MATCHED PEARLS (10 page)

So presently she wended her way to the library, returned her armful of books, and set herself to find the right book to read herself to sleep with.

She had browsed for half an hour from shelf to shelf before she came on the book she wanted, a new novel, a bestseller just a few weeks before. What luck to find it in! That couldn’t have happened if it were not so near to commencement, with so many duties and a gorgeous day out besides.

She took her book and started for the dormitory, but several classmates idled in just then and they paused to talk together, luxuriating in the fact that there were no quiet rules to be kept in the library today. It was almost another half hour before Constance turned away from them and started toward the door again, resolved to get her resting time now at all cost.

But just at that instant a young freshman rushed in at the door calling for her, her face white and distraught, her eyes wide with panic.

“Is Constance Courtland here?” she called out before her eyes had accustomed themselves from the out-of-doors to the dim light of the library.

“Yes?” said Constance with apprehension in her voice. Her hand flew to her throat involuntarily. “What’s the matter, Nan?”

“Oh, come quick, won’t you? It’s Doris. She’s hurt! Terribly hurt! The doctor says she can’t possibly live but a few hours and she wants you right away, Constance.”

“But how did it happen?” chorused the other girls in horror.

“They went over the cliff!” said the breathless freshman. “They say Casper Coulter was killed instantly, and there isn’t a particle of hope for Doris!”

The freshman was panting and stopping for breath. Constance seemed rooted to the floor, her face gone white and stricken. For an instant her head reeled and she felt as if she were falling. Then she set her lips hard and took a deep breath. She must not faint, if this was fainting. She had never fainted in her life.

“Oh,” moaned one of the girls, “I told you he had been drinking. We saw him on his way down for his car, and he stopped and kidded with us. I thought then he wasn’t quite himself and his breath was strong of liquor.”

But the freshman had got her breath again and, seizing hold of Constance, drew her along.

“Come quick!” she said. “They told me to tell you to hurry. She might not live but a few minutes. No, not to the dormitory. They have taken her to the hospital!”

Constance’s brain began to function at last and her heavy feet to move. She was anguished with the need for haste. She tried to run and seemed to be creeping.

The freshman, Nan Smythe, kept easy pace with her and talked breathlessly every step of the way.

“They went over the cliff on the river drive! The car is a wreck in the valley! Casper Coulter was dead when they picked him up! Doris was under the car! But she was conscious. They say—”

“Don’t!” said Constance. “Oh, don’t tell me anything more or I can’t get there!” The freshman looked at her speculatively. She was easing her own soul’s excitement by telling the tale.

Constance fled along trying to keep pace with her thoughts. Down there was the drive where they sped away into the sunlight just a little over an hour ago. She could see again the flashing of Doris’s white hand in farewell. The glint of the red hat in the sun. She caught her breath in a deep quick sob and, putting her head down, ran toward the hospital entrance, outdistancing the freshman.

Breathlessly she followed a white-garbed nurse through those white halls that had never meant anything to her before but a haven for a few days’ rest, a case of mumps or measles out of due time, a twisted ankle with plenty of good company and flowers and candy. Now the echo in the marble halls filled her with awe. Death was here somewhere! Death waited to take Doris, her Doris, away forever!

Pale with horror, she arrived at the room where they had laid the poor broken body and approached the bed. And Doris, blithe Doris, cried out in fright and suffering. Constance scarcely recognized her agonized voice. Doris, who had no friends or relatives nearer than California and who turned to her in her calamity!

“Oh, Connie,” she cried out, “they say I’m going to die! They say I’ve only a few hours at most, it may be only a few minutes. Connie, you’ve got to tell me how to die! You joined the church. You ought to know what to do. Tell me quick! For the love of mercy, help me quick!”

C
onstance, with ghastly white face and knees trembling so that she could not stand, dropped down beside the hospital bed and struggled for her usual self-control. She had always prided herself on being able to adapt herself to any circumstance, had always thought she could rise to any crisis. But here was one she could not meet.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do to keep this comrade alive longer. She was up against it. Doris had to leave this earth in a few short hours! How terrible!

It had never occurred to Constance that any such horrible situation could ever face anyone whom she knew, and her poise was absolutely shaken, her mind became a blank.

“Try to quiet her,” whispered the nurse. “She’s been calling for you ever since she was brought here. She said you would know what she ought to do.”

“Darling!” murmured Constance from a dry throat and could think of nothing more.

“Oh, don’t waste time,” cried out the anguished girl. “Tell me something quick! He said I might go any minute. I heard him. He didn’t know I heard him. He thought I was unconscious, but I wasn’t. Tell me something quick to do to be safe. What are you going to do when you die?”

Constance had never thought of that before. The question stabbed its way into her own soul. It was as if she were anguished not only for this friend of hers but for her own self, too.

“Do you want me to send for the college chaplain?” she asked frantically at length when she could bear Doris’s importunity no longer.

“Not on your life,” said Doris. “I’ve listened to him four years and he never told us how to die. Why would he know any better now? Can’t you tell me yourself, Connie? Wasn’t there something said the day you joined the church? Oh, Connie, I can’t go out like this. Hurry! Hurry! Can’t you think of something to tell me? They want to give me dope to dull the pain, but I know that’ll be the end. I won’t have another chance after that. And I’m afraid, Connie, afraid to go to sleep like that and wake up—Where? Connie, I’m going to die, right away, pretty soon! Do you realize that? I’m not going to graduate, I’m going to
die
! I never somehow thought
I’d
die! Oh, what shall I do? You must tell me. Connie!”

Constance desperately struggled for words, thinking back to that Easter Sunday.

“You have to be saved, Dorrie.” The strange words struggled to her white lips.

“Saved, but how?”

“You have to be born again,” she said, snatching at another word from memory.

“How could one do that, Connie? Oh,
hurry
! Tell me
quick
! This pain is something awful!”

Constance gripped her hands together in anguish.

“Why, you just believe and it happens.” She struggled with the torturous alien phrases, surprised to find them indelibly stamped on her memory. How had he put it that day, the handsome stranger? Oh, if he were but here now! He could tell her.

“Believe what, Connie?” Doris clutched at Constance’s wrist until it hurt her.

“Why, believe God. Oh, I don’t know, Dorrie, I don’t know just how they say it. But I’m sure there’s a way and you needn’t be afraid.”

“Oh, Con, if you could just find someone who knows the way before it is too late! Oh, isn’t there someone,
someone
? Not the one that talked about sweetness and light, nor the one who preached about finding God in nature, nor the one who said that about the greatest sin being the sin against your own personality. I want somebody real, Connie. Don’t you know anybody, not anybody who is sure about what comes after we die? Listen, Connie, I’ve been an awful sinner! I never thought so before, but now I know it! I’ve been thinking of all the things I’ve done—Oh, Connie, I can’t die this way! Can’t you find someone? Isn’t there anybody in the whole world that knows about God?”

“Yes!” said Constance, suddenly springing to her feet. “I know one. I’ll try to get him. You lie still, Doris, and just be as quiet as you can. I’ll get him somehow or make him tell me what to tell you.”

“I will, Connie, but hurry! Oh, hurry!”

Constance, breathless, flew down the hall to the telephone and asked for Long Distance. Her heart was beating wildly. Never in any stress of her own life had she felt so helpless, so utterly frightened, so frantic. She closed her eyes and tried to think what she should say to the operator. He was Mr. G. Seagrave, and he was in the office of Howarth, Well and Company. She tried to locate the exact block in which that firm had its offices, and when the operator answered she was ready with her directions.

It seemed an incredible thing that she should so soon hear his voice answering. That he should be there at the end of the wire without delay. It thrilled her strangely across all that distance.

“This is Graham Seagrave speaking!”

Graham, so that was what the
G
stood for, said her subconscious mind as she caught her breath and tried to speak naturally.

“This is Constance Courtland, Mr. Seagrave.” Her voice was shaking and sounded unnatural to herself. “This is an SOS for help.”

“Yes?” he said with an eagerness in his tone that thrilled her again with deep relief. His voice was just as she remembered it, dependable, strong, ready to help as she had known it would be. That was why she had dared to call him.

“How can I help?”

“My roommate has had a terrible accident. She has but a very few hours to live, though she may go at any minute, the doctor says. She is horribly afraid to die. She is begging me to tell her what to do, and I don’t know what to say to her. I’ve tried, but I don’t understand it myself”—her voice broke with a quick sob. “
Could
you possibly come? I don’t know anybody else to ask.”

“Of course I’ll come. Where are you?”

“At college.” She gave brief directions how to find her.

“I’ll start at once. I’ll get there as soon as I can, but—meantime—surely there must be some Christian nearer who can help you at once, at least till I get there?”

“I don’t know one who talks about it the way you do. They don’t any of them
believe
what you do, and I don’t know how to quiet her. She is frantic.”

“Have you a pencil there?”

“Yes.”

“Then write this down: ‘John 3:16.’ Those are Jesus’ own words. Read them to her, and tell her to trust herself to His promise. Good-bye, I’m coming, and I’m praying.”

Constance turned from the telephone and found that her face was wet with tears. She brushed them away as she hurried down the hall looking at the bit of paper she held in her hand. This would be a Bible reference. She must find a Bible somewhere. The library would be the place to go.

But to her annoyance she found when she reached there that the librarian was not there. No one was there but the old janitor sweeping the front hall. Search as she might she could not find a Bible. It was not in its numbered place. Somebody had likely drawn it out for reference, or perhaps from disuse it had become lost. Anyway she couldn’t find it.

“Oh dear!” she said aloud, thinking no one was in the great empty room but herself. Of course it was late in the afternoon and so near to commencement that nobody would be consulting the library now. “Now what shall I do?”

“You want something?” It was the old janitor who appeared from behind a book alcove, duster in hand.

“Oh, I want to find a Bible, Emil, but you wouldn’t know where they keep it. Is the librarian coming back soon?”

“Her gone for de weekend,” said Emil. “What you want? Whole Bible? I got Testament right here. That do?” He put his hand into the gingham pocket of his jumper and brought forth a cheap little Testament.

“It’s John,” said Constance. “Yes, John is the New Testament, isn’t it? John three-sixteen.”

“Oh, yah! Him! I know him. Gott so luve de worll’—” He opened the little book and there was the verse right before her as if it had been much opened at that place.

Constance seized the book.

“Oh, thank you. I’ll bring it back as soon as I can.”

“Keep so long as you need,” said the old man, smiling. “I like lend.”

As she hurried back to the hospital, Constance marveled that the janitor should be carrying a Testament. He was perhaps the last one to whom she would have thought of applying for a Bible, and perhaps the only one in the building who had one. It seemed a special providence that he should have been there. And he knew the verse! How strange! Were there perhaps more people in the world than she dreamed who lived by the Bible, who knew God? By the look of the light in his face when he had brought out that worn little Testament, she had a feeling that this old man was somehow akin to the man of the hillside who had brought her the flowers. What an odd idea to float through her head.

Before she entered Doris’s room again, she paused to read the verse Seagrave had given her, and as she opened the door Doris cried out eagerly:

“Did you get someone? Is he coming?”

“Yes, dear,” said Constance, her voice vibrating with hope. “I got him on the telephone. He’s coming just as fast as possible. But it is a long distance to come. You’ll have to be patient. He has sent you something to help though. Listen. He said it was the words of Jesus, God’s Son, and I was to tell you to trust them utterly.”

Doris fixed bright, haggard eyes upon her face, eyes that had already begun to have that other-world look, and from which gaunt terror driven by pain looked forth to a world that could no longer help nor satisfy.

“Read!” she commanded with quivering lips.

Constance read: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

“Read it again.”

Constance read it again, and yet again, and then her eyes catching a word or two of what followed, read on: “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”