MATCHED PEARLS (15 page)

Yet after she had put the things away and got into the new bed with its luxurious fittings, laid her tired head upon the pillow, back like a flash came the whole problem of the stranger upon her. Then she had to live over again that awful day when Doris died and he had come to her rescue in her great need. Hour after hour she lay trying to frame a note to thank him for the flowers. And always there was that tantalizing possibility that she might also tell him all about herself in it and end the matter once and for all right away before it could go any further, for she felt more than sure that that would be the result if she should tell him just what a hypocrite she had been.

So she tossed and thought and cried a little into her pillow until the small hours of the night.

About that time, far out on the ocean, a ship plowed forward over the bright moonlit waves, and one alone upon the forward deck looked up to God and prayed for her, that she might find and know the Lord Jesus as her own personal Savior.

C
onstance was up early the next morning in spite of her long vigil in the night. Somehow her restless mind would not let her sleep. She had that note to Seagrave on her thoughts and must get it written. It ought to go at once. He must not think her indifferent to his flowers.

She thought she had the words that she would write all arranged and learned by heart, but when she came to the writing, other words kept stealing in, that old confession persisting. So she finally yielded and wrote it out just to see how it would look on paper. Then with a shiver of dislike she tore it into little bits and started over again.

When she heard the sound of the breakfast gong, she was no nearer to a note of thanks than she had been when she first started, and she had torn up several sheets of her best monogrammed notepaper.

After breakfast she tried again, destroying more notepaper, still dissatisfied. It was almost time for lunch when her mother tapped at the door and asked her to come down to the garden. She wanted to consult her about some flowers she was having moved.

“I’ll be there in just a minute or two, Mother dear!” she called.

Then she sat down at her desk again in desperation and dashed off a brief note of thanks, the phrases coming clear cut from her heart, and added a line requesting they meet as soon as convenient on his return home as she had something she wanted to tell him. Determinedly she put it in an envelope and sealed it, addressing it care of Howarth, Well and Company. There! She had done it! She would run right down and slip it in the post box at the corner. Then she couldn’t recall it and have it all to do over again. It was a great relief to have it done at last. It would be forwarded to him somewhere on his journey, and she need worry no more till he got back. She had taken the first step toward confession. She had committed herself to tell him something, and now she would have to tell it. Now there was nothing further to be done until his return. Perhaps this ridiculous obsession would leave her for the time and she would be able to get back into normal living and have a good time.

So she ran down to the mailbox, slipped her letter in with a click, and ran back to the garden where her mother was awaiting her.

All that day her heart was a little lighter because of the letter which she knew had started on its way; and by dint of keeping herself well occupied and always around with the family, she was able to forget for a little while the tragedy that had so filled the last week of her college days.

Her trunks and boxes arrived and had to be unpacked. She enjoyed putting her things away, though she was constantly coming on something that reminded her of Doris. For one cannot live in the same room with another girl four years and not have every little article they have shared in common bring back experiences.

But her mother and grandmother came back and forth into her room, and Frank dropped in now and then to look over her photographs and question about who was in her class, and the day got itself comfortably away.

Ruddy was sulking. He did not appear in the evening as she had rather dreaded he would. She was not in a mood for her former playmate. She was glad of the family gathered together in the little summer house in the garden behind the house after dinner. Even Grandmother was there in a special chair that Frank brought out for her, soft with cushions.

They sat and watched the garden grow dusky with evening, watched the colors blossom in the sky and in the flower beds. Father discussed the possibility of getting a new car, Grandmother told about her own garden long ago when she was a child, and Frank played about with his dog and came to rest occasionally at his sister’s side with his hand on the dog’s head. It was just a happy homecoming time and Constance was glad in it. She felt like a little girl once more without grown-up problems to decide, the little girl she used to be before she went away to college and learned to doubt, before she had ever come into the presence of death and knew what it was to be afraid of the future.

Then when the dew began to fall they picked up Grandmother, chair and all, she on one side, Frank on the other, and carried her into the house. Afterward Frank got out a new picture puzzle and the two sat over it till it was completed, a great beautiful hunting scene with dogs and horses and red hunting-coats scattered over a lovely landscape.

It was late when Constance went up to her room with a little-girl contentment in her heart.

But when she turned on the light, there was Doris’s photograph on her desk where she had placed it, and there before it lay the little, soft leather Testament that Seagrave had given her, and which she had not read as yet. Then the whole terrible tragedy rushed over her again, and Doris’s pictured eyes looked at her sorrowfully, while Doris’s voice seemed to be speaking to her, “What are you going to do when you die?”

Well, what was she?

Suddenly the imminence of death came back to her in full force again. Death was always just around the corner, and one never knew when it might strike. One must be ready! But how could one be ready?

As if it were a lifeline lying ready at hand, Constance reached out and took up the little Testament, dropping down in a deep upholstered chair and snapping on a reading lamp. She had promised to read this, and it likely held some solution to her problems, yet she was afraid of it, exceedingly fearful of an arraignment she might find within those pages.

It was to John 3:16 that the pages fell open of themselves. How strange! She remembered that old Emil’s book had done the same. Was there something peculiar in the binding of Testaments that made them open always to that verse? Was it the middle of the book or something? No, it was only about a third of it. Did the other third open naturally like that? She closed the book and tried it. No, it must be opening from habit. The owner had turned much to that spot. Had he read it to other dying ones?

Constance began to read and discovered that she knew the words. They were graven deep on her mind. She closed her eyes and repeated them to herself and her consciousness, every word, every little incident, including the fright and terror in Doris’s eyes, and then that inexplicable peace that entered her face before she died. And once more Constance had to face that thought of death herself.

She went back to the beginning of the chapter and read it through. And there was that verse, marked heavily, about being born again, that Seagrave had read on the hilltop that first morning of their acquaintance.

She fluttered the leaves through, remembering how the little book had looked in its former owner’s hand as he turned the pages so familiarly and seemed to know just where to find what he wanted. Why, there were many marked verses! How interesting! It would give her a key, as it were, to his habits of thinking to see what verses he had picked out to mark. Here was one, quite a long passage marked with a single line at the side, and the verse at the beginning and end each heavily underlined with blue pencil: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. “

She stopped, startled. She was an unbeliever. That was what she had tried to tell him on the hillside. He had not understood. Ah! But when she told him about the pearls he would thoroughly understand.

“For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?” asked the rest of the verse, “and what communion hath light with darkness?”

The verse stabbed her with its truth. Of course, she had known it from the first. He was righteousness and she unrighteousness. In God’s eyes, if there was a God—and she now began to feel there was—she would be counted unrighteous. He was light and she was darkness. It was quite true, and somehow it hurt her.

She read on through the bracketed verses, vaguely understanding the separation line carried through them, and then the other underlined verse made its appeal; she almost felt as if it were spoken directly to herself: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”

Yes, but at what price! Coming out and being separate! Was she willing to do that? Forgo the world with all its brightness when she was just for the first time in her life in a position to fully enjoy it? The world to which she had looked forward?

She drew a quick, annoyed breath and turned over to another marked place: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

Crucified with Christ! She shuddered. Was that what Seagrave felt he was? The pleasures of the world, didn’t they draw him at all? What a waste it seemed of a splendid fine life to be like that! Why, that was fanatical, peculiar! Yet he did not seem fanatical. Rather he seemed an unusually strong character with something great behind his belief. Oh, she wished he were here to tell her what all this meant. Of course, one had to die sometime, yet she was young—so young.

But Doris had been young, too. Doris had been a year younger than herself. Youth had not saved her.

She tried to tell herself that that was an unusual happening, an accident. After all, there were not so many accidents. It was not likely that she would die young. And she wanted those years of brightness on earth. She wanted them so very much!

Yet it had been good to have a man like Seagrave near when death came. She shuddered again to think what death would have meant to Doris if Seagrave had not come and talked with her and prayed. Oh, it had been a real something, what he had brought, and she could not help a yearning to have it for herself, only—she did not want to be crucified with Christ. She did not want to shut out all the fun.

She closed the little book and got into bed, but her thoughts were still filled with the words she had read, and when she woke in the morning it was with a feeling of gloom upon her, a burden of death—and yes, sin—upon her. She simply must snap out of this! She must do something to forget her gloom. She had promised it—well, of course he didn’t mean just read it once. She would be fair. She would keep her promise and read it every day from now on. She would read it every morning, and then she would have the whole day to forget it.

So she sat down and read a chapter, choosing it at random, mainly because the page did not seem to have anything marked in it, for she was afraid of any more of his marked verses. They probed too deep.

She read through the first twelve verses complaisantly, her mind turning over meanwhile what she should do that morning, and then when she turned the page she started, for there were a lot of verses marked, and they stood out amazingly: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.”

The very words that Seagrave had quoted to her in that memorable talk in the tearoom, when he had told her that the Lord was coming back again and would raise and bring the bodies of those who sleep in Jesus.

Ah! That would be Doris! She was asleep in Jesus. Nothing else would describe the look she wore in her casket. And God was going to bring her back again! Constance had a sudden conviction that it was all true, that she believed. She was startled at that. She read on curiously, eager to know what it all meant, wishing Seagrave were here to explain more. Of course she had heard this passage before at occasional funerals, though she had never gone to one if she could help it. But the words hadn’t meant a thing. Just picture language, poetry to soften a hard hour.

She read on through the description of that wonderful meeting of God’s own in the air, the church of Christ called home, till she came to those strange words: “Wherefore comfort one another with these words,” and she wished she knew how to get the comfort that the words seemed to imply, but they meant nothing to her but alarm, a dread of something uncanny that she did not understand. The only comfort connected with those words was the memory of Seagrave’s hand upon her head.

She sighed deeply as she closed the little book, laid it down almost impatiently, half wishing she had not read it, yet knowing that the memory of what she had read would cling to her through the day unless she did something strenuous to obliterate it from her mind.

She hurried downstairs with an air of joyousness upon her which she was far from feeling, determined to dispel this cloud that hung over her.

Frank was swinging glumly in the hammock on one end of the porch looking over toward the Fairchild place.

“What’s become of Dillie?” his sister asked him. “Did you succeed in making a contact there?”

“Dillie’s gone to her aunt’s for a visit,” he said gloomily. “She won’t be home till tomorrow.” He spoke as if all the universe must halt until Dillie returned to her home.

“Oh, well, that won’t be long. How about some tennis this morning? Like to play me?”

“Oh, gee! At the country club? Say, that’s great, only—Aw, gee! We’ll just get started and Ruddy or some other dumb egg’ll come along and you’ll go off again.”