who was that tall, severely correct gentleman waiting at the station, with a bunch of violets in his hand, and the light in his countenance which was never on sea or land? it was gerald fosland, and he astonished all beholders by his extraordinary conduct. as the beautiful arly stepped through the gates, he advanced with an entirely unrepressed smile, springing from the ball of his feet with a buoyancy too active to be quite in good form. he took arly’s hand in his, but he did not bend over it with his customary courteous gallantry. instead, he drew her slightly towards him, with a firm and deliberate movement, and, bending his head sidewise under the brim of her hat, kissed her; kissed her on the lips!
immediately thereafter he gave a dignified welcome to gail, and with arly’s arm clutched tightly in his own, he then disappeared. as they walked rapidly away, arly looked up at him in bewilderment; then she suddenly hugged herself closer to him with a jerk. as they went out through the carriage entrance, she skipped.
it was good to see allison, big, strong, forceful, typical of the city and its mighty deeds. his eye had lighted with something more than pleasure as gail stepped out through the gates of the station; something so infinitely more than pleasure that her eyes 213dropped, and her hand trembled as she felt that same old warm thrill of his clasp. he was so overwhelming in his physical dominance. he took immediate possession of her, standing by while she greeted her uncle and aunt and other friends, and beaming with justifiably proud proprietorship. gail had laughed as she recognised that attitude, and she found it magnificent after the pretentions of howard clemmens. the difference was that allison was really a big man, one born to command, to sway things, to move and shift and re-arrange great forces; and that, of course, was his manner in everything. she flushed each time she looked in his direction; for he never removed his gaze from her; bold, confident, supreme. when a man like that is kind and gentle and considerate, when he is tender and thoughtful and full of devotion, he is a big man indeed!
she let him put her hand on his arm, and felt restful, after the greetings had been exchanged, as he led her out to the big touring car, asking her all sorts of eager questions about how she found her home and her friends, and if the journey had fatigued her, and telling her, over and over, how good she looked, how bright and how clear-eyed and how fresh-cheeked, and how charming in her grey travelling costume. she felt the thrill again as he took her hand in his to help her into the car, and she loved the masterful manner in which he cleared a way to their machine through the crowded traffic. in the same masterful air, he gently but firmly changed her from the little folding seat to the big soft cushions in the rear, beside her aunt grace.
the reverend smith boyd was at the steps of the sargent house to greet her, and her heart leaped as she 214recognised another of the dear familiar faces. this was her world, after all; not that world of her childhood. how different the rector looked; or was it that she had needed to go away in order to judge her friends anew? his eyes were different; deeper, steadier and more penetrating into her own; and, yes, bolder. she was forced to look away from them for a moment. there seemed a warm eagerness in his greeting, as if everything in him were drawing her to him. it was indescribable, that change in the reverend smith boyd, but it was not unexplainable; and, after he had swung back home, with the earnest promise to come over after dinner, she suddenly blushed furiously, without any cause, while she was talking of nothing more intense than the excellent physical condition of flakes.
gay little mrs. babbitt brought her husband, while the family group was still jabbering over its coffee, and after them came the deluge; dick rodley and the cherub-cheeked marion kenneth, and willis cunningham, and a host of others, including the van ploons, father, son, and solemn daughter. the callow youth who had danced with her three times was there, with a gardenia all out of proportion to him, and he sat in the middle of the louis xiv salon, where he was excessively in everybody’s road, and could feast on gail, for the most of the evening, in numb admiration; for his point of vantage commanded a view into the library and all the parlours.
with a rapidity which was a marvel to all her girl friends, gail had slipped upstairs and into a creamy lace evening frock without having been missed; and she was in this acutely harmonious setting when the reverend smith boyd called, with his beautiful mother on his arm. the beautiful mother was in an exceptional 215flurry of delight to see gail, and kissed that charming young lady with clinging warmth. the rector’s eyes were even more strikingly changed than they had been when he had first met her on the steps, as they looked on gail in her creamy lace, and after she had read that new intense look in his eyes for the second time that evening, she hurried away, with the license of a busy hostess, and cooled her face at an open window in the side vestibule. there was a new note in the reverend smith boyd’s voice; not a greater depth nor mellowness nor sweetness, but a something else. what was it? it was a call, that was it; a call across the gulf of futurity.
they came after her. ted and lucile had arrived. she was in a vortex. dick rodley hemmed her in a corner, and proposed to her again, just for practice, within eye-shot of a dozen people, and he did it so that onlookers might think that he was complimenting her on her clever coiffure or discussing a new operetta; but he made her blush, which was the intention in the depths of his black eyes. it seemed that she was in a perpetual blush to-night, and something within her seemed to be surging and halting and wavering and quivering! her aunt helen davies, rather early in the evening, began to act stiff and formal.
“go home,” she murmured to lucile. “all this excitement is bad for gail’s beauty.”
she felt free to give the same advice to the gay little mrs. babbitt, and the departure of four people was sufficient to remind the stiff van ploon daughter of the conventions. she removed the elder van ploon’s eyes from gail, and gathered up houston, who was energetically talking horse with allison. after that the exodus became general, until only the callow youth and allison 216and the reverend smith boyd remained. the latter young gentleman had taken his flutteringly happy mother home early in the evening, and he had resorted to dulness with such of the thinning guests as had seemed disposed to linger.
it was aunt helen who, by some magic of adroitness, sent the callow youth on his way. he was worth any amount of money to which one cared to add ciphers, and his family was flawless except for him; but aunt helen had decisively cut him off her books, because he was so well fitted to be the last of his line. she thought she had better go upstairs after that, and she glanced into the music room as she passed, and knitted her brows at the tableau. the reverend smith boyd, who seemed unusually fine looking to-night, stood leaning against the piano, watching gail with an almost incendiary gaze. that young lady, steadily resisting an impulse to feel her cheek with the back of her hand, sat on the end of the piano bench furthest removed from the rector, and directed the most of her attention to allison, who was less disconcerting. allison, casting an occasional glance at the intense young rector, seemed preoccupied to-night; and mrs. helen davies, pausing to take her sister grace with her, walked up the stairs with a forefinger tapping at her well-shaped chin. she seemed to have reversed places with her sister to-night; for mrs. sargent was supremely happy, while helen davies was doing the family worrying.
she could have bid allison adieu had she waited a very few minutes. he was a man who had spent a lifetime in linking two and two together, and he abided unwaveringly by his deductions. there was no mistaking the nature of the change which was so apparent in the reverend smith boyd; but allison, after careful 217thought on the matter, was able to take a comparatively early departure.
“i’ll see you to-morrow, gail,” he observed finally. rising, he crossed to where she sat, and, reaching into her lap, he took both her hands. he let her arms swing from his clasp, and, looking down into her eyes with smiling regard, he gave her hands an extra pressure, which sent, for the hundredth time that night, a surge of colour over her face.
the reverend smith boyd, blazing down at that scene, suddenly felt something crushing under his hand. it was the light runner board of the music rack, and three hairs, which had lain in placid place at the crown of his head, suddenly popped erect. ten thousand years before had these three been so grouped, allison would have felt a stone axe on the back of his neck, but as it was he passed out unmolested, nodding carelessly to the young rector, and bestowing on gail a parting look which was the perfection of easy assurance.
the reverend smith boyd wasted not a minute in purposeless hesitation or idle preliminary conversation.
“gail!” he said, in a voice which chimed of all the love songs ever written, which vibrated with all the love passion ever breathed, which pleaded with the love appeal of all the dominant forces since creation. gail had resumed her seat on the end of the piano bench, and now he reached down and took her hand, and held it, unresisting. she was weak and limp, and she averted her eyes from the burning gaze which beamed down on her. her breath was fluttering, and the hand which lay in her lap was cold and trembling. “gail, i love you!” he bent his head and kissed her hand. the touch was fire, and she felt her blood leap to it. “gail 218dear,” and his voice was like the suppressed crescendo of a tremendous organ flute; “i come to you with the love of a man. i come to you with the love of one inspired to do great deeds, not just to lay them at your feet, but because you are in the world!” he bent lower, and tried to gaze into the brown eyes under those fluttering lashes. he held her hand more tightly to him, clasped it to his breast, oppressed her with the tremendous desire of his whole being to draw her to him, and hold her close, as one and a part of him for all time to come, mingling and merging them into one ecstatic harmony. “gail! oh, gail, gail!”
there was a cry in that repetition of her name, almost an anguish. she stole an upward glance at him, her face pale, her beautiful lips half parted, and in her depthless brown eyes, alive now with a new light which had been born within her, there was no forbiddance, though she dropped them hastily, and bent her head still lower. she had made herself an eternal part of him just then, had he but seized upon that unspoken assent, and taken her in his arms, and breathed to her of the love of man for woman, the love that never dies nor wavers nor falters, so long as the human race shall endure.
he bent still closer to her, so that he all but enfolded her. his warm breath was upon her cheek. the sympathy which was between them bridged the narrow chasm of air, and enveloped them in an ethereal flame which coursed them from head to foot, and had already nigh welded them into one.
“i need you, gail!” he told her. “i need you to be my wife, my sweetheart, my companion. i need you to go with me through life, to walk hand in hand with me about the greatest work in the world, the redemption 219of the fallen and helpless, into whose lives we may shed some of the beauty which blossoms in our own.”
there was a low cry from gail, a cry which was half a sob, which came with a sharp intake of the breath, and carried with it pain and sorrow and protest. she had been so happy, in what she fancied to be the near fulfilment of the promptings which had grown so strong within her. no surge of emotion like this had ever swept over her; no such wave of yearning had ever carried her impetuously up and out of herself as this had done. it had been the ecstatic answer to all her dreams, the ripe and rich and perfect completion of every longing within her; yet, in the very midst of it had come a word which broke the magic thrall; a thought which had torn the fairy web like a rude storm from out the icy north; a devouring genii which, dark and frightening, advanced to destroy all the happiness which might follow this first inrushing commingling of these two perfectly correlated elements!
“i can’t!” she breathed, but she did not withdraw her hand from his clasp. she could not! it was as if those two palms had welded together, and had become parts of one and the same organism.
there was an instant of silence, in which she slowly gathered her swirling senses, and in which he sat, shocked, stunned, disbelieving his own ears. why, he had known, as positively, and more positively, than if she had told him, that there was a perfect response in her to the great desire which throbbed within him. it had come to him from her like the wavering of soft music, music which had blended with his own pulsing diapason in a melody so subtle that it drowned the senses to languorous swooning; it had come to him with 220the delicate far-off pervasiveness of the birth of a new star in the heavens; it had come to him as a fragrance, as a radiance, as the beautiful tints of spring blossoms, as something infinitely stronger, and deeper, and sweeter, than the sleep of death. that tremendous and perfect fitness and accord with him he felt in her hand even now.
“i can’t, tod,” she said again, and neither one noticed that she had unconsciously used the name she had heard from his mother, and which she had unconsciously linked with her thoughts of him. “there could never be a unity of purpose in us,” and now, for the first time, she gently withdrew her hand. “i could never be in sympathy with your work, nor you with my views. have you noticed that we have never held a serious dispute over any topic but one?”
he drew a chair before her, and took her hand again, but this time he patted it between his own as if it were a child’s.
“gail, dear, that is an obstacle which will melt away. there was a time when i felt as you do. the time will come when you, too, will change.”
“you don’t understand,” she gently told him. “i believe in god the creator; the maker of my conscience; my friend and my father. i am in no doubt, no quandary, no struggle between faith and disbelief. i see my way clearly, and there are no thorns to cut for me. i shall never change.”
he looked at her searchingly for a moment, and then his face grew grave; but there was no coldness in it, nor any alteration in the blueness of his eyes.
“i shall pray for you,” he said, with simple faith.
