MATCHED PEARLS (21 page)

But what he learned that day of Delancey Whittemore absorbed him so that he did not notice when a party of boys and girls came in until they were fully upon him, and then suddenly a jazzy sweater was flung across his shoulder, the sleeve striking him full in the face, and the lazy drawl of Mary Esther cried out, “Hello, old thing, feeding yer face? Blow me to a soda, darling? I’m simply dying of thirst and I’m broke.”

“Sorry!” said Frank, rising in haste and restoring the sweater ceremoniously. “So’m I. I gotta beat it. S’long!”

A loud chorus of laughter from Mary Esther’s gang followed him as he stalked out of the drugstore and down the street to the church where he had promised to meet Dillie and help her escort the youngest of the mission band to their homes. But as he went he did some thinking.

Was Mary Esther always going to hang around and take it for granted that he belonged to her? Suppose now that Dillie had been with him when Mary Esther talked to him like that!

He must take some steps to put Mary Esther right where she belonged.

Yet even as he thought it, he wondered whether that would be possible. Whether Mary Esther would not take all possible occasions to insult and annoy him just because she was piqued. Well, let her go. It was a cinch he couldn’t stop her, and after all it was his fault. He had been a fool ever to go with a girl like Mary Esther. He knew it now. Perhaps he had always known it even when he was most crazy about her. That was it—he had been crazy about her. There ought to be some way for the brakes to be put on a fellow when he got crazy like that and stop him from being a fool. He guessed a fellow never did quite get rid of something he was ashamed of, did he? It was always cropping up. He thought of the one time he had taken Mary Esther out in his father’s car against his father’s express command. He hadn’t been found out. Nothing had happened to the car. He hadn’t done it again. But there was a memory. Mary Esther had insisted on having the car parked in a lane and snuggling up to him with her head on his shoulder. Mushy stuff! He hadn’t cared for it at the time. His mother had brought him up to be clean-minded, and it didn’t seem quite nice to him. But he had to be a sport, didn’t he, and do the thing a girl expected? There had been a kiss and he was ashamed of it. He hadn’t been given to that sort of thing; it seemed silly. There had been no thrill in kissing Mary Esther. He had come as near to disliking her that night as he could, while he was still rather crazy about going with her. He rubbed his lips hard at the memory of it. Someday he would have to tell Dillie about that kiss perhaps, and it wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience, because Dillie wasn’t that kind. Dillie gave no liberties. That is, one took no liberties with Dillie. Dillie had been kept sweet and clean. He wished he had never seen Mary Esther. Did one ever get quite clear of the Mary Esthers?

Then he remembered the rumor he had heard about that fish-faced Whittemore. He’d have to follow that up and see if it were true. It if was, there must be some way to make Connie understand she must cut him out. Gee! Suppose she wouldn’t listen? He was younger than she was, of course. She might be angry. She’d been mighty sweet lately, but no telling how she would act if he attempted to get into her affairs. Well, and no telling whether what he had to tell would make any difference with her if she should happen to get crazy about the man. Life was like that, Frank had observed. People got out of their heads about somebody now and then and you couldn’t do anything with them. Then they were sorry afterward. Seemed as if there must be some ballast or something somewhere that one could have to keep one from doing fool things!

Then suddenly he was at the church and there was Dillie in a pink organdy with a swarm of cute little kiddies around her. Gee, wasn’t Dillie sweet! When you saw her like that, wasn’t she sweet? Nobody would look at girls like Mary Esther if there were girls like Dillie around, thought Frank. But then girls like Dillie didn’t stick around everywhere to be had for the asking. They weren’t always on the landscape like the Mary Esther kind. You had to go and find the Dillies of life. Discover them and win them. Frank liked that. It made them more worthwhile than just to get a girl from the other fellows because you happened to be able to buy her more sodas or have a better car.

So Frank lifted a small, tired baby with a sticky fist full of colored paper favors and carried her on his shoulder to her home, while Dillie led two other sticky ones, stained with ice cream but smiling, and several other larger ones tagged on behind.

Frank liked it. He didn’t care if they did meet Mary Esther and her crew! Let them stare! He was having a good time.

But tomorrow he had to hunt up the Whittemore pedigree and take care of his sister!

So Frank and Dillie took the last happy, sticky child to its home and then sauntered back through the long shadows of the late afternoon perfectly content with each other’s company. They slammed through a set of tennis on Dillie’s court, which Frank was gradually whipping into fine shape, bolted their dinners, and Frank returned to the Fairchild house for an evening of ping-pong.

Sauntering home under the bright summer stars, Frank planned out his campaign for the next day. Dillie was going to the city shopping with her mother in the morning so he would have the time uninterrupted. He would go to the courthouse first and look up some records and then hunt up Joe Rafferty, who used to live on the old Johnston estate, was stable boy or something to the Johnsons, and knew the history of everybody for miles around, all back through the years. It might not be a bad idea to drop around and look the improvements over at the old house. He had heard there was a groom there taking care of the horses of the new owner.

He ought to be able to drop a word or two of enlightenment. Then there was a village a few miles north that had been connected with that first rumor he heard in the drugstore. If he could get Dad’s car he would rustle around there for a while and see what he could bring to light. It ought to be dead easy.

And when he remembered Constance telling that story to Doris’s people, he reflected that it ought to be easy to make her understand about Whittemore, provided he really had the facts. A girl who could talk that way wouldn’t stand for a guy like Whittemore, not if she knew what he was!

So Frank arose with alacrity quite early the next morning and started out on his tour as detective.

It might have amused his elders mightily if they could have watched the indifferent way he went about it, sauntering into places and buying a paper or a bag of peanuts. Asking a casual question or two, following out a clue with the quickness of a rat terrier on the scent, yet never seeming to be anything but an idle youth on a day’s pleasure.

Strangely enough his father had consented to his taking the car for the morning, which made it possible for him to cover more ground to the hour than he had expected, and just before the two o’clock train came in, on which he expected Dillie to arrive from the city, he came driving into his hometown well satisfied with his morning’s work. He was reflecting that the few brief entries he had set down in his grubby notebook, now reposing in his pocket, ought to be proof enough to his sister of the warning he would give her when the right time came. If they weren’t, he would take her over to the county seat and the village over the state line and let her see and hear for herself.

So he drove up to the station with a flourish just as the train came in, and was there ready to carry the parcels for Dillie and her mother and take them home in the car. It made him very proud to be able to do that. And it added not a little to his pleasure that they should pass Mary Esther performing the unusual duty of carrying a basket home from the market with not a single swain in sight. Frank gave her a mere gesture toward his hatless head as he flew by with his hair blowing wildly. It didn’t even occur to him to stop and give her a ride. Poor Mary Esther! But Dillie hadn’t seen her. Dillie was telling Frank about a cute little dog they had seen in the window of a pet shop in the city. Sparkling little Dillie! How pretty she looked in that dark blue frock with the fluffy white sleeves and the small bue hat with the bit of scarlet down next to her dark curls. He wondered how he had ever thought Mary Esther was worth looking at.

Dillie was all eager to play tennis after her morning. Fairchild invited Frank to stay to dinner so they could finish their tennis set before it got dark, and then Frank came in again. Dillie had bought a wonderful new picture puzzle of seven hundred pieces and they spent the evening putting it together. Frank forgot all about his brotherly anxieties and had a good time.

The last thing he thought of as he laid his happy head upon his pillow that night was that he must try to get hold of Constance in the morning and work it around to tell her what he knew about Whittemore. He couldn’t be quite easy in his mind till he got that all fixed up. Then he disposed himself to deep sleep!

But Frank did not wake early as he had expected to do, and Constance went off to the club with Whittemore for eighteen holes of golf before the sun got too high for comfort, for it promised to be a warm day.

So Frank slept on like the seven sleepers. He did not hear an outcry in the hall, nor anxious hurrying footsteps up the stairs. Not until his mother came into his room and shook him did he wake up and with startled eyes still filled with sleep take in vaguely her agitation.

“Get up quick, Frank, and go for the doctor! Your grandmother is very sick, dying perhaps, and the doctor’s car has broken down. I told him you’d be there for him right away. Hurry!”

“Good night!” said Frank, tumbling out of bed instantly. “Grand! Not Grand sick!”

With the technique acquired in going to fires in the middle of the night, Frank dressed in three or four motions and was on his way downstairs in a flash, shot out the driveway and down the street like a speck in the distance.

Yet it seemed to the boy as he flashed along the highway as if he were merely crawling. Grand! If anything should happen to Grand, what would they all do? Death! It had never occurred to him that death would enter their household, at least not for many years ahead.

Of course Grand was ready. There wouldn’t be any question about that. It wouldn’t be like that scene at Doris’s bedside that Connie told about. A quick memory came of sitting at his grandmother’s feet on a little bright stool learning to spell out words from her big-print Testament, her frail warm hand upon his curly head. Grand knew the way to die. Oh sure! She knew the way to heaven! But good night! If Grand was in heaven then everything about life would be changed! They would have to be thinking about heaven continually, get sort of heaven-conscious. It would be bound to make a difference, of course. A fellow couldn’t just go on living his own way and never think about dying after that! One of the family in heaven!

A bright tear dimmed his vision and a tight constriction came in his throat. He drove ahead with a solemn look on his stern young face and brought up at the curb where the doctor stood waiting for him, like a flying Mercury, scarcely halting long enough in his passage to get the doctor into the car. Grand was dying perhaps! Nothing else mattered but to get the doctor to her at once.

He answered the doctor’s questions grimly, breathlessly, speeding over the two miles to home, and brought up at the door with a great sob in his throat. Perhaps even now she was gone!

He parked the car and followed the doctor into the house, listening in the hall fearfully. His mother came halfway down the stairs to meet the doctor, that frightened, noncommittal look on her face. They went up to Grand’s room, and Frank slowly, hesitantly followed, terrified of what might have happened.

He went and stood at Grand’s door, looking in. A nurse was already there in a white uniform. He recognized her as one who had been staying across the road taking care of a child who had broken her leg. Mother must have telephoned for her after he left.

He could see Grand’s little lovely old face there on the pillow, looking like a frail white flower. Her silver hair, which always was so perfectly groomed and pinned severely about her small shapely head, lay out on the pillow now in lovely curls, silver curls. He hadn’t seen them that way since he was a little bit of a kid and was parked in Grand’s bed mornings sometimes while she finished dressing. But the curls weren’t silver then, just brown with threads of white here and there. The soft curls gave her face an ethereal look as if she were already something not of earth, some being of another world, too delicate and sweet for this world. Frank felt that awful choking in his throat again, the mist in his eyes. His heart cried out with inexpressible longing to have Grand open her eyes and break this awful spell of death that seemed spread upon the room, as if a breath might take her away at any instant.

Then his mother tiptoed to him and whispered. There were tears on her cheeks, too. She did not try to hide them. Perhaps, even, she did not know they were there.

“Go quick and find Constance!” she whispered. “Her grandmother has asked for her. The doctor says she ought to come quickly.”

Frank gave one more anguished, yearning look toward that ethereal face on the pillow and turned to go.

“And Dad?” he asked.

His mother shook her head.

“You needn’t go for him. Someone is bringing him from town in a car. He ought to be here soon.”

Frank dashed silently down the stairs again, his heart heavy with anguish. They thought, then, the doctor and his mother, that she was not going to get well! She might even be gone when he got back!

But before he reached the car his mother called softly from the front window, “Wait, Frank, the doctor wants you to get this prescription filled and bring it back quick before you go for your sister.”

Tensely he turned and caught the paper that fluttered down through the morning sunshine. It was a relief to have even that much to do for Grand.

He was back at the house again with the medicine in an incredibly short time, his big anxious eyes appearing at his grandmother’s door, searching the white face on the pillow for an answer to his anxiety.