusion appears to me very neat, and ought to be effective.
All is going on very well indeed, and I feel I could continue with dignity to the end, but that just at this moment I become conscious I am going to sneeze. Oh, horrible, unromantic thought! Will nothing put it back for ten minutes—for even five? I feel myself turning crimson, and certain admonitory twitchings in my nose warn me the catastrophe is close at hand.
"Of course," says Mr. Carrington, in a low tone, "I know you are very young" (it is coming) "only seventeen. And, and"—(surely coming)—"I suppose twenty eight appears quite old to you." (In another instant I shall be disgraced forever.) "I look even older than I am. But good gracious Phyllis, is anything the matter with you?"
"Nothing, nothing," I murmur, with a last frantic effort at pride and dignity, "only a—a—snee—eeze—atchu—atchu—atchu!"
There is a most awful pause, and then Mr. Carrington, after a vain endeavor to suppress it, bursts into an unrestrained fit of laughter, in which without hesitation I join him. Indeed, now the crisis is over and my difficult and new-born dignity is a thing of the past, I feel much more comfortable and pleasanter in every way.
"But, Phyllis, all this time you are keeping me in suspense," says Mr. Carrington, presently, in an anxious tone: "and I will not leave you again without a decided answer. The uncertainty kills me. Darling, I feel glad and thankful when I remember how happy I can make your life, if you will only let me. You shall never have a wish ungratified that is in my power to grant. Strangemore shall be yours, and you shall make what alterations there you choose. You shall have your own rooms, and furnish them as your own taste directs. You shall reign there as the very sweetest queen that ever came within its walls."
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