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 dropped, 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 recognised 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 flurry 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 and 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.