The Ball of Fire

She was glad to be alone, to rescue herself from the whirl of anger and indignation and humiliation which had swept around her 109

She telephoned that she was going to remain with Allison; and they enjoyed a two hour chat of many things 278

The Ball of Fire

CHAPTER I NO PLACE FOR SENTIMENT

Silence pervaded the dim old aisles of Market Square Church; a silence which seemed to be palpable; a solemn hush which wavered, like the ghostly echoes of anthems long forgotten, among the slender columns and the high arches and the delicate tracery of the groining; the winter sun, streaming through the clerestory windows, cast, on the floor and on the vacant benches, patches of ruby and of sapphire, of emerald and of topaz, these seeming only to accentuate the dimness and the silence.

A thin, wavering, treble note, so delicate that it seemed like a mere invisible cobweb of a tone, stole out of the organ loft and went pulsing up amid the dim arches. It grew in volume; it added a diapason; a deep, soft bass joined it, and then, subdued, but throbbing with the passion of a lost soul, it swelled into one of the noble preludes of Bach. The organ rose in a mighty crescendo to a peal which shook the very edifice; then it stopped with an abruptness which was uncanny, so much so that the silence which ensued was oppressive. In that silence the vestry door creaked, it opened wide, and it was as if a vision had suddenly been set there! Framed in the dark doorway against the background of the sun-flooded vestry, bathed in the golden light from the transept window, brown-haired, brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, stood a girl who might have been one of the slender stained-glass virgins come to life, the golden light flaming the edges of her hair into an oriole. She stood timidly, peering into the dimness, and on her beautifully curved lips was a half questioning smile.

“Uncle Jim,” she called, and there was some quality in her low voice which was strangely attractive; and disturbing.

“By George, Gail, I forgot that you were to come for me!” said Jim Sargent, rising from amid the group of men in the dim transept. “The decorators drove us out of the vestry.”

“They drove me out, too,” laughed the vision, stepping from her frame.

“We are delighted that they drove you in here,” quoth the tall, young Reverend Smith Boyd, who had accomplished the rare art of bowing gracefully in a Prince Albert.

She smiled her acknowledgment of the compliment, and glanced uncertainly at the awe-inspiring vestry meeting, then she turned toward the door.

“My niece, Miss Gail Sargent, gentlemen,” announced Jim Sargent, with entirely justifiable pride, and, beaming until his bald spot seemed to glow with an added shine, he introduced her to each of the gentlemen present, with the exception of Smith Boyd, whom she had met that morning.

“What a pity Saint Paul didn’t see you,” remarked silver-bearded Rufus Manning, calmly appropriating the vision and ushering her into the pew between himself and her uncle. “He never would have said it.”

“That women should not sit in council with the men?” she laughed, looking into the blue eyes of patriarchal Manning. “Are you sure I won’t be in the way?”

“Not at all,” round-headed old Nicholas Van Ploon immediately assured her. He had popped his eyes open with a jerk at the entrance of Gail, and had not since been able to close them to their normal almond shape. He sat now uncomfortably twisted so that he could face her, and his cheeks were reddening with the exertion, which had wrinkled his roundly filled vest. The young rector contemplated her gravely. He was not quite pleased.

“We’ll be through in a few minutes, Gail,” promised Jim Sargent. “Allison, you were about to prove something to us, I think,” and he leaned forward to smile across Gail at Rufus Manning.

“Prove is the right word,” agreed the stockily built man who had evidently been addressing the vestry. He was acutely conscious of the presence of Gail, as they all were. “Your rector suggests that this is a matter of sentiment. You are anxious to have fifty million dollars to begin the erection of a cathedral; but I came here to talk business, and that only. Granting you the full normal appreciation of your Vedder Court property, and the normal increase of your aggregate rentals, you can not have, at the end of ten years, a penny over forty-two millions. I am prepared to offer you, in cash, a sum which will, at three and a half per cent., and in ten years, produce that exact amount. To this I add two million.”