MATCHED PEARLS (18 page)

“Well, I’m glad I’m here!” said Frank graciously in the tone Mary Esther had always demanded of him, a grown-up tone, very polite. “You oughtn’t to carry such heavy things.”

Dillie laughed.

“Why, they aren’t a bit heavy, but it’s kind of you to carry them.”

Suddenly the subject seemed to be exhausted. They walked several steps before another one presented itself.

“My, it’s good to get home!” said Dillie, looking up at her home adoringly. “I feel as though I’d been away a year.”

“I thought it seemed terribly lonesome around your house for the last few days,” said Frank gallantly. “Have a good time?”

“Oh, wonderful!” said Dillie with a soft flush in her cheeks and her eyes shining. “I have five cousins and they were all home.”

“Oh!” said Frank. “Boys or girls?”

“Both!” said Dillie. “Three girls and two boys, only the youngest is only a baby, about three years old. The oldest cousin is a boy, too. He’s about your age. You’d like him!”

“Oh!” said Frank, wondering if he would. That one boy cousin somehow seemed a bit annoying. He didn’t want any lingering friendships to get in the way of his experiment in friendshipping with Dillie.

“Been playing tennis a lot?” he asked, looking down at the tennis racket neatly strapped onto the suitcase he was carrying.

“Oh yes, every day. Ronald, my oldest cousin, is a champion in his college. They have a wonderful court, and we played just all the time.”

“Gee! That must have been great,” said Frank without enthusiasm. “How about you and me having a set pretty soon?”

“Why, I’d love it,” said Dilly eagerly, “but our court is in awful condition. The weeds have sprung up all over it. Father said he’d have it put in order, but the man was so busy this spring he hadn’t got around to it before I left. I don’t know whether he has yet or not, but it won’t be like my cousin’s court.”

“What about playing at the country club?” asked Frank with a large air.

“The country club? Oh, could we? I thought they didn’t let the younger people play there.”

“Well, I can. I’ll be glad to take you over. When will you go? This afternoon?”

“Why, I guess so, unless Mother has planned something else for me.”

“Awwright. What time? Two o’clock be all right?”

“Oh, I should think so. Suppose you come in a minute and see if Mother has any other plans.”

So Frank carried Dillie’s baggage into the house and up to her pretty room, with her mother standing at the head of the stairs smilingly thanking him. He gave a shy glance around on the dainty appointments, pink things on the bureau and dressing table, pink drapery on the bed and at the windows. It looked like a flower garden. Her home seemed pleasant, at least the rooms of which he could get a glimpse. The background of Dillie, although he had known it from a distance nearly all his life, suddenly took on new interest to him. He felt that a girl from a happy home like that was a nice girl to know. He rather liked it that Dillie asked her mother before she made dates with boys. He knew Mary Esther did not. Mary Esther had often sneaked off to go with him to a ball game when her mother had told her to stay at home and practice her music lesson. Also Mary Esther carried a silly vanity case and stopped on the sidewalk to pencil her lips redly and scrub her face over with powder. Frank had always felt embarrassed when she did that. It didn’t seem quite nice. Yet on the other hand the house that Mary Esther’s father lived in was much larger and grander than Dillie’s home, and Mary Esther was much more sophisticated than Dillie. She had begun to smoke. He had never quite liked that. His sister did not smoke and neither did his mother. He wondered if Dillie’s mother smoked. He looked at Dillie and decided that she hadn’t ever tried it yet. Well, he would find out. He liked Dillie.

So he stood watching while Dillie kissed her mother and asked about the tennis game, and then he went away with Dillie’s mother’s smile upon him and a feeling of something clean and fine in his heart, he wasn’t just sure what it was.

Dillie came out at exactly two o’clock in a little green dress with a snood of soft green silk knotted around her short dark curls to keep them out of her eyes. She was swinging her racket and skipping down the steps happily like a child, and Frank wondered why he had never noticed before how pretty she was. She was surprisingly at her ease, too. She could always think of something interesting to talk about. She chatted all the way to the country club about her journey, and he was able to explain to her several things she seemed not to understand. It was nice having a girl who wanted you to tell her things, and seemed interested. Not just to be always fooling and getting off smart sayings on each other. A fellow liked to have a girl look up to him. It made him feel he ought to be more worthwhile. Mary Esther was always making fun of somebody, either him or somebody else, or else trying to get something out of him. Sometimes his allowance had been greatly overdrawn trying to satisfy Mary Esther’s appetite for sodas and sundaes at the corner drugstore.

He asked Dillie if she would like to stop and get something. Of course it was the expected thing to do—that is, the other girls expected it. But Dillie said, “Oh, don’t let’s waste time in the drugstore, unless you want something. I’m not thirsty, are you? Not yet anyway. I’m just crazy to try those lovely country club courts. I’ve heard they are wonderful this year.”

He apologized for not having a car to take her because his mother had one and his sister the other, but Dillie said she liked to walk, and they stepped out in rhythm and kept step. It was great. Dillie was as good as a boy. She was a real sport. Yet she was pretty, prettier than any of the other girls he had been with. Strange, Connie had known how that would be. He wished he could see Mary Esther; that is, he wished Mary Esther could see him. She would see that he didn’t miss her in the least.

And then they swung into the gate of the country club and there came Mary Esther!

But before either of them had seen Mary Esther, they had spied together a little baby robin sitting hunched up in the drive and a big blue sports car all glittering in chromium coming toward it at a fine pace.

Both at once swooped down upon the tiny, frightened creature and gathered it tenderly, their hands cupped together to scoop it in, and drew back to the grass, while Mary Esther stood with a disgruntled youth on the other side waiting for the car to pass.

Then Mary Esther saw her formerly devoted attendant so utterly absorbed in another girl and a silly bird that he did not even notice she was there. That was something that she had never thought could happen. And she could not at first identify the girl because of the silken snood and the falling dark curls.

The car passed and the two of them were still absorbed. They had the bird on one of their rackets now and were examining its wing and planning what to do with it. Mary Esther simply couldn’t go by and not have Frank see her at all, so she spoke.

“H’llo, old thing!” she called listlessly.

Frank lifted his head with a frown at the interruption.

“Oh. Hello!” he said carelessly and bent his head to the broken wing again.

Dillie also lifted her head and glanced across with a fleeting smile of recognition. They were not intimates, these two girls.

But there was nothing of rancor in Dillie’s smile. She was just absorbed in the bird.

“Oh, is that you,
little
Dillie?” said Mary Esther disagreeably.

Dillie looked up with a twinkle.

“Yes, it’s me,
big
Mary Esther!” she answered with a good-natured grin.

Then Mary Esther marched on with her head up in the air, and Frank and Dillie walked on down the driveway to put the bird in the hands of the caretaker at the club. They talked entirely about the bird. They did not mention the little passage with Mary Esther.

But when they had seen the bird in a safe and comfortable box reposing on a neat bed of dried grass, with a few crumbs to the good beside it and a tin top to an oil can filled with water beside it, and had started toward the tennis courts, Frank drew a deep breath and looked at his companion, growing admiration in his eyes.

“H’m,
‘little
Dillie’!” he said contemptuously. “I don’t see as you’re so awfully little!” Dillie only laughed.

“Say, that was some answer you gave her!” he said again. “I guess she won’t call you that again.”

Then after a pause he added, “It’s so nice to be little. It’s nicer to be little than big.”

There was a pause and then Dillie spoke, her face suddenly serious. “I oughtn’t to have said it, I suppose. It came out quick before I stopped to think. Mother says I’m always doing that.”

“Why shouldn’t you have said it?” demanded the boy. “She deserved it.”

“Yes,” said Dillie slowly, thoughtfully, “but it wasn’t very Christian of me.”

Frank eyed her curiously. It appeared then that there were realms above petty meannesses and retaliations, and Dillie Fairchild moved in those realms. Henceforth Frank Courtland would never again look up to Mary Esther no matter how much more sophisticated she might become, for he had had a vision of something higher.

But soon all this was forgotten in the delights of tennis. The court was perfect, the day was rare, the two players were well matched. Each stimulated the other to do his best, and many a seasoned player paused to give an admiring glance at the two promising youngsters.

They played until late in the afternoon; the long slant rays of the sun were lying low on court and turf; ladies were beginning to appear on the distant clubhouse porch in delicate afternoon attire after the strenuous play of the day.

“Wantta take a swim?” asked Frank, eyeing the pool, where a few late swimmers were still sporting.

“I guess not tonight, thank you,” said Dillie. “I didn’t bring my bathing suit, and besides, isn’t it getting awfully late?”

“Well, there’s time enough for a bite to eat anyway,” said Frank. “That won’t take long.”

So they went in step across the grass and over to the clubhouse, where late afternoon tea was in progress, and there at the far end of the porch they saw Mary Esther with her grumpy escort. Frank steered Dillie away to the other end and they ordered a sundae.

They had just finished when a familiar voice called out behind them, “Hello, old thing! Mind if we bring chairs and sit down here beside you children?”

“Help yourself!” said Frank, rising quickly. “We’re just leaving. All set, Dillie?”

Dillie sprang up, Frank picked up the rackets, and they started away, his hand just slipped inside the turn of Dillie’s elbow, keeping them together in perfect step, and so they walked away across the smooth turf, and out the big club gateway to the road, while baffled Mary Esther sat amazed and watched them.

About seven o’clock Mary Esther called up the Courtland house on the telephone.

“That you, Frank? I’ll let ya take me out to a picture tonight if you wantta.”

“Thanks awfully, Mary Esther,” said Frank in his most grown-up tone, “but I’ve got a date.”

Meantime Constance had plunged into a wild string of social engagements. Her promise to Ruddy Van Arden had taken her to an affair at the club at which a number of young people new to the neighborhood were present. There was one especially, a man a little older than the men who were Constance’s friends, who sought her out more than once during the evening, and seemed to be determined to absorb a good deal of her time. He asked her to play golf the next morning, to ride with him in the afternoon, and to dine with a few of his friends from a nearby city a few days later. His attention could not but flatter her. He was a man of the world with an interesting personality and fascinating manners. He had just fallen heir to a beautiful estate in the neighborhood that had been in the hands of caretakers for several years while its elderly owners traveled, and he was preparing to make it entirely up-to-date in every way, a charming place for house parties and social affairs on a large scale. The swimming pool he was building was on a far larger scale than any in that vicinity; also he was planning to keep polo ponies and lay out a private golf course. He was certainly a man whom it would be a social advantage to know, and just now when Constance was troubled in her mind and trying frantically to fill her thoughts to the exclusion of all serious matters, he seemed the very one she needed. She was not slow to accept his various invitations, glad of the chance to be constantly on the go, and also to have a good excuse to get rid of Ruddy Van, who sulked his days through and drank his nights through in other and perhaps more questionable company.

Constance had a passing thought now and then that perhaps Delancey Whittemore was no more what her brother would desire as a companion for her than Ruddy Van, but at least he was exciting, and that was what she wanted more than anything else just now.

Not that even her wildest attempts to be frivolous and busy every minute completely exorcised the memories that crowded upon her the instant she was alone. It seemed that Doris’s death was something she never would shake off. Sometimes when she was laughing and cheerful at some evening affair, Doris’s face with the terror in her eyes would look out at her from the throng of people, and she would hear her wild voice saying, “What are you going to do when you die?” Then she would start and catch her breath and take on that faraway look. She wondered if people noticed it sometimes.

Then at other times she would see that last light of peace in her friend’s face, the utter rest and trust, and find an inexpressible longing in her own heart to get that same peace for herself.

She was wearing her pearls now, almost every night. She had felt she must get over that silly feeling about them. It pleased her grandmother to see them. Yet every time she put them around her neck she shivered a little.

And then there was that Sunday school class! She had been duly introduced that first Sunday and was virtually bound to take it over. Not that the teaching of it worried her particularly. Miss Howe had promised to bring her a book that would have everything in it she needed to know about the lesson, and she would merely have to read it over to get a good idea of it. Miss Howe was sure it would not take much of her valuable time.