The Ball of Fire

by George Randolph Chester; Lillian Chester

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 thought 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 dear,” 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 of 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!