MATCHED PEARLS (2 page)

“Oh, Mother!” wailed Constance softly as she slipped through the door. “I was going to play golf with Ruddy all tomorrow morning! Must I, Mother? Can’t I get by without it?”

“I’m afraid you must, dear,” said her mother firmly, even while she arranged a welcoming smile on her lips for the old minister who was being ushered in.

With a whispered moan, Constance had slipped up the back way to her room, where she remained during the minister’s stay.

As Constance answered the call to dinner ten minutes after the minister’s departure, she saw her mother and her grandmother at the foot of the front stairs talking.

“It’s all right, Mother dear. Constance is going to join,” said Constance’s mother to the firm-mouthed, little old lady in black silk with priceless lace at her throat and wrists.

The little old lady had keen black eyes, and she fixed them on her daughter warily.

“You’re sure she’s doing it of her own free will, Mary?” she asked. “I wouldn’t want any pressure to be brought to bear upon her in a thing like this.”

“Oh yes, Mother dear, I’m quite sure Constance sees the fitness of it all. Easter Sunday, too—so appropriate!”

Relief came in the bright eyes; the tenseness of the thin lips relaxed.

“Then she’ll meet the session tonight?” she asked eagerly.

“Well, not tonight,” said the mother warily. “Dr. Grant has arranged a special session meeting early in the morning before the service.”

“Oh,” said Grandmother suspiciously. “Why was that?”

“Well, he said they often did,” evaded Constance’s mother. “I think it’s most appropriate at that hour just before the service.”

The old lady studied her daughter a moment speculatively; then, apparently satisfied, she said, “Well then, I shall give her the pearls in the morning. I’d like her to wear them to the service. I’d like to see them on her the first time in the church. Easter Day. Her first communion. It will be lovely, Mary. It will be just as I have hoped and planned. Her grandfather would have liked it so.”

“Yes!” said Constance’s mother crisply. “So appropriate! And so dear of you, Mother, to give her the pearls. I’m sure she’ll be deeply grateful.”

Constance smothered a mocking smile and came ruefully down the stairs, wondering what some of her professors at college and various fellow students would think if they would know that she was succumbing to tradition and family pressure just for a string of pearls. Well, the pearls were worth it! Matched pearls and flawless. The only really worthwhile heirloom in the family. Grandfather’s taste in adornment had been severe simplicity and pearls!

The sun shone forth gorgeously on Easter morning. Constance groaned softly as she saw it, looked out from her window and noted the far stretch of the golf links in the distance. Such a day as this was meant to play golf! And to think all the morning had to be wasted!

Yet of course she was to wear the string of pearls!

She went about her dressing with more than the usual care. Was she not to be the focus of all eyes today? Even the eyes in a country church, which had been her great-grandfather’s church in the past, were worth dressing for.

She picked her garments all of white—heavy white silk with a long, fitted coat, white furred to match, white shoes, even white stockings, though the suntan would have been more stylish, but she must not have the look of a sportsman this morning. Grandmother was even capable of coming right up to the front and taking those pearls off her neck during the service if she suspected all was not utmost innocence.

She dressed her golden hair demurely in smooth braids coiled low over her ears with a little tip-tilted hat of white showing a few soft waves on her forehead. With her gold hair, the white hat, and sweet untinted cheeks and lips au naturel for the occasion, she looked like some young saint set apart from all the world.

Her grandmother felt it when she came down the stairs and met her with a sacred smile and a look of satisfaction in the keen, eager old eyes. She clasped the pearls around Constance’s neck and kissed her tenderly.

“Dear child!” she whispered. “How your grandfather used to talk about this day and pray about it!” And then, half-frightened at her words, she retreated back into her silent reticence and hurried out the door to where the car waited to take them to church.

And Constance, following, felt a sudden smart of tears in her eyes in spite of her cynicism. She remembered the words of one most modern professor in talking once about sacraments—how he had advised them not to throw away old sacraments, even if they meant nothing anymore, but to keep them for the sweet sentiment they had had in former years. Constance thought she understood suddenly what he had meant. She caught a brief vision of what all this meant to her grandmother and was really glad she had done it. Even without the pearls, she was glad she had done it just to please little, sweet, hard, bright, old Grandmother.

So with virtue shining from her lovely ultramarine eyes, she entered the lily-decked aisles and took her place in the house of the Lord.

The windows in the old, old church were lovely Tiffany windows. They cast opalescent lights across the sanctuary and touched lightly like a halo the gold of Constance’s hair. They lighted up her unpainted face till she attained an almost holy look in her white garments, her gold hair, her blue, blue eyes, and the pearls around her neck with twinkles of the beauties of all the world in their polished depths.

The music was angelic, and the words the monotonous old minister read and said were sonorous and musical. They meant nothing much to Constance. She was seeing herself with the pearls at the next weekend party. She was conscious of the crowded sanctuary and of being the best dressed of the whole class of which she was a member.

When the time came, she went sweetly, demurely up to the front of the church and stood with just such a prayerful attitude as did her grandmother years and years before, and people whispered, “Isn’t Constance lovely? I never knew she was so serious, did you?”

Constance stood before the altar and kept her eyes upon the white-haired Dr. Grant, whom she detested, watching his lips half-fascinated, wondering if the wave in his white hair was natural, bowing her head when the prayer began, and studying the toes of two well-polished shoes and the neat creases of the cheap, dark blue serge trousers that stood next to her white suede shoes, and wondering idly who was their owner. Was the serge a bit shiny, almost shabby? That was the impression she got from her brief glance as she closed her eyes for the prayer.

The ceremony was over and they were seated for the sacrament. Constance noticed as she sat down that the man beside her was tall and had a courteous bearing. She had not noticed his name as it was called. Doubtless some newcomer since she had been away.

The solemn ceremony proceeded amid soft music from the fine organ; tender old melodies that reminded her of her childhood days; exquisite fragrance from the lilies in the chancel; blended prisms of color flung across the perfumed air from the Tiffany windows; scraps of white bread on silver plates; tiny, tinkling crystal glasses like ruby jewels passing; blood-red wine against the whiteness of the lilies in the chancel; soft, cool polish of matched pearls against the softness of her neck. It all was a lovely dream to Constance, just a picture in which the colors and setting harmonized. It meant nothing in her life, a brief incident and pearls. What did it matter if she had the pearls for her very own? She had a passing moment of wonder as she touched the tiny glass of wine to her lips. Memory flashed back to a Sunday long ago when she had wept bitterly into her grandmother’s lap that she could not have this privilege, and now here it was hers and she was reluctant. Was all life like that? She wondered. Nothing attained until desire had passed!

At last the final solemn march and passing of the mystic symbols was complete; the painful stillness, soft-music-laden, was over; the final hymn and benediction finished; the minister admonished the members to greet one another with a cordial right hand of fellowship before they left; and the organ burst forth into a triumphal Easter paean of victory.

Constance lifted up her head with a relieved breath and glanced around her. She was free now for the rest of the day. Her penance was over and the prize was upon her.

Then a voice beside and above her spoke, a pleasant, confidential voice that yet was clear above the trumpeting of the organ, with something throbbing, deep and stirring, in its lilt.

“I guess that means that we’re to greet one another, doesn’t it?” the voice asked. “We’re members of one household now, members of the Body of Christ.”

Then Constance was aware of a hand, shapely, well cared for as a woman’s, yet firm, big, strong, the hand of a real man. And it was obviously being held out to her in greeting, a kind of holy greeting, it seemed. She was suddenly aware that all the people around her were shaking hands and offering congratulations, just like a wedding reception! Heavens! Did one have to endure another ordeal also? And who was this presumptuous person who seemed determined to shake hands with her? A stranger!

She lifted haughty eyes and met the handsomest brown eyes she had ever looked into, young, friendly, pleasant eyes; and then without her own volition she found her hand folded in a strong, quick clasp.

The stranger was taking almost reverent note of the sweet line of forehead under gold hair and little tilted hat brim, lovely curve of cheek and lip and chin, the soft white neck above the lustrous pearls, and doing them homage with his glance.

“My name is Seagrave. May I know yours?” he asked with utmost courtesy.

Then Constance remembered her patrician birth, the pearls she wore so regally, the shabbiness of the blue serge trousers she had glimpsed through prayer time, and lifted her chin, stiffening visibly, and answering in a voice like a clear, lovely icicle. “I am Miss Courtland.”

“Thank you, Miss Courtland. I am glad to know you,” he said with quaint, old-time formality. “I hope we’ll meet again.”

Constance gave him a little, frozen smile and swept him an upward appraising glance.

“I’m afraid not,” she said haughtily. “I’m going back to college Tuesday.”

Their glances met for just an instant, a puzzled questioning gaze, and then her girl friends surged between them; when she looked again, wondering if she must introduce him, he was gone.

“Who’s your boyfriend, Con?” whispered Rose Acker, one of her most intimate friends. “Isn’t he perfectly stunning looking!”

But Constance only smiled and went forward to her grandmother who was waiting with proud eyes and sternly pleasant lips.

As they drove along in the car toward home, Constance looked for the stranger among the people on the pavement, but he was not anywhere among them. She wondered if she would ever see him again. He was impertinent of course, or perhaps only ignorant, she decided, but nevertheless interesting. A new type.

“Well,” said her brother, Frank, coming down the steps to fling open the car door for them when they reached home, “is the grand agony over?”

“Do you see my lovely pearls?” asked Constance quickly with a warning look at her brother as she noted the wicked twinkle in his eyes.

“Some pearls!” said the reckless youth. “Cheap at the price, I’ll say! What do I get, Grand, if I go and do the same sometime?”

But the little old lady with the keen dark eyes shut her thin lips in a firm line and spurned her grandson’s offered arm, tripping up the steps like an indignant robin, holding her black taffeta shoulders irately as she marched into the house without answering.

C
onstance came downstairs early the next morning. She had promised to play a set of tennis with Ruddy Van Arden. She wanted to get in touch with the brightness of the morning and stretch her wings a little just to feel how good it was to be at home again.

Her father and mother were not down yet, breakfast wasn’t ready, and Frank, of course, would not even be awake. Perhaps she would go up and lay a nice cool, dripping washcloth across his eyes and forehead and call good morning as she slipped away again, before he roused and threw it at her.

But first she would bring in the morning paper and just get a glimpse of the yard. She had caught a glimmer of daffodils down near the walk, and was the forsythia bush really out in bloom?

She opened the front door and picked up the paper, glanced idly over the headlines, then looked toward the daffodils. Yes, they were out. She would go down and look at them. So tucking the paper under the arm of her pretty, knitted dress of blue and white, she started across the lawn.

She was halfway down to the walk before she saw Seagrave coming up the street with something in his hands, carrying it wrapped in white like a cake. She paused, irresolute, the color coming to her cheeks, then hastened on. Why should it be anything to her that he was passing her father’s house? He was a stranger. She need not recognize him. It was not likely he would know her again, she told herself, and hurried down to where the daffodils made brave array along the path to the street.