MATCHED PEARLS (16 page)

His tone was deep dejection. It was his first week of vacation, and he felt that it was beginning like a failure.

“Say, what do you think I am? A quitter?” his sister inquired brightly. “No, sir. I’m engaged to play you all the morning or till you want to stop. And we won’t take anybody else in unless it’s someone you pick. However, I’d rather play singles if you don’t mind.”

“Don’t mind!” said Frank, springing up with alacrity. “Where’d you get that? Don’t you s’pose I’ve heard about your tennis scores? But I didn’t suppose you’d stoop to play with a mere brother.”

“A mere brother is a good thing sometimes,” said Constance with a sisterly grin. “Come on and let’s get breakfast over so we can have a choice of courts before the angry mob arrives.”

“Okay with me!” said Frank with a light in his eyes.

So they played tennis at the country club all the morning, developing such good form that the benches around the court became filled with observers, and more than one young man, old friend, former schoolmate, or neighbor, ventured between sets to petition Constance for her company, but Constance cheerfully refused every one.

“My brother and I are trying each other out after a long separation,” she laughingly told everyone. “It’s a singles contest, and we’ll be at it all morning.”

She could see the sparkle of admiration growing in her young brother’s eyes, and she wondered why it had never occurred to her before to get acquainted with him and try to have something in common between them. He played well, and after his first few self-conscious games began smashing the balls across the net like a professional. Her admiration for his quickness and exactness grew, and the audience on the benches was moved to occasional applause.

They finished with a dip into the pool and drove home just in time for lunch with keen appetites, both sides voting the morning a success.

“Now,” said Constance as they entered the house, “how about driving out this afternoon to that nursery Mother’s been talking about and getting her plants and shrubs for her? We can take the old car and fill it full.”

“Okay with me!” said Frank joyously. “I’m not dated up for anything. Bill Howarth is down to the shore till Monday.”

“Well, I thought we might as well enjoy each other’s company while we had the chance,” smiled Constance. “After Dillie gets back I don’t suppose I’ll see much of you. I have a hunch she’s going to be a pretty good pal.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Frank offishly. “She’s only a kid yet, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” said Constance, “but she used to be pretty good at tennis even when she was twelve years old. I remember her playing with her uncle all that summer he was here.”

“That’s so,” said Frank excitedly. “I don’t suppose we could play on the country club courts though. They usually act kind of high-hat if any of the younger people take the courts.”

“Oh, we’ll get Dad to fix that up for you,” said Constance.

“Say, you’re some sister!” said Frank, wholly won over now. “Tell you what. Dillie’n I’ll practice up and play you an’ Seagrave when he gets home. What?”

Constance’s face flamed scarlet to her great annoyance, but she tried to laugh it off.

“Sure, I’ll play you, but of course I can’t answer for Mr. Seagrave,” and she caught a little breath of a sigh and smothered it. When she got done telling Seagrave what she had to tell him, he wouldn’t want to play tennis with her, she felt certain of that. And she was the more certain since she had read that Bible verse which he had marked, about being separated from the world. He wasn’t one who made friends with unbelievers and unrighteous people, except to try to help them, as he had done for Doris.

Constance was surprised that afternoon at what a good time one could have with a mere brother. Somehow all the ranking and criticism that had grown up through the years since she had left home and gone to school seemed rooted out and swept away. They had a merry time and came home laden with many plants and shrubs and spent the time between dinner and dark setting them out in the garden under their mother’s direction.

“Now,” said Constance, drawing a long breath and feverishly wondering what she could do next to keep from that intensive thinking that had seemed to seize her at the slightest unoccupied moment ever since Doris’s death, “now, what shall we do this evening? This is our day, and we must finish it off in a regular way. Shall we do another picture, or would you like to get your guitar and play duets?”

“Both!” said the eager brother. “Say, you’re great! I wouldn’t need anybody else if I had you. But of course it can’t last. Ruddy or some other poor fish’ll come around and you’ll be off.”

“And you’d get good and tired of just me,” laughed Constance. “You just aren’t used to me, that’s all. But I’m glad we’ve had this nice time together. And we must keep it up whenever we have a chance,” she added with a promise in her eyes.

So they played until they were tired, played all the old songs from high school that Constance used to know, all the new jazzy ones of modern days, a lot of college songs, popular things from radio programs, and then dropped into a sacred tune or two for Grandmother who came down from her room to listen and sat smiling, well pleased.

Constance, drumming away at accompaniments of things she had never heard and never hoped to hear again, smiled to herself. She was really pleasing Grandmother and Frank, and in fact the whole family, for they sat around adoringly and seemed too happy to think of bedtime. Perhaps things like this would somehow atone for her joining the church just to get the pearls. Perhaps by the time Seagrave came home she would feel it was quite all right not to tell him at all. She would keep up this good work. It made her feel quite righteous and self-satisfied.

And then she went up to her room, and there was the little book lying on her desk, drawing her irresistibly to open and read again.

I
t was remarkable what a hold that little book got on Constance. She was almost afraid to go up to her room at night because she knew inevitably she would read that book; afraid to wake up in the morning because there was the book again, and she had made a kind of pact with her conscience that she would read it night and morning. She was making a virtue of it, building up good works to atone for the past hypocrisy.

On the other hand she was filling her days and evenings just as full as could be, far into the small hours, to keep from having to think, for the little book was slowly, steadily getting her. She had begun to know that she was a sinner! Not just to fear it but to know it.

The Bible had never been an unknown book to her. She had been sent to Sunday school as a child, had gone to church regularly until she went away to school, had been taught many Bible stories at her grandmother’s knee, but never had the old truths of sin and death and salvation through the atoning blood been made very plain to her until that memorable night when she heard Seagrave explain it all to Doris in those few breathless moments while Death tarried at the door to take her.

Oh, she had known these things in a general way, but not in any way that touched herself at all, so that when she came under the influence of unbelief it had done its withering work quickly, and what little truth had been implanted in her heart when young had soon died out. But now, just reading that book and hearing an echo of the clear, believing voice that had spoken some of those words into dying ears seemed to bring her a strange new knowledge of God. She hadn’t as yet much knowledge of what it was all about. The plan of salvation was but vague, the reason for it vaguer, but somehow what she gleaned from the little book was more disturbing than she cared to own even to herself, and to antidote it she plunged into the world with all her might.

She had kept her word and worked things so that Frank and Dillie had an entrée into the country club, although the younger set were as a rule frowned upon and discouraged from taking their recreation there. But as soon as her brother was fairly launched on a safe little friendship with Dillie, a sweet, shy, capable little girl of fine instincts, Constance got herself a throng of friends and began to amuse herself.

It is true that what she did was not often amusing to her, was seldom as interesting as she had hoped it would be, but it filled her days to exhaustion, so that at night she could fall asleep in spite of disturbing scripture faithfully read with eyes that blinked with sleepiness. But somehow she managed to get through time, with longer and longer intervals between thinking about Doris’s death or planning what she would say when Seagrave came home. After she had made her confession and perhaps been able to offer a few good works to offset her evil, then she would be relieved and could plunge in and be as mad as anybody.

But even though she tried hard and sometimes almost let herself go to lengths she had never allowed before, she could not seem to get the consent of herself to be anything but conservative. She always insisted on going home a little earlier than the rest of the revelers did and gave smug, virtuous excuses, where before she would not have cared what people thought of her, so she felt she was in the way she had chosen for herself.

It was one afternoon about four o’clock that she drove home earlier than usual to snatch a bit of a nap, for the evening promised to be a long one, and she was unusually tired.

She found a visitor in the living room, too late discovered to be escaped from.

“Oh, here she is now,” she heard her mother say, as she attempted to slide up the stairs without being seen.

So there was nothing for it but to go into the living room as pleasantly as she could and greet the caller. And then it was only Miss Harriet Howe, a maiden lady of uncertain age whom Constance had never quite liked. She had a sweet, subdued air about her, a little too humble perhaps, and eyes that were eager but not quite keen. Kind, loving eyes but not as discerning as they might be. She never dressed well, either, and Constance had always wondered why somebody had never suggested to her to fashion her garments a little less antiquely. Of course she was poor, but one didn’t have to be frumpy if one was poor. One could do something about it. She was a teacher of girls in the Sunday school. Constance had just escaped having to go into her class once. She was considered quite spiritual, and it was rumored that she often gave surprisingly to missions. Constance could not understand a woman who gave a five-dollar bill to a missionary collection and wore the same old hat to church for three years in succession.

Constance sat down on the edge of her chair, poised ready for flight after she had greeted the unwelcome guest, and waited. Why had this woman come to see her? She was not wont to come to their house. This must be a special call, probably to ask her to train some girls for a pageant or something.

“My dear,” said Harriet Howe eagerly, “I’m so glad to find you in. I’ve had it on my heart to come to you for several days. I didn’t know when you were due to arrive home, so I’ve just taken the chance that I’d find you here and come. I do hope I’m not hindering you at an inconvenient time.”

Constance looked at her watch as if time were a great consideration in her life. “Oh, no,” she said hesitantly. “I can spare you a few minutes before I have to go.”

“Well then, I’ll talk fast. It won’t take long,” said the little woman with a quick catch of her breath. “You see it means so much to me.”

“Yes?” said Constance unencouragingly. She did not want to be bored with getting up bazaars and pageants and things just now, not in company with this dowdy woman anyway. She would be utterly impossible to work with from an artistic standpoint.

“It’s about my Sunday school class!” said Harriet wistfully, and she spoke the word
class
almost with a caress. One could see by the light in her eyes that that class meant everything to the lonely, homely, elderly woman.

“You see—” She gathered breath with an effort as if she were about to run an unpleasant race but meant to do it conscientiously. “You see—I’m getting a little too old for them!” She stated the fact rapidly, as one might give a sudden jerk to a loose tooth to get it over with quickly and have it out.

“At least,” she added with a nervous laugh, “I’ve been suspecting for a long time—that is, fearing a little—that they had outgrown me and my methods of teaching. I had some reason to feel that another teacher, perhaps a younger, better-looking one, might be more to their liking. And last week I found the superintendent agreed with me. That is”—she lifted honest eyes—“he frankly told me so before I even had a chance to ask him about it, though I was considering doing so.”

“Oh,” said Constance pityingly, sorry for the woman in spite of her dislike.

“Well, then, so I told him I would pray over it, that probably he was right,” she went on sorrowfully, swallowing hard to keep a brave front. “And so, I made it a subject of prayer all last week, and the Lord showed me that I ought to give up the class.”

Her lip quivered and her glance went down briefly then up again, and the submissive smile trembled out again.

“You see, I love that class. I’ve had them for twelve years, ever since they came out of the beginner’s room. I had them in the junior department, and then when they were promoted they sent me up to the big room with my class, so you see they’re almost like my own children.”

Constance was watching the transfiguration of the plain, homely face when she spoke of her girls and marveling that a thing like a Sunday school class could become the sole interest of a life. Suddenly her heart was full of pity for this withered, faded, lonely old maiden with her few interests in life and her few contacts with society, about to lay down the most precious thing that life held for her.

“Oh, Miss Howe!” Constance said impulsively. “I don’t think you ought to give up your class if you feel that way about them. If they knew I’m sure they would say they wanted you to stay.”

“No! No!” said the little woman quickly but firmly. “They wouldn’t! They want a new teacher! They really do! I put it up to them last Sunday. I told them I’d been thinking that I’d been teaching a long time and probably needed a rest, and that I felt it would likely be good for them to have a new teacher, a bright young pretty thing that could bring them new ideas and, and—sort of new interest. And they owned it would be nice to have a change. Well, they didn’t exactly say it in so many words, but you can tell, you know. If you love somebody, you can always tell whether they are kind of tired of you or not.”