clad in her filmy cream lace gown, gail walked slowly into her boudoir, and closed the door, and sank upon her divan. she did not stop to-night to let down her hair and change to her dainty negligee, nor to punctiliously straighten the room, nor to turn on the beautiful green light; instead, with all the electric bulbs blazing, she sat with her chin in her hand, and, with her body perfectly in repose, tried to study the whirl of her mind.
she was shaken, she knew that, shaken and stirred as she had never been before. something in the depths of her had leaped up into life, and cried out in agony, and would not stop crying until it was satisfied.
the hardest part of the whirl from which to untangle herself was the tremendous overwhelming attraction there had been between them. the red wave of consciousness rose up over her neck and crimsoned her cheeks and flushed her very brow, as the nearness of him came back to her. again she could feel that marvellous welding of their palms, the tingle of her shoulder where he had accidentally brushed against it; the music of his voice, which had set up that ecstatic answering vibration within her. she felt again his warm breath upon her cheek, the magnetic thrill of his arms as he enfolded her, the breathless joy which had ensued when 222he had drawn her to his breast, and held and held and held her there, as an indivisible part of him, forever and forever. the burning pressure of his lips upon hers! that breathless, intolerable ecstasy when he had folded her closer, and still closer! a sense of shame flooded her that she had yielded so much, that she had been so helpless in the might and the strength and the sweep—
she raised her head with a jerk, and rubbed her hands over her eyes. why there had been no such episode! he had not folded her in his arms, nor drawn her to him, nor kissed her lips; though her breath was fluttering and her wrists burning in the bare memory of it; he had only drawn quite near to her, and held her hand; and once he had kissed it! how then had she reproduced all these sensations so vividly? then indeed, shame came to her, as she realised how much more completely than he could know, she had, in one breathless instant, given herself to him!
it was that shame which came to her rescue, which set her upon her defence, which started her to the seeking for her justification. she had refused him, even at the very height of her most intense yielding. and why? she must go deeper into the detail of that. she had to grope her way slowly and painfully back through the quivering maze of her senses, to recall the point at which she had been taken rudely from the present into the future.
“i need you to walk hand in hand with me about the greatest work in the world!” that was it; the greatest work in the world! and what was that work? to live and teach ritual in place of religion; to turn worship into a social observance; to use helpless belief as a ladder of ambition; to reduce faith to words, and 223hope to a recitation, and charity to an obligation; to make pomp and ceremony a substitute for conscience, and to interpose a secretary between the human heart and god!
for just an instant gail’s eyelids dropped, her long brown lashes curved upon her cheeks, while beneath them her eyes glinted, and a smile touched the corners of her lips; then she was serious again. no, she had decided wisely. they could not spend a lifetime in the ecstasy of touch. between those rare moments of the rapture of love must come stern hours of waking. then she must live a constant lie, she must battle down her own ideals and her own thoughts and her own worship and subscribe to a dead shell of pretence, which she had come to hold in contempt and even loathing. she must appear constantly before the world as subscribing to and upholding a sham which had been formulated as thoroughly as the multiplication table; and to do all these things she would be compelled to throttle her own dear deity, with whom she had been friends since her babyhood, to whom she could go at any hour with pure faith and simple confidence; always in love and never in fear!
yes, she had chosen wisely. through all the years to come there would be clash upon clash, until they would grow so far apart spiritually that no human yearning, no matter how long nor how strong, could bridge the chasm. she was humiliated to be compelled to confess to herself that the tremendous fire which had consumed them, that the tremendous attraction which had drawn them together, that the tremendous ecstasy which had enveloped them, was by no means of the soul or the spirit or the mind. and yet, how potent that attraction had been, how it left her still quivering 224with longing. did she despise that tendency in herself? something within her answered defiantly “no!” still defiantly, she exulted in it; for many instincts which the creator has planted in humanity have been made sinful by teaching alone. moreover, a further search brought a deserved approbation to the rescue of her self-respect. mighty as had been the call upon her from without and from within, she had resisted it, and driven it back, and leashed it firmly with the greater strength of her faith! she gloried that she had not been weak in this stormy test, and her eyes softened with a smile of gratitude. poor tod!
there was a knock on the door, and gail smiled again as she said:
“come in.”
mrs. helen davies entered, tall and stately in her boudoir frills and ruffles. she gazed searchingly at gail’s now calm face, with its delicately tinted oval cheeks and its curved red lips and its brown eyes, into which a measure of peace had come. the face did not tell her as much as she had expected to find in it, but the fact that gail had so far deviated from her unbreakable habit of piling into a negligee and putting every minute trace of disorder to rights before she did anything else, was sufficient indication that something unusual had occurred. aunt helen sat down in front of gail and prepared to enact the rôle of conscientious mother.
“doctor boyd proposed to you to-night,” she charged, with affectionate authority.
“yes, aunt helen,” and gail began to pull pins out of her hair.
a worried expression crossed the brow of aunt helen.
225“did you accept him?” and she fairly quivered with anxiety.
“no, aunt helen.” quite calmly, piling more hairpins and still more into the little tray by her side, and shaking down her rippling waves of hair.
aunt helen sighed a deep sigh of relief, and smiled her approval.
“i was quite hopeful that you would not,” and the tone was one of distinct pleasure. “doctor boyd is a most estimable young man, but i should not at all consider him a desirable match for you.”
gail walked across to her dressing table, and rang for her maid. something within her flared up in defence of tod, but the face which, an instant later, she turned toward the older woman, had its eyelids down and the eyes glinting through that curving fringe and the little smile at the corners of the lips.
“of course, he is perfectly eligible,” went on aunt helen, studying the young man in question much as if he were on the auction block, and guaranteed sound in every limb. “while there would be no possibility of gaiety, and no freedom of action for even an instant, with the eyes of every one so critically fixed on a rector’s wife, still she would have the entrée into the most exclusive circles, and would have a social position of such dignified respectability as could be secured in no other way.” interested in her own analysis, and perfectly placid because, after all, gail had refused him, she did not notice that gail, now brushing her hair, stopped in the middle of a downward stroke, and then fell to brushing furiously. “moreover, the young man is highly ambitious,” went on aunt helen. “the movement for the magnificent new cathedral had lagged 226for years before he came; but he had not been here twelve months before he had the entire congregation ambitious to build the most magnificent cathedral the world has ever seen. my dear child, you’ll break your hair with that rough brushing! moreover, the new rectory must, of course, be built in keeping with the cathedral, and no multi-millionaire could erect a home more palatial than doctor boyd will occupy.”
gail unfastened her necklace.
“however, gail dear, you have shown a degree of carefulness which i am delighted to find in you,” complimented aunt helen. “if you handle all your affairs so sensibly, you have a brilliant future before you.”
“i must be an awful worry to you, aunt helen,” observed gail, and walking over, she slipped her arm around mrs. davies’ neck, and kissed her, and looked around for her chocolate box.
gail’s maid came in, and mrs. davies bade her sister’s niece good-night most cordially, and retired with a great load off her mind; and half an hour later the lights in gail’s pretty little suite went out.
if she lay long hours looking out at the pale stars, if, in the midst of her calm logic, she suddenly buried her face in her pillows and sobbed silently, if, toward morning, she awoke with a little cry to find her face and her hands hot, all these things were but normal and natural. it is enough to know that she came to her breakfast bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked and smiling with the pleasant greetings of the day, and picked up the papers casually, and lit upon the newest sensation of the free and entirely uncurbed metropolitan press!
the free and entirely uncurbed metropolitan press had found vedder court, and had made it the sudden 227focus of the public eye. those few who were privileged to know intimately the workings of that adroit master of the public welfare, tim corman, could have recognised clearly his fine hand in the blaze of notoriety which obscure vedder court had suddenly received. after having endured the contamination and contagion of the market square church tenements for so many years, the city had, all at once, discovered that the condition was unbearable! the free and entirely uncurbed metropolitan press had taken up, with great enthusiasm, the work of poking the finger of scorn at vedder court. it had published photographs of the disreputable old sots of buildings, and, where they did not seem to drip enough, the artists had retouched them. it had sent budding young poes and dickenses down there to write up the place in all the horrors which a lurid fancy could portray, or a hectic mind conceive; and it had given special prominence to the masterly effort of one litterateur, who never went near the place, but, after dancing ably until three a.m., had dashed up to his lonely room, and had wrapped a wet towel around his head, and had conceived of the scene as it would look in absolute darkness, with one pale lamp gleaming on the doréian faces of the passersby! it had sent the sob sisters there in shoals to interview the down-trodden, and, above all things, it had put prominently before the public eye the immense profit which market square church wrung from this organised misery!
gail turned sick at heart as she read. uncle jim permitted four morning papers to come to the house, and the dripping details, with many variations, were in all of them. she glanced over toward the rectory and the dignified old church standing beyond it, with 228mingled indignation and humiliation. a sort of ignominy seemed to have descended upon it, like a man whose features seem coarsened from the instant he is doomed to wear prison stripes; and the fact which she particularly resented was that a portion of the disgrace of market square church seemed to have descended upon her. she could not make out why this should be; but it was. aunt grace sargent, bustling about to see that gail was supplied with more kinds of delicacies than she could possibly sample, saw that unmistakable look of distress on gail’s face, and went straight up to her sister helen, the creases of worry deep in her brow.
mrs. helen davies was having her coffee in bed, and she continued that absorbing ceremony while she considered her sister’s news.
“i did not think that gail was so deeply affected by the occurrences of last night,” she mused; “but of course she could not sleep, and she’s full of sympathy this morning, and afraid that maybe she made a mistake, and feels perfectly wretched.”
grace sargent sat right down.
“did the rector propose?” she breathlessly inquired.
mrs. davies poured herself some more hot coffee, and nodded.
“she refused him.”
“oh!” and acute distress settled on grace sargent’s brow, with such a firm clutch that it threatened to homestead the location. mrs. sargent shared the belief of the reverend smith boyd’s mother, that smith boyd was the finest young man in the world; and gail’s aunt was speechless with dismay and disappointment.
“i have ceased to worry about gail’s future,” went on mrs. davies complacently. “it is her present condition 229about which i am most concerned. she is so conscientious and self-analytical that she may distress herself over this affair, and i must get in arly and lucile, and plan a series of gaieties which will keep her mind occupied from morning until night.”
in consequence of this kindly decision, gail was plunged into gaiety until she loathed the scrape of a violin! the mere fact that she had no time to think did not remove the fact that she had a great deal to think about, and the gaiety only added dismally to her troubled burden.
meanwhile, the free and entirely uncurbed metropolitan press went merrily onward with its righteous vedder court crusade, until it had the public indignation properly aroused. the public indignation rose to such a pitch that it almost meant something. there is not the slightest doubt that, if the public had not been busy with affairs of its own, and if it had not been in the habit of leaving everything to be seen to by the people financially interested, and if it had not consisted chiefly of a few active vocal cords, there is not the slightest doubt, it is worth repeating, that the public might have done something about vedder court! as things were, it grew most satisfactorily indignant. it talked of nothing else, in the subways and on the “l’s” and on the surface lines, and on the cindery commuter trains; and on the third day of the agitation, before something else should happen to shake the populace to the very foundation of its being, the city authorities condemned the vedder court property as unsanitary, inhuman, and unsafe, as a menace to the public morals, health and life, and as a blot upon civilisation; this last being a fancy touch added by tim corman himself, who, in his old age, had a tendency to link poetry to his 230practicability. in consequence of this decision, the city authorities ordered vedder court to be forthwith torn down, demolished, and removed from the face of the earth; thereby justifying, after all, the existence of the free and entirely uncurbed metropolitan press! the exact psychological moment had been chosen. the public, caught at the very height of its frenzy, applauded, and ate its dinner in virtuous satisfaction; and gail sargent’s distress crystallised into a much easier thing to handle; just plain anger!
and so market square church had persisted in clutching its greedy hold on a commercial advantage so vile that even a notoriously corrupt city government had ordered it destroyed! her mind was immensely relieved about the reverend smith boyd. she had chosen well, and wisely!
