Читать книгу The Ball of Fire - George Randolph Chester - Страница 9

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Gail faltered when, after bidding good-night to her uncle and to Allison, she turned and met the look in Howard Clemmens’ eyes. She knew that the inevitable moment had arrived. He walked straight up to her, and there was a new dignity in him, a new strength, a new resolve. For a moment, as he advanced, she thought that he was about to put his arms around her, but he did not. Instead, he took her hand, in his old characteristic way, and led her into the library, and seated her on the couch, and sat beside her.

“Gail, come home with me,” he said, authoritative but kind. He had been her recognised suitor from childhood. He had shut out all the other boys.

She withdrew her hand, but without deliberate intent. She had felt the instinctive and imperative need of touching her two hands together in her lap.

“You’re asking something impossible, Howard,” she returned, quietly. Her voice was low, and her beautiful brown eyes, half veiled by their long lashes, were watching the play of light in a ruby on one of her fingers. She was deep in abstracted thought, struggling vaguely with problems which he could not know, and of which she herself was as yet but dimly conscious.

“Come home, and marry me.” Perfectly patient, perfectly confident, perfectly gentle. He reached for her hand again, and took them both, still clasped, in his own. “Gail, we’ve waited quite long enough. It’s not doing either one of us any good for you to be here. The best thing is for us to be married right now.”

For the first time she turned her eyes full upon him.

“You are taking a great deal for granted, Howard,” and she wore a calm decision which he had not before seen in her. “There has never been any agreement between us.”

“There has been an understanding,” he retorted, releasing her unresponsive hands and looking her squarely in the eyes, with a slight frown on his brow.

“Never,” she incisively reminded him, and her piquant chin pointed upwards. “I’ve always told you that I could make no promises.”

That came as a shock and a surprise. It could not be possible that she did not care for him!

“Why, Gail dear, I love you!” he suddenly told her, with more fervour than she had ever heard in his tone. He slipped from the edge of the couch to his knee on the floor, where he could look up into her downcast eyes. He put his arm around her, and drew her closer. He clasped her hands in his own strong palm. “Listen, Gail dear; we grew up together.” He was tender now, tender and pleading, and his voice had in it ranges of modulation which it had never developed before this night. “You were my very first sweetheart; and the only one. Even as a boy in school, when you were only a little kiddie, I made up my mind to marry you, and I’ve never given up that dream. All my life I’ve loved you, stronger and deeper as the years went on, until now the love that is in me sways every thought, every action, every emotion. I love you, Gail dear! All my heart and all my soul is in it.”

She had not drawn away from his embrace, she had not removed her hands from his clasp; instead, she had yielded somewhat towards this old friend.

“I can’t do without you any longer, Gail!” he impetuously went on, detecting that yielding in her. “You must marry me! Tell me that you will!”

She disengaged herself from him very gently.

“I can’t, Howard.” Her voice was so low that he could scarcely catch the words, and her face was filled with sorrow.

He held tense and rigid where she had left him.

“You can’t,” he repeated, numbly.

“It is impossible,” and her face cleared of all its perplexity. She was grave, and serious, and saddened; but still sure. “For the first time I know my own mind clearly, and I know that I do not now, and never can, care for you in the way you wish.”

He rose abruptly and stood before her. His brows were knotted, and there was a hard look on his face.

“I came too late!” he bitterly charged. “They’ve already spoiled you!”

Gail sprang from the couch, and a round red spot flashed into each cheek. She had never looked so beautiful as when she stood before him, her tiny fists clenched and her eyes blazing. She almost replied to him, then she rang the bell for the butler, and hurried upstairs. Wild as was her tumult, she stood with her hand on the knob of her dressing-room until she heard the front door open and close; then she ran in and threw herself downward on the chintz-covered divan, and cried!

She sat up presently, and remembered that the dove-coloured gown was her pet. With a quite characteristic ability of self-segregation, she put out of her mind, except for the dull ache of it, the tangled vortex of distress until she had changed her garments and let down her waving hair, and, disdaining the help of her maid, performed all the little nightly duties, to the putting away of her clothing. Then, in a perfectly neat and orderly boudoir, she sat down to take herself seriously in hand.

First of all, there was Howard. She must cleanse her conscience of him for all time to come. In just how far had she encouraged him; in how far was he justified in assuming there to be an “understanding” between them? It was true that they had grown up together. It was true that, from the first moment she had begun to be entertained by young men, she had permitted him to be her most frequent escort. She had liked him better than all the others; had trusted him, relied on him, commanded him. Perhaps she had been selfish in that; but no, she had given at least as much pleasure as she had received in that companionship. More; for as her beauty had ripened with her years, Howard had been more and more exacting in his jealousy, in his claims upon her for the rights and the rewards of past service. Had she been guilty in submitting to this mild form of dictatorship, and, by permitting it, had she vested in him the right to expect it? Possibly. She set that weakness to one side, as a mark against her.

Then had come the age of ardour, when a more serious note crept into their relation. It was the natural end and aim of all girls to become married, and, as she blossomed into the full flower of her young womanhood, this end and aim had been constantly borne in on her by all her friends and relatives, by her parents, her girl chums, and by Howard. They had convinced her that this was the case, and, in consequence, the logical candidate was the young man who had expended all his time and energy in trying to please her. How much of a debt was that? Well, it was an obligation, she gravely considered, with her dimpled chin in her hand. An obligation which should be repaid—with grateful friendship.

She was compelled to admit, being an honest and a just young person, that at various times she had herself considered Howard Clemmens the logical candidate. She must be married some time, and Howard was the most congenial young man of all her acquaintance. He was of an excellent family, had proved his right to exist by the fact that he had gone into business when he had plenty of money to live in idleness, was well-mannered, cheerful, good-natured, self-sacrificing, and an adorer whose admiration was consistent and unfaltering. Even—she confessed this to herself with self-resentment for having confessed it—even at the time she had left for New York, she had been fairly well settled in her mind that she would come back, and invite all her hosts of friends to see her marry Howard, and they would build a new house just the way she wanted it, and entertain, and some day she would be a prominent member of the Browning Circle.

However, she had never, by any single syllable, hinted to Howard, or any one else, that this might be the case, and her only fault could lie in thinking it. Now, just how far could Howard divine this mental attitude, and just how far might that mental attitude influence her actions and general bearing toward Howard, so that he might be justified in feeling that there was an actual understanding between them?

She did not know. She was only sure that she was perfectly miserable. She had yielded to a fit of impetuous anger, and had sent away her lifelong friend without a word of good-bye, and he had been a dear, good fellow who had been ready to bark, or fetch and carry, or lie down and roll over, at the word of command; and they had been together so much, and he had always been so kind and considerate and generous, and he was from back home, and he did really and truly love her very much, and she was homesick; and she cried again.

She sat upright with a jerk, and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, which was composed of one square inch of linen entirely surrounded by embroidered holes. She had been perfectly right in sending Howard away without a good-bye. He had insulted her friends and her, most grossly; he had been nasty and unreasonable; he had been presumptuous and insolent; his voice was harsh and he had crossed his legs in a fashion which showed his square-toed shoe at an ugly angle. She had never seen anybody cross his legs in just that way. “They had spoiled her already!” Indeed! Why had she not waited long enough to assert herself? Why had she not told him what a conceited creature he was? Why had she not said all the hot, bitter, stinging things which had popped into her mind at the time? There were half a dozen better and more scornful ways in which she could have sent him away than by merely calling the butler and running upstairs. She might even have stretched out her hand imperiously and said “Go!” upon which thought she laughed at herself, and dabbed her eyes with that absurdity which she called a handkerchief.

There was knock at the door and, on invitation, the tall and stately Mrs. Helen Davies came in, frilled and ruffled for the night. She found the dainty, little guest boudoir in green tinted dimness. Gail had turned down all the lights in the room except the green lamps under the canopy, and she sat on the divan, with her brown hair rippling about her shoulders, her knees clasped in her arms, and her dainty little boudoir slippers peeping from her flowing pink negligee, while the dim green light, suited to her present sombre reflections, only enhanced the clear pink of her complexion. Mrs. Davies sat down in front of her.

“Mr. Clemmens proposed to you to-night,” she charged, gleaning that fact from experienced observation.

Gail nodded her head.

“I hope you did not accept him.”

The brown ripples shook sidewise.

“I was quite certain that you would not,” and the older woman’s tone was one of distinct relief. “In fact, I did not see how you could. The young man is in no degree a match for you.”

There was a contemptuous disapproval in her tone which brought Gail’s head up.

“You don’t know Howard!” she flared. “He is one of the nicest young men at home. He is perfectly good and kind and dear, and I was hateful to him!” and Gail’s chin quivered.

Aunt Helen rendered first aid to the injured in the tenderest of manners. She moved over to the other side of Gail where she could surround her, and laid the brown head on her shoulder.

“I know just how you feel,” she soothingly said. “You’ve had to refuse to marry a good friend, and you are reproaching yourself because you were compelled to hurt him. Of course you are unfair to yourself, and you feel perfectly miserable, and you will for a while; but the main point is that you refused him.”

Gail, whose quick intelligence no intonation escaped, lay comfortably on Aunt Helen’s shoulder, and a clear little laugh rippled up. She could not see the smile of satisfaction and relief with which Aunt Helen Davies received that laugh.

“My dear, I am quite well pleased with you,” went on the older woman. “If you handle all your affairs so sensibly, you have a brilliant future before you.”

Gail’s eyelids closed; the long, brown lashes curved down on her cheeks, revealing just a sparkle of brightness, while the mischievous little smile twitched at the corners of her lips.

“If you were an ordinary girl, I would urge you, to-night, to make a selection among the exceptionally excellent matrimonial material of which you have a choice, but, with your extraordinary talents and beauty, my advice is just to the contrary. You should delay until you have had a wider opportunity for judgment. You have not as yet shown any marked preference, I hope.”

Gail’s quite unreasoning impulse was to giggle, but she clothed her voice demurely.

“No, Aunt Helen.”

“You are remarkably wise,” complimented Aunt Helen, a bit of appreciation which quite checked Gail’s impulse to giggle. “In the meantime, it is just as well to study your opportunities. Of course there’s Dick Rodley, whom no one considers seriously, and Willis Cunningham, whose one and only drawback is such questionable health that he might persistently interfere with your social activities. Houston Van Ploon, I am frank to say, is the most eligible of all, and to have attracted his attention is a distinct triumph. Mr. Allison, while rather advanced in years—”

“Please!” cried Gail. “You’d think I was a horse.”

“I know just how you feel,” stated Aunt Helen, entirely unruffled; “but you have your future to consider, and I wish to invite your confidence,” and in her voice there was the quaver of much concern.

“Thank you, Aunt Helen,” said Gail, realising the sincerity of the older woman’s intentions, and, putting her arms around Mrs. Davies’ neck, she kissed her. “It is dear of you to take so much interest.”

“I think it’s pride,” confessed Mrs. Davies, naïvely. “I won’t keep you up a minute longer, Gail. Go to bed, and get all the sleep you can. Only sleep will keep those roses in your cheeks. Good-night,” and with a parting caress, she went to her own room, with a sense of a duty well performed.

Gail smiled retrospectively, and tried the blue light under the canopy lamp, but turned it out immediately. The green gave a much better effect of moonlight on the floor.

She called herself back out of the mists of her previous distress. Who was this Gail, and what was she? There had come a new need in her, a new awakening. Something seemed to have changed in her, to have crystallised. Whatever this crystallisation was, it had made her know that she could not marry Howard Clemmens. It had made her know, too, that marriage was not to be looked upon as a mere inevitable social episode. Her thoughts flew back to Aunt Helen. Her eyelashes brushed her cheeks, and the little smile of sarcasm twitched the corners of her lips.

Aunt Helen’s list of eligibles. Gail reviewed them now deliberately; not with the thought of the social advantages they might offer her, but as men. She reviewed others whom she had met. For the first time in her life, she was frankly and self-consciously interested in men; curious about them. She had reached her third stage of development; the fairy prince age, the “I suppose I shall have to be married one day” age, and now the age of conscious awakening. She wondered, in some perplexity, as to what had brought about her nascence; rather, and she knitted her pretty brows, who had brought it about.

The library clock chimed the hour, and startled her out of her reverie. She turned on the lights, and sat in front of her mirror to give her hair one of those extra brushings for which it was so grateful, and which it repaid with so much beauty. She paused deliberately to study herself in the glass. Why, this was a new Gail, a more potent Gail. What was it Allison had said about her potentialities? Allison. Strong, forceful, aggressive Allison. He was potence itself. A thrill of his handclasp clung with her yet, and a slight flush crept into her cheeks.

Aunt Grace had worried about Jim’s little cold, and the distant mouse she thought she heard, and the silver chest, and Lucile’s dangerous looking new horse, until all these topics had failed, when she detected the unmistakable click of a switch-button near by. It must be in Gail’s suite. Hadn’t the child retired yet? She lay quite still pondering that mighty question for ten minutes, and then, unable to rest any longer, she slipped out of bed and across the hall. There was no light coming from under the doors of either the boudoir or the bedroom, so Aunt Grace peeped into the latter apartment, then she tiptoed softly away. Gail, in her cascade of pink flufferies, was at the north window, kneeling, with her earnest face upturned to one bright pale star.