MATCHED PEARLS (6 page)

Well, she wouldn’t return the handkerchief anyway. He would just think she wanted him to correspond if she did. She would forget it, and he could, too, or else think he had put it in his pocket and lost it. Anyway it didn’t matter what he thought. She must snap out of this. She was getting perfectly maudlin on the subject.

She sat up with a jerk and opened her magazine, absorbing herself as well as she could in a thrilling murder and detective story, but ever in between the paragraphs would come some sentence that Seagrave had spoken that morning. Some arresting phrase that kept her wondering. Born again. That was the thing he had talked about so much. She tried to think it out. What had he said was the way to get born again? Was it just that you had to believe something? That was absurd, of course. You couldn’t believe a thing that you couldn’t believe.

Of course he had used the illustration of riding in an airplane, but then that wasn’t quite a parallel case. One rode in planes as a matter of course. Now if some special plane had been condemned, if it had a doubt cast upon its workmanship or mechanism, she wouldn’t go in it. And that was what had happened to her spiritually. She had been to college and found out that these things he talked about were myths, fables, legends, traditions. How could one believe any more in a fable after one had been enlightened? How could he? He had been to college, too, and seemed more than commonly intelligent.

And yet he did believe with all his soul. There was no denying that. He was utterly sincere in everything he said.

During the whole of that five-hour journey, Constance debated with herself. She didn’t even finish the detective story. It didn’t somehow seem worthwhile. She finally laid down the magazine and closed her eyes. Too many times had a pair of brown eyes come across the page and interrupted the trend of the story. She was more interested in the stranger of the hillside than in the story.

Then she found herself recalling every trifling word or action of her contact with the handsome stranger, from the moment when he addressed her in the church to his farewell smile and the set of his fine shoulders as he walked away, when Ruddy Van so annoyingly appeared on the scene.

She remembered each expression of his face, each intonation of his voice; she thrilled at the memory of his handclasp and the almost reverent way in which he lifted her from the hillside and helped her to her feet. She remembered every word he spoke. Somehow the words he had read from his little Testament had gone deep into her heart. She could not throw them off though she tried hard to do so. It was not going to be pleasant having such words clinging in her mind when she got back to college. But of course college and a normal life would drive them out again, just as college had first driven away the early teaching of her grandmother and her Sunday school teachers.

Before her journey was over, Constance had made the incident of the stranger into a lasting memory of her life. She thought that she was going to be able to shake it off as soon as she arrived at her destination, but she found herself succumbing more and more to the memory of the man. She even allowed herself to think wistfully what it would be to have such a man for an intimate friend, perhaps the most intimate friend of her life. Of course it would be utterly unthinkable to live up to such standards as he held, but there were ways in which such a friend and companion would be wonderful. It would put living on an entirely different plane. Of course she never would be willing to pay the price. She was too fond of her world and its ways, too eager for matched pearls and the like. Yet she found herself thinking wistfully of a future in which there might appear such a person who would yet be satisfied with herself as she was.

She was roused from her absorption by the stir of the passengers getting ready to get out, and the porter appeared to brush her shoes, take her baggage, and receive her generous tip.

Half-reluctantly she opened her eyes and came back to her regular life again, knowing that Seagrave must henceforth have no part in her thoughts and plans. He was merely a pleasant, romantic little incident, like the flowers he had given her that were likely withered by this time and would soon be forgotten.

Getting back to college again was always an interesting occurrence. There was the happy stir of fellow students’ greetings, the unpacking and getting in order again, the running back and forth to other rooms to chat and hear the news, to tell all that had befallen one during the few days’ absence. In the excitement Constance snapped back to normal and was as cheerful and flippant as the rest. The hillside and the stranger and the lovely blue flowers, even the steady, earnest brown eyes, were forgotten. Constance was her former self again.

It was not until Doris Hampden, her roommate, after a burst of confidence about a new admirer she had met at a dance, said, “Well, Connie, what’s the news? Any great thrills? Meet any new men?” that Seagrave’s face came back to her and his eyes seemed to be smiling at her again.

The color, to her utmost confusion, flamed into her cheeks without warning. She was not a girl given to showing emotion and it annoyed her.

“Oh yes,” she owned in a drawl of indifference, “one perfectly stunning one, but wait, Dorrie, I haven’t shown you my pearls yet.”

“Your pearls? The real pearls! You princess! How come?”

Constance twisted a little grimace. “Oh, my grandmother gave them to me,” she said lightly.

“But I thought they were to be a graduating present if you got them. You weren’t at all sure when you went home, you know.”

“Well, there they are,” said Constance, proudly exhibiting them, “but I had to pay the price.”

“What do you mean ‘pay the price’?” asked her friend curiously. “Was there a string attached to them?”

“Yes,” said Constance, shrugging her shoulders, “a theological string. Grandmother got these pearls herself the day she joined the church, and she had set her heart on giving them to me when I joined the church. I found she was going to be quite stubborn about it. There was even danger she might give them to my country cousin who happens to be quite religiously inclined, so I gave in. I joined the church last Sunday. What do you think of that after all my noble renunciation of the faith of my fathers?”

“You don’t mean it, Connie; you really joined the church? Say, isn’t that rich? But I don’t blame you, of course, for pearls like that. They’re wonderful! I’d have done it myself, of course. What harm could it do? It doesn’t mean a thing, of course.”

“Of course not,” said Constance and felt suddenly a pair of steady brown eyes upon her soul, a keen, disappointed look in them.

“But to think of you standing up before the congregation joining church! Con Courtland. It’s a scream! What’ll the girls say when they hear it?”

“It’s none of their business, of course,” said Constance gravely. Somehow she wasn’t enjoying the sensation as much as she had anticipated when she had thought of going back to college and telling the girls what she had done. She had thought it a good joke at first. But now somehow she shrank from it. Was she always going to have that man with his brown eyes following her around censoring her acts? She must certainly snap out of this and do it quickly.

So she joined in the laugh as two other girls came into the room and Doris proceeded to tell the tale and show the pearls. She even added grotesque touches, describing her nunlike appearance in white and the throng of her former Sunday school mates, who were not her friends any longer. As the thorn in her conscience stabbed her and the prick went deeper, she grew more flippantly eloquent, until she had the girls in screams of laughter and the news was noised abroad that Constance Courtland had joined the church. They all flocked in to hear the tale and view the pearls and added each her witty sarcasm, until suddenly Constance felt as if she were going to cry. She seemed to have cast aside all tender ties to home and family and fine, true things. She knew she had said things she did not mean. She knew that if Seagrave could have heard her he would have turned away with hurt, disappointed eyes and would never have wanted to see her again. And he had said he would pray for her! Perhaps he was even now praying for her! The thought stabbed her like a knife.

Suddenly she snatched the pearls from Rose Mellen’s hands and put them away, snapping sharply the little case that held them.

“Come, girls,” she said breezily, “let’s go down and take a walk.”

So they all trooped down to the campus and went cheerfully arm in arm down the broad cement walk. But Constance’s heart was very sore. She was deeply ashamed of herself. She said bitterly to herself that she wouldn’t wear her pearls. They were spoiled for her, utterly spoiled by the false light in which she had allowed them to place her.

She went to bed early that night professing to have a headache and, turning her face to the wall, began to think again about Seagrave and all that he had said, and most of all about the steady, true voice and the deep look in his eyes and the way he had seemed to expect the best and finest things of her. She felt somehow degraded by her own acts.

Never in her life before had Constance felt that sense of utter humiliation. It would sweep over her at times with a strange, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the hot blood of shame would burn in her cheeks against the cool pillow. It seemed to be an actual physical ailment. It fairly choked her with a sense of her own worthlessness as she lay there with her face burning in the darkness.

She tried to summon her former self-respect, to call to mind that she belonged to two very old, respected families. It ill became a Courtland or a Van Vleck to discount herself. She had always been respected. Her family had always been respected. She had not done anything to merit this inferiority complex. She had merely lived up to the code of the day. And she had humored a dear, foolish, little old grandmother, pleased her beyond anything, and got the lovely pearls in return. Why should she have this feeling that she had somehow erred in a moral way?

Why, she had always been almost ridiculously moral in comparison to her comrades, and they were considered perfectly all right girls anywhere. Yet they did a lot of things that she wouldn’t do. Surely she wasn’t to blame that she couldn’t believe in some fusty old traditions in which her grandmother was brought up. And just for that should she hurt the dear old lady? If, as she firmly believed—or had believed until she got all upset by that fanatical stranger—there wasn’t anything in this religious stuff but traditions and dogmas, what harm had there been in going through the gestures just to satisfy Grandmother? It wasn’t her fault either that the pearls were a part of the business. It was just her luck.

So she reasoned with herself hour after hour and tossed cautiously upon her bed lest Doris across the room should hear her. And Doris finally did rouse sleepily and say, “What’s the matter, Con? Have you got a toothache again? I thought you had it out!”

“I did!” snapped Constance, taking a deep breath. “I guess I ate something that didn’t agree with me!”

“Better get up and take a dose of soda,” advised Doris, turning over her pillow and returning to her dreams.

But Constance continued to toss, and just when she would think she had exorcised this demon of wakefulness and would be dropping off to restfulness, Seagrave’s face would appear before her, his eyes looking trustfully at her as they had done on the hillside that morning. No, decidedly, Constance was not at rest.

S
he took herself severely to task next morning when, having at last dropped into a troubled sleep, she woke to find herself very late for the day and was dressing with haste and annoyance.

“This is ridiculous!” she told herself. “It’s just a case of nerves! I didn’t have enough exercise when I was at home. I ought to have played tennis all Sunday morning instead of sitting in that melancholy church service and getting all upset. I always said religion was mainly a case of emotions, and how I know it! Well, this has got to stop! How absurd to let a fanatical stranger get hold of me in this way. What do I care what he thinks of me?”

And then suddenly she knew in her heart that it wasn’t just what the stranger thought; it was this strange feeling he had given her that there was a God, and that God was looking at her and thinking about her and was not pleased with her attitude.

“And that, too, is absurd!” she said aloud. “There likely isn’t any God, nothing but a Power somewhere, and if there is, He wouldn’t bother about me. Of course Grandmother believes He does, and that likely has affected my imagination. I declare, it’s a crime to teach little children such unreasonable dogmas!”

Later in the morning there came a dainty package addressed in Frank’s scrawling handwriting, which, when opened, proved to be a tin box containing the last surviving blue hepaticas done up in wet moss.

Constance was alone in her room when she opened them, and a sudden constriction caught her throat, a flashing memory of the giver as he had stood with his hands full of them looking down at her that morning, a breath of the hillside where they had sat and watched the wind blowing the little frail blue cups, and the maidenhair fern bending low in the breeze over them like loving nurses over the baby flowers. Something almost like a sob caught in her throat, and she put her face down for an instant on the brave little drooping blossoms and cried a few tears, a great wistfulness coming over her.