MATCHED PEARLS (13 page)

Constance shuddered.

Not a word of the everlasting Home Doris had closed her eyes expecting to enter. Not a word of the resurrection life that Seagrave had spoken of so confidently. These people did not believe in a life hereafter. Or, if they did, it was some vague, general, misty thing called Life-as-a-Whole, no individuality about it. Nothing precious and sweet and comforting.

Oh, was Seagrave mistaken? Were these wise, heartless speakers right? Was life a hopeless brief flash and death a dark despair? Oh, it was piteous! Death! Death made everything different, took the glow from all the things on earth, changed the whole outlook!

But what a pity that there could not have been someone like Seagrave to have said the last words above Doris’s lovely dead face. Someone who could have voiced the hope she bore with her out of the world, instead of this dead chaff. She had a feeling that Doris would have hated all this. That she would have wanted someone to tell what comfort she had found in the end. What hope and peace and, yes, joy, dying with a smile like that! Those words being said over her were but a hollow mockery. Even if Seagrave had not been right about it, it would have been good to have some of his wonderful words said in the service, some of the truths he had given to Doris which had enabled her to go gloriously into the gloom.

Yes, even if they were not true, they would have been more fitting after the way she died.

Ah, if she were worthy, if she had indeed been the Christian whom Seagrave thought her when he spoke to her by that communion table on that Easter Day that seemed so long ago, even she might have told something of what had come to Doris at the last. Even now she almost felt as if she must stand up and cry out, as if Doris would have wanted her to. Only her lips were sealed. She knew that she was alien. She did not know the language.

Oh, Death! Death! Death! Why did there have to be a world at all if Death had to be in it? And someday she, Constance Courtland, would have to die, too, and what would come to her? She who had mocked the Savior of the world for a string of pearls.

It was over at last, the solemn procession, her classmates all in deepest black, the class banner draped, the flag at half-mast, the terrible hearse bearing Doris away down the drive through the campus just where she had gone so cheerfully such a little while before, out through the arched gateway. Doris’s little white-clad body started on its long journey to its final resting place, until the resurrection day—if there was a resurrection.

Coming back from the station where she had insisted upon going for the last little tribute she could ever pay to her dear friend and roommate, Constance was met by her eager classmates. Already they had flung the glamour of the world over the solemn interval. Already most of the class was going cheerfully, excitedly on their way, forgetting that death had entered their ranks.

But Constance was not able to forget. Yet the whole gorgeous program of play and panoply and procession swept mercilessly on, and it seemed to Constance as if every step of the way they were trampling over her heart. Rose Mellen taking Doris’s place in the play, laughing giddily, unconsciously imitating Doris’s very mannerisms, bringing down the house just as Doris had done. Deborah Faust in Doris’s place in the class procession, lifting her classic black gown and pirouetting coquettishly when some of her men friends happened to pass, when none of the powers-that-be were noticing, casting bright glances toward visiting strangers. It all hurt Constance. Everything going on as if nothing had happened. Just a black band hastily added to the programs after Doris’s name, that was all the notice or memory most of them had now. The commencement that had meant so much to Doris was going on without her, and up in heaven—if there was a heaven—Doris was entering upon a new life, a life that would never end!

Constance packed all Doris’s things to send to her sister in California. Doris’s lovely coral dance frock, the green chiffon for the class tea, the presents that had come, unopened, the books and photographs. The little shoes, shining silver, in which she was to have danced. And Doris was gone to a world now where these things did not count. She needed them no longer!

Commencement day came at last and dragged its slow, harrowing length along. Constance’s father and mother came and Frank, too, and brought her gifts. Ruddy Van Arden was there and brought gorgeous roses. Even her little grandmother in a new gray silk and a little gray malines bonnet of quaint pattern sat there in the audience watching her with proud eyes, and Constance had to wear her pearls! She could not disappoint those keen dark eyes that had come all these miles in the family limousine to watch her on her graduation day. But as she clasped them around her neck, she shivered as if they were the price of her soul. Poor pretty things! It was not their fault, she thought, as she looked at them wistfully.

There came a box to her at the last minute just as she was dressed to go to the auditorium that brought tears to her eyes and a glow to her heart. For when she opened it there were masses of heavenly blue forget-me-nots against a background of lilies of the valley, every tiny flower a blue reminder of hepaticas and every little waxen lily bell a pearl. Graham Seagrave’s card was on the top.

She wore a lovely knot of the blue and white flowers and left Ruddy Van’s gorgeous roses lying in the washbowl. But all during the commencement exercises she was thinking as she looked down at the little flowers that as soon as she got home she would summon Graham Seagrave and make a clean confession. He would not be interested in her anymore, of course, but at least she would stand honestly before him and her own conscience. Yet she took that day the much-needed comfort from his flowers she was wearing and from his little Testament, which she had wrapped carefully in tissue paper and stowed in the tiny pearl-beaded bag she carried.

There had been no time to read the Testament as yet. To tell the truth, she had almost feared to begin to read it lest it would master her self-control and carry her back to that death-bed scene, the first death she had ever witnessed.

But commencement was over at last, and then came the rush of good-byes, of packing and last things, of getting off her trunks and boxes, so many things that had accumulated during her college years. It seemed to her that she was being rushed through the hours like a meteor to whom a resting place would never come, just going round and round the universe at high speed, her heart aching, her body tense, her throat full of tears.

In the midst of it all came Ruddy Van Arden taking it for granted that she was to drive home in his car with him. Constance was aghast. She looked around fearsomely for her own family, lest they, taking it for granted that she was to ride with Ruddy, might already have departed without her. She was reassured when she saw her father standing nearby talking with the dean. She drew a long breath. She couldn’t possibly stand Ruddy today. Somehow he seemed years behind her in experience, a mere child who would not understand her as she was today. Death seemed to her to have made such a difference.

She had just been up to her desolate room to make sure that nothing was left behind and had come on one of Doris’s little worn-out blue satin mules trimmed with foolish pink ostrich feathers and bits of rosebuds, tucked back in a dark corner of the closet out of sight. The silly trifle had brought the tears to her eyes, a great lump to her throat, a kind of vague terror to her whole being.

“Oh, I couldn’t, Ruddy, really I couldn’t!” she hastened to say in alarm. “You know this is my grandmother’s first trip up here to see me—my commencement—she has counted on it for a long time. I must go back home with her and the family. It’s her only commencement trip, you know.” She tried to smile lightly.

“It’s my only commencement, too,” gloomed Ruddy, “and I’ve been counting on it, too. Been saving up all my times out to get this time free to come up and take you home! And you never even wore my flowers! Just wore some other fella’s rotten little weeds.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Ruddy, but you know the roses are so gorgeous. I couldn’t wear them all and I didn’t want to separate them. You were a peach to send them to me, and I was all kinds of proud to receive them. The girls were crazy about them. I’m taking them home in the spray just as they are—” She reflected that he must not know that the roses were still in the deserted washbowl, forgotten, until she spoke. “I think if I put them in the box and sprinkle them they will keep fresh till I get home. I want to show them to everybody, you know.”

She wondered if she would be able to find the box. She must run right back to her room before the maids got there and carried off the roses.

“Well, there isn’t a reason in the world why you can’t ride home with me,” begged Ruddy, slightly mollified. “Then I could look after sprinkling the flowers on the way.”

“Ruddy, really, I couldn’t do it. I’m riding with Grandmother!” she said firmly and then grew silent over the reflection that here she was making her grandmother an excuse again for having her own way. Wasn’t this just what she had done about the pearls? Was she inherently dishonest with herself and everybody else? But, oh, she couldn’t ride with Ruddy today!

She got rid of him at last, promising to go to the country club with him some night the next week, and then rushed back to her room to rescue the poor forgotten roses.

She was ready to drop with fatigue when at last she climbed into the limousine beside her pleased little grandmother. She wanted nothing so much as to put her head back, close her eyes, and let the tears pour down her face. But she managed to sit up and receive all the family congratulations, answer all the family questions, tell in detail the life history of every one of the members of her class, identifying the one with black hair, blue eyes, and a dimple; the one with red hair; and the one who walked so well. Then they plied her with questions about the accident, exclaimed, said it was dreadful that Constance had to be there alone with her, and that the college authorities ought not to have allowed her to go through anything so dreadful right on the eve of her graduation. It was mainly her mother who talked, though her father sometimes added his word, and Constance, though she loved her mother, shrank inexpressibly from these criticisms.

“Oh, I wouldn’t have missed being with her, Mother,” she said at last with a quiver of her lip, and her grandmother patted her hand and said:

“That was quite right, Constance, to stick to your friend when she was all alone and in trouble.”

“But Mother,” spoke up Constance’s mother, “she was likely under anesthetics and didn’t realize who was there. There really was no need for Connie to stay there and get all harrowed up. A young girl has to think a little of her looks at a time like a commencement. It isn’t as if it was just a party or something like that. One only has one commencement, you know. Connie really looks ghastly. I noticed it the minute I laid eyes on her. Really, Connie, I think such devotion was utterly uncalled for. It seems to me that some of the other girls might have stayed with her at least part of the time. Didn’t any of them offer?”

Then Frank quite amazingly took a part in the conversation.

“Aw, cut it out, can’t ya, Mums? Don’t ya see Con’s all in? Fer heaven’s sake talk about something cheerful!”

Constance gave him a surprised, feeble little smile and received a big, comradely wink in return by way of the little mirror over his head.

They stopped soon after that at a hotel for the night that the grandmother might not have too hard a journey, and Ruddy Arden turned up while they were eating dinner, just as Constance had been wearily sure he would do. But after a brief chat in the hotel parlor, she begged off from a moving picture he suggested and, pleading a headache, slipped off to her room and went to bed, glad to get a bit of quiet darkness where it didn’t matter whether a tear slipped out unbidden or not. Constance had just about reached the limit of her strength.

But even when she was lying in her bed she could not sleep. Her mind was in a tumult. The old ways and the new were meeting, and she could not see ahead. The zest had been strangely taken out of life. Was it all Doris’s sudden tragic death that had done it, or was it the disturbing stranger and his strange confident talk of another world, his radiant smile, his eyes lighted with a joy she had never seen before in human eyes? She could not tell.

She decided at last that she must snap out of this and do it quickly, or life that was opening up before her would be a flat failure. But she was further convinced that she would not be able to snap out of it until she had seen Seagrave and made her full confession. Then the look she was sure she would see in his eyes when he heard that she had desecrated a sacred sacrament for a string of pearls would cure her. She would be an outcast in his eyes and would have to get back into her own world again and get to work enjoying herself.

She spent the last few minutes before she fell asleep in planning how she would summon Seagrave to an interview as soon as she got home and just what she would say to him.

C
onstance was much relieved the next morning to find that Ruddy Van Arden, still sullen from his defeat of the evening before, had left the hotel some two hours before the rest of them had arisen and must be well on his way home by this time.

It was also a pleasant surprise to find that her brother had maneuvered a change of seats and that she was to ride in the front with him while her father and mother would be in the back. Somehow there was a gentle deference in her young brother’s attitude toward her ever since he had come to commencement that was exceedingly restful. She did not understand it, but it was nice and pleasant, so she accepted and enjoyed it. He was being what she had always dreamed an older brother might have been, though he was more than two years younger than she was.

He helped her into the seat, disposed of the bags and her coat comfortably, arranged the windows to please her, and treated her exactly as if she were a visiting lady. Constance rewarded him with a grateful smile as he took his place at the wheel, and when they were well under way so that his voice was covered by the sound of the motor, he said gruffly, “Say, kid, you’ve got more sense than I thought you had!”