MATCHED PEARLS (28 page)

Constance stood looking out of the window after him as he swung recklessly into his car and whirled away. She was vaguely conscious of having done something devastating to Ruddy, yet how could she have helped it? She searched her heart to find blame for herself and found it back in the days when she was running around with Ruddy just because he was handsome and gave her a good time. Had she led him on? Had she allowed him to suppose that he was more to her than he really was? Her newly awakened conscience would not give her absolution. All the rest of the afternoon she carried about with her a memory of Ruddy’s face as he had walked away, a memory that made her shiver as she remembered how he had looked last night as he held her wrist and tried to force her out to his car. Oh, life was getting more and more terrible every way she turned, and tomorrow Seagrave was coming home and she was about to meet him now, to go with him to a religious meeting, talk with him, have those clear eyes of his look her through and through. Probably he would see all she had done for years, or if he did not see, there would be some force that would compel her to confess everything, just as she was being forced to tell him about the pearls.

The day wore on and she spent herself upon her grandmother, trying to be cheerful, offering to read, telling bright bits of gossip, but feeling all the time that those kind, sharp eyes watching her so brightly, responding with a loving smile, were searching her through and through and often divining what was going on in her mind.

Constance brought a bit of sewing, nothing important, just a thing of lace and chiffon to adorn the neck of a dress, and sat with Grandmother all the afternoon after her nap was over, wheedling her into telling bits of her own girlhood, romances of her young friends, anything to keep her thoughts from pondering on Ruddy and on her own useless self.

For constantly underneath every other thought was that knowledge that tomorrow Seagrave was coming and she would have to meet him and she felt more unready than ever since last night.

She had a keen memory of a day back in her very young childhood when she had been told to come in and go upstairs to her nurse to be bathed and dressed for a company cousin who was arriving presently. But instead of obeying she had run away down the back alley and played with some little children of the tenements, played in the mud all the afternoon and arrived home just before the company tea party, torn and soiled and streaked with mud, her hair down in her eyes. She could keenly remember exactly how she looked. Her mother had taken her frowning and crying upstairs to the long mirror in her room and made her look at herself with her muddy hands and face and torn dress and then look down from the window at the little girl cousin in the yard by the inviting tea table with its pretty china, its little frosted cakes and pink candies and ice cream. The little cousin was in a white dress with a wide pink sash and pink kid shoes, her dark curls tied with a big pink ribbon bow. Her mother asked her if she would like to go down there looking like a little slum girl. Her heart had been broken. She could remember just how those great sobs hurt as they broke forth from her dirty little lips and how the big tears stung in her eyes. For Mother had said she must stay upstairs in the nursery instead of coming down to the party, because she hadn’t come in when she was called and now no one had time to wash her and dress her till the party was over. She remembered sitting all alone with her silent dolls crying by herself while the teacups jingled and her little cousin romped and laughed with the kitten, her white kitten, on the lawn. She remembered her mother saying as she led her to the nursery that little girls had to learn to mind.

And now Constance felt as if God were leading her away into a corner and asking her to look at herself and see if she were fit to meet a good man and be his friend. Constance tried to get away from these thoughts all day.

But at last when Grandmother had been tucked away to sleep and there was nothing more to be done, she went downstairs to sit with the family, hoping still to be able to further distract her thoughts. Then the telephone rang.

“Answer that, Connie, won’t you?” said her mother, looking up from her knitting and the stitches she was counting.

Constance stepped into the hall to the telephone.

It was Betty Van Arden’s excited voice that greeted her as she took down the receiver. Betty was Ruddy’s fourteen-year-old sister.

“Is that you, Constance? Oh, Connie, won’t you ask your mother to come over and talk to my mother and see if she can’t quiet her down? She’s got the hysterics and it’s something awful here. You heard what’s happened, didn’t you?”

“No!” said Constance with a sudden pang of premonition. “Has something happened?”

“I’ll say there has,” answered Betty’s hard, young voice. “It’s Ruddy, of course.”

Constance’s heart gave a sudden terrified lurch.

“Oh, not Ruddy!” she cried piteously. “He isn’t—there hasn’t been an automobile accident, has there? He isn’t—?” She hesitated, not daring to speak her fear.

“No,” said Betty fiercely. “He isn’t dead! Though I guess Mother wishes he was. He’s just run off and got married to that peroxide blond that serves sodas at the drugstore down next to the movie theater. Alma Phelps. Do you know her? I guess that’s enough to make Mother have hysterics, isn’t it?”

A great relief and then a great horror went over Constance. She could scarcely summon words to answer.

“Oh—! Betty—dear!” she managed and then added, “But how do you know it is so? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely!” said Betty dejectedly. “Ruddy just telephoned to tell us. And he’s coming home tomorrow and bringing her! Can you imagine that? Alma Phelps in this house! My sister-in-law! Do you blame Mother?”

“Ohh, Betty!” gasped Constance sorrowfully. “You poor kid!” And then she roused herself. “I’ll tell Mother, Betty, and I’m sure she’ll be right over. And if there’s anything I can do, tell me.”

“Can you think of anything that could be done?” answered the young, tragic voice. “If he’d only married you instead, Connie!” she let out with a smothered sob. “How different it all would have been.”

Constance gave a long shudder but tried to control her voice.

“Oh, you poor little girl!” she said. “I’m so sorry for you!”

When Constance had hung up she went slowly into the other room.

“Mother, it was Betty Van Arden,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “She wants to know if you will come over right away and try to calm her mother. They’ve just had word from Ruddy that he has married some girl who serves soda water at Tait’s Drugstore and she’s all broken up!”

Frank looked up from a magazine he had been reading.

“Gosh!” he said. “No kidding, Connie? Is that the truth? Ruddy married? Gosh! What a mess some men do make of their lives!”

He was still for an instant and then added, “And at that he’s got a girl that was too good for him. There were three or four others he’s been running around with that might have been a lot worse!”

Mrs. Courtland dropped her knitting and looked up aghast, gave a keen, frightened glance at her daughter, and then a reproachful one at her son. “And you knew all that and yet let your sister go with him?” asked his mother sharply, looking straight at Frank.

“Say, listen, Mother. I did my best ta tell ya a long time ago, and you just bawled me out for talking against Con’s friends! You wouldn’t any of ya believe me.”

“Why, Frank!”

“‘s true!” said the boy grimly.

“Well, but,” said his mother in fluttering indignation and bewilderment, “I don’t understand. Wasn’t he just here this afternoon, Constance? I’m sure I saw him as I went upstairs from lunch.”

“Yes, Mother,” said Constance with an anxious warning glance at Frank. “He came to apologize for something he’d done. He didn’t stay long.”

“Did he tell you he was going to get married?” Mrs. Courtland’s gaze searched her daughter’s face again as if to discover if there were any signs of blighted hopes.

“No, Mother, but he was not in a nice mood. He has been drinking a great deal lately. He was rather sore at me for not wanting to go with him.”

“Say, Mother, Connie’s all right. Don’t put her through a questionnaire!” broke in Frank. “Connie knows what she’s about.”

“Don’t you really think you ought to go right over to poor Mrs. Van Arden, Mother?” questioned Constance meekly. “Betty seemed at her wit’s end. She said her mother had hysterics.”

Mrs. Courtland thus adjured, hastily put down her knitting, and hurried away.

Left alone, the brother and sister looked at one another.

“I suppose,” said Constance slowly as if she were thinking aloud, “that I did that to him!” There was a quiver in her words and her brother looked at her sharply.

“Don’t kid yerself, Sister. He’d like you ta think that. He always likes ta get it back on somebody, but he knows he’s a rotten lot. Don’t waste sympathy on him. Just remember what he meant ta do last night, take you over ta the club and let everybody see ya going round with a drunken mess! I suppose he came around today and yammered a lot and told you he’d go on the water wagon or something if you’d take him on again.

Was that it?”

Constance gave her brother a quick glance. What a lot boys understood when you thought they were only kids!

“Ferget it, Connie!” went on the boy. “He won’t take this near as seriously as his mother will. You’ll see. He’ll chuck this girl as soon as he gets tired of her, won’t even bother ta send her ta Reno, just chuck her and go off awhile, and when he comes back there’ll be another. I’ve seen ’em. He can blame it on you, but it’s his own fault and he knows it. Suppose he does blame you, Connie? What’s that got ta do with it? You couldn’t go marry him ta keep him from losing his fool head and marrying a girl he knows his folks won’t stand for. You didn’t want to be tied up ta a fella that acted the way he did last night, did ya?”

“Oh! Don’t, Frank!” shivered Constance. “Of course not. But I just feel as if I’d been an awful fool!”

“No you haven’t, Connie!” burst out her brother earnestly. “You’re a swell girl. You can’t be responsible for every poor fish that gets inta a mess.”

“But I’ve just been going around thinking of myself and having a good time!” wailed Constance. “I’ve never thought I had any responsibility about other people!”

“Well, ya haven’t. When a fella’s grown up it’s his own lookout. You’re a swell kid and a fella oughtta be proud if he gets a look from ya. Now cut this out, Connie, and go ta bed.

You’re all white around the gills and you’ll be sick ef ya don’t get some rest. Ferget that poor fish and get some sleep. He’s made trouble enough in our house, and I’m glad he’s married. It’ll keep him outta our house at least fer a time. He never was fit fer ya ta wipe yer feet on. You’re a swell kid, I tell ya, Connie, and it’s time you understood!”

He patted her on the back, and Constance, strangely comforted, went off to her room half laughing, half crying, to lie awake and torment herself with thoughts till sleep came at last.

I
t was late when Constance woke, but a glad thought came to greet her. Somehow the sunshine and the morning had washed away her fears and forebodings. Seagrave was coming home today! Everything might be in a mess, she herself might be all wrong, but today she was going to see him, and she had a feeling now that he was going to be able to tell her how to make everything right.

She found a song on her lips and exultation in her heart.

The family rejoiced over her secretly. Grandmother was well and Constance was like herself again! Now they could begin to live again!

Mother had a dreary tale to tell of the Van Arden trouble. She had stayed until after midnight trying to quiet the frantic mother who declared she would not allow the new daughter-in-law to step her foot over the threshold. They were already planning to have the marriage annulled and send Ruddy abroad indefinitely. The mother and sister were bitter against Ruddy, and the father declared that if his son did not obey him in this matter of the annulment of the marriage that he would disown him. The whole household was in a most unhappy state.

Frank gave his sister a quick, keen look and said to her in a low tone which the others did not hear, “You should worry, Connie! Ruddy had this coming to him! It’s his life, not yours. Likely God knows how to work it out. You can’t go around marrying every poor simp that takes a fancy to you just ta save him from unpleasantness. Trouble with him is his dad never did lick him enough! Likely all this’ll be good for him in the end.”

Constance flashed an amused, grateful look at her brother. It was funny, but somehow it was a precious thing to her to have him taking thought for her in this way. There was a lot of good common sense, too, in what he said. She really couldn’t have married Ruddy of course. She never cared for him. And she couldn’t save him now from the consequences of what he had done in anger. But she knew in her heart that she might have been a better friend to him, just a friend, when she first went around with him, and it made her resolve that she would never again play around without thought for those who were her companions.

But not even the pall that hung over the house next door could take the sunshine out of the day for Constance. Her heart would keep singing a melody that was entirely without foundation and against common sense. She kept telling herself that she was going to put herself in the worst light possible today before the man for whose respect she cared most, and it was presumptuous for her to be so glad that he was coming.

It was a glorious day. One of those days washed clean by a shower in the night, with the earth so green and the sky so blue that it almost seemed to be too lovely for this world.

Constance gave a good deal of thought to what she should wear that evening and decided on a simple blue organdy, cool and becoming, but very plain and childlike in its lines. She was not going to a concert or a party. It was a religious meeting, she reminded herself, when other more elaborate frocks presented themselves to her mind as possibilities.