George Randolph Chester

“ She had grown world weary in all the false gaiety of New York! She was disillusioned! She was blasé. She was tired of frivolity; and she immediately planned or enthusiastically agreed to take part in a series of gaieties which would have made an average hard-working man anticipate them with an already broken constitution.
The house was full of them, morning, noon and night; young girls, sedate and jolly, and all of them excitedly glad that Gail was among them again; and young men, in all the degrees from social butterflies to plodding business pluggers, equally glad. ”

“ AN EMPIRE AND AN EMPRESS The soft air which blew upon Gail’s cheek was like the first breath of spring, and there was the far-off prophecy of awakening in the very sunshine, as she sped out the river road with Allison in his powerful runabout. For days the weather had been like this, mild and still invigorating, and it had been a tremendous rest from the protracted crispness of the winter. There was the smell of moist earth, and the vague sense of stirring life, as if the roots and the seeds, deep in the ground, were answering to the thrill of coming birth. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ The creed of Gail!
He walked out into the broad centre aisle, now, amid the solemn pews and the avenue of slender columns, and beneath graceful arches which pointed heavenward the aspirations of the human soul. Before the altar he paused and gazed up at the beautiful Henri Dupres crucifix. The soft light from one of the clerestory windows flooded in on Him, and the compassionate eyes of the Son of God seemed bent upon the young rector in benign sympathy. ”

“ Because it has pleased Divine Providence to place in my hands the distribution of the grain of the fields, I am constantly subject to the attacks of envy and malice! It has gone so far that I, last night, received from the Reverend Smith Boyd, a request to resign from this vestry!” He paused in triumph on that, as if he had made against the Reverend Smith Boyd a charge of such ghastly infamy that the young rector must shrivel before his eyes. “I have led a blameless life! I have never smoked nor drank! I have paid every penny I ever owed and fulfilled every promise I ever made. ”

“ He was astonished to find in himself the sudden growth of a poetic spirit, and his voice had in it the modulation which went with the sentiment.
“This was created,” mused Gail, as if answering an inner question. “Why should the clumsy minds of men destroy the simplicity of anything so vast, and good, and beautiful, as our instinctive belief in the Creator?”
Finding no answer in his experience to this unfathomable mystery, Edward E. Allison very wisely kept still and admired the scenery, which consisted of one girl framed tastefully in a miscellaneous assortment of snowflakes. ”

“ If that symbol of man’s spiritual rejuvenation, of his renewed nearness to God, were, in reality, a ball of fire, Gail, I would hold it up in the sight of all mankind though it shrivelled my arm!”
The thin treble note stole out of the organ loft, pulsing its timid way among the high, dim arches, as if seeking a lodgment where it might fasten its tiny thread of harmony, and grow into a song of new glory, the glory which had been born that day in the two earnest hearts beneath in the avenue of slender columns. ”

“ Some wit has to be taken so very seriously. There were dashes into the brisk, exhilarating winter air, there were lazy breakfasts, where three or four of 100the girls grouped in one room, there was endless gaiety and laughter, and, above all, oceans and oceans of flirtation. The men whom Lucile and Arly had collected were an especial joy. They had all the accomplished outward symbols of fervour without any of its oppressive insistence. Gail, as an agreeable duty to her new found self, experimented with several of them, and found them most amusing and pleasant, but nothing more disturbing. ”

“ For just a moment his eyes had softened, and Gail felt a slight trace of pity for him; but in the pity itself there was revulsion.
“I can not,” she told him.
“You must!” he immediately rejoined. “As I would build up an empire to win you, I would destroy one to win you. You spoke last night of what you called the cruelty and trickery of the building up of my big transportation monopoly. If it is that which stands between us, it shall not do so for a moment longer. Marry me, and I will stop it just where it is. ”

“ The very crystallisation which had brightened and whetted her to a keen zest in her natural destiny, had attracted this fellow, inevitably. Her face was hot and cold by turns, and she was almost on the point of crying, in spite of her constantly reiterated self-admonishment that she must control herself here, when Allison came to the door of the alcove.
“All right, Gail,” he said laconically.
She felt suddenly weary, but she rose and joined him. When she slipped her hand in his arm, strong, and warm, and pulsing, she was aware of a thrill from it, but the thrill was just restfulness. ”

“ Even in her incoherence, however, even in her wild disorder of emotion, she realised that there was danger, not only to her but to every one she loved, in the man from whom she had run away; and she could not tell the young rector any more than that she had been frightened. Had she so much as mentioned the name of Allison, she instinctively knew that the Reverend Smith Boyd, in whom there was some trace of impetuosity, might certainly have forgotten his cloth and become mere man, and have strode straight across to the house before Allison could have collected his dazed wits ”

“ They were not particularly long streaks, but they were boldly marked, and they hugged, with extraordinary closeness, the pencil mark which Allison had drawn from New York to Chicago and from Chicago to San Francisco. There were long gaps between them, but these did not seem to worry him very much. It was the little stretches, sometimes scarcely over an inch, which he drew with such evident pleasure from day to day, and now, occasionally, as he passed in and out, he stopped by the big globe and gave it a contemplative whirl. ”

“ Gail watched the alert figure of Allison, tensely and yet easily motionless, in the seat beside her. The terrific swiftness of everything impressed her. Every car was going at top speed, and it seemed that she was in a constant maze of hair-breadth escapes. By and by, however, she found another and a greater marvel; that in all this breathless driving, there was no recklessness. Capability, that was the word for which she had been groping. No man could survive here, and rest his feet upon the under layer, unless he possessed superior ability, superior will, superior strength. ”

“ Lucile and Ted Teasdale, handsome Dick Rodley and Arly Fosland and Houston Van Ploon, had come clattering in as an escort for Mrs. Davies, whose pet fad was to have as many young people as possible bring her home from any place.
The young man from back home took his plunge into that vortex with becoming steadiness. Gail had looked to see him a trifle bewildered, and would have had small criticism for him if he had, but he greeted them all on a friendly basis, and, sitting down again beside her, crossed his legs, while Mrs. Davies calmly lorgnetted him. ”

“ There is a magic thrill in creation. It extends beyond the creator to the created, and it inspires all who come in contact with it. Gail’s eager mind traversed again and again the girdle he had looped around the world, darting into all its intricacies and ramifications, until she, too, had pursued it into all the obscure nooks 278and crannies, and saw the most remote and distant peoples dependent upon it, and paying toll to it, and swaying to its command. ”

“ Gail, it’s an empire, and none so great ever existed in all the world! The giant monopolies of which so much has been said, are only parts of it, like principalities in a kingdom. There isn’t a nook or corner on the globe where one finger of my giant does not rest. The armies which swept down from the north and devastated Europe, the hordes which spread from Rome, the legions which marched to Moscow, even those mighty armies of the Iliad and the Odyssey were insignificant as compared to the sway of this tremendous organisation! ”

“ 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! ”

“ The stockholders, grey and grave, and some with watery eyes, drew up their chairs to the long table; for they were directors, too. They answered to their names, and they listened to the minutes, and waded mechanically through the routine business, always with their gaze straying to the new force which had come among them. Every man there knew all about Edward E. Allison. He had combined the traction interests of New York by methods as logical and unsympathetic as geometry, and where he appeared, no matter how pacific his avowed intentions, there were certain to be radical upheavings. ”

“ Gail turned her eyes from him and looked out over the white-edged waves again.
“It is a tremendous responsibility,” she mused, whereupon Dick, as became him, violently broke that thread of thought by taking her arm and drawing her away from the rail, and walking gaily with her up to the forward shelter deck, where, shielded from the crispness of the wind, there sat, around the big table and amid a tangle of Sunday papers, Jim Sargent and the Reverend Smith Boyd, Arly and Gerald Fosland, all four deep in the discussion of the one possible topic of conversation. ”

“ No great spiritual revival has ever swept the world without its attendant supernatural phenomena, for mysticism is a part of religion, and will be to the end of time. Reason, by the very nature of itself, realises its own limitations, and demands something beyond its understanding upon which to hang its faith. It is the need of faith which distinguishes the soul from the mind.”
“A sign,” mused Gail, her eyes aglow with the majesty of the thought. ”

“ That is love, Gail! It drives one on to do great deeds! It gives one the impulse to recognise no bounds, no bars, no obstacles! It has put all my being into the attainment of things big enough to show you the force of my will, and what it could conquer! Do you suppose that, with such love driving me on, any objection which you may make will stop me? ”

“ Her eyes lighted with pleasure, and she nodded gaily to him over Van Ploon’s tall shoulder. When the dance stopped she was on the far side of the room, and was instantly the centre of a buzzing little knot of dancers, from out of which carefree laughter radiated like visible flashes of musical sound. She emerged from the group with the arms of two bright-eyed girls around her waist, and met Allison sturdily breasting the currents which had set towards the conservatory, the drawing-rooms, or the buffet.
“Nobody has saved me a dance,” he complained. ”

“ Chickentown lay in a smoky triangle, entirely surrounded by railroad yards and boiler factories and packing houses and the like, and it was as feudal in its instincts as any stronghold of old. Its womenfolk would not market where the Black Creek women marketed, its men would not drink in the same saloons, and its children came home scarred and prowed from gory battles with the Black Creek gang; yet, in their little cottages and in their tiny yards was the neatness of local pride, which had sprung up immediately after Gail had inaugurated the annual front yard flower prize system. ”

“ Not exactly flat-footed; but, with tolerably strong insinuation, he gave her to understand that the consolidation of the immense traction interests of New York was about as tremendous an undertaking as she could comprehend, and that, having attained so dizzy a summit, he felt entitled to turn himself to lighter things, to enjoy life and gaiety and frivolity, to rest, as it were, upon his laurels.
Gail was amused, as she always was when men of strong achievement dropped into this weakness to interest girls. ”

“ GAIL AT HOME “I hear Miss Gail’s back home.” It was the ice man. He had given her slivers of ice in the days when she had wished that she were a boy.
“Yassum.” Mammy Emma. She said “Yassum” to everybody; men, women, and children.
Gail, still snuggled in the pillows, smiled affectionately, and knew what time it was. She reached lazily out and pressed the button.
“Prettier than ever, I suppose.” A slam and a bang and a rattle of crockery.
“Heaps.” The clink of a muffin pan. Gail knew the peculiar sound from that of all the other pans in the house. ”

“ Gail shrieked when she first read that letter, then she read it again and blushed. She had, as she came upon his initial flat statement of denial, felt a flush in her cheeks and a snap in her eyes. She had, as she read, stiffened with indignation, and relaxed in scornful disdain, and flashed with hot retort, in advance of his discernment that she would do so! She was flamingly vexed with him! On the third reading her eyes twinkled, and her red lips curved deliciously with humour, as she admired the cleverness which she had previously only recognised. ”

“ They even seemed to leer down at the Reverend Smith Boyd, as if his being the only clean thing in the street were an impertinence, which they would soon rectify. It had been comparatively dry in the brighter streets of New York, but here, in Vedder Court, there was perpetual moisture, which seemed to cling, and to stick, and to fasten its unwholesome scum permanently on everything. Never had the tangle of smudge-coated children seemed so squalid; never had the slatternly women seemed so unfeminine; never had the spineless looking men seemed so shuffling and furtive and sodden ”