MATCHED PEARLS (22 page)

His mother came and took the bottle from him. The strained look was not quite so apparent on her face, he thought.

“The doctor thinks she is rallying a little,” she whispered reassuringly, “but he says Connie ought to get here as soon as possible.”

Ah! The weight dropped down upon his heart again. Grand! Dear little white Grand!

He turned and dashed out to the car again. Oh, why did he have to leave now and go after Connie? Why wasn’t Connie here?

F
rank, driving at a furious rate, came whirling down the drive to the country club. He brought the car to an abrupt stop, left the engine running, and sprang out.

“My sister here?” he asked a couple of girls who sat tending golf bags as they waited for their tardy partners.

“Why,” said one girl, “she just came in from the eighteenth hole.”

Frank looked around distractedly.

“Which way did she go?” he demanded savagely.

“She was talking to Carolyn Coxe a few minutes ago,” said the other girl. “I think Carolyn just went up to the dressing room. I’ll call her.”

A moment later Carolyn appeared with the information that Constance had gone with Delancey Whittemore up to his estate.

“It’s something about the pageant for the housewarming or the decorations or else maybe the lighting. That’s it, the lighting. I heard Delancey say that he wanted Connie to see if she thought the lights were being put high enough over the pool for the swimming scene.”

With a black look and a murmured thanks, Frank sprang into his car and was off again, his engine drowning the last part of Carolyn Coxe’s explanation.

“I wonder what’s up,” said Carolyn to the two idlers. “He acts as if something had happened.”

“Oh, he’s just that way,” said one of the other girls. “He’s just a kid. Boys that age are always that way. I’ve got a kid brother and he’s a pest. He simply is. I suppose he’ll grow out of it someday. But it’s awful while it lasts.”

“He’s a stunning-looking boy,” said the other girl, who was younger herself.

“Oh yes, in a way. He’s too smart-aleck for me, and I don’t like the way his lips shut as if he were a stone wall and you couldn’t move him an inch.”

“That’s character!” said Carolyn Coxe as she hurried back to get ready for a swim.

Frank’s heart was pounding wildly as he drove along. His sister gone off with that bounder! Why hadn’t he done something sooner? Perhaps people knew she was off up there alone with him! Didn’t girls have any sense at all?

He almost forgot the errand that had brought him out hunting her in such a frantic haste as he boiled with anger at Constance for taking up with such a man.

He broke all the laws of traffic as he hurled his car along through town, turned corners on one wheel, took hairbreadth escapes one after the other in quick succession, and whirled on out toward the Whittemore estate.

Into the sacred “snobbish” precincts beyond the high hedge and the young forest he turned, dashed past them all and hurtled round the drive to the great house, nearly pulled the ancient bell from its socket in his fury, demanded of the servant who opened the door where his sister might be, and was at last directed to an eminence a little above and behind the great mansion, where stood Constance with Whittemore. She was pointing down to a level below her where a lovely, blue-tiled pool glittered in the morning sunlight and where several workmen, presumably electricians, were at work. Connie was directing them. His sister was on this rotter’s property directing how things should be just as if she had some right there! His young soul nearly exploded within him.

He dashed up the hill, his face white with panic. “Constance!” he called, and his voice sounded strangely stern like his father’s when he was roused to severity with his children.

“Why, Frank!” said Constance, turning around. “What is the matter? How did you happen to come here?”

“How’d you happen, you’d better say!” he barked, all out of breath. “I’ve hunted the earth over for you. Come on quick!

Mother wants ya right away!”

“Here, you young upstart, cut that out!” interrupted Whittemore. “You can’t come here and order your sister around!”

But Constance saw beyond her brother’s gruff words, and something in his eyes frightened her.

“What is the matter, Frank dear? Has something happened?”

“It’s Grand,” said Frank huskily, choking over the words as he suddenly remembered the unhappy errand. “She’s been taken awfully sick. It’s her heart!”

“Oh!” said Constance with that sudden rush of terror at the thought of Death stepping near again. “We must go right away. Where is the car? Hurry!”

“But you can’t go yet, Connie,” interposed Whittemore. “These men have come all the way out here to get your directions, and the time is short. If they have to wire this over again there won’t be any time to spare. You’ll simply have to wait a few minutes and get this into their heads or the whole color scheme will be a mess.”

“Oh, what difference does a color scheme make now when my grandmother may be dying?” said Constance, throwing out her hands wildly.

“But, my dear Constance,” said the man, approaching her imperiously. “It won’t take long. I insist that you stop just long enough to make Mr. Ensign understand what you were trying to tell him. You really don’t need to get into a panic. You probably can’t save your grandmother’s life even if you do go at once, and a few minutes more or less can make no difference in the outcome.”

But Constance was already hurrying down the hill toward the car.

“But really, Connie, you’re leaving me in an awful hole!” he called.

“Too bad about you!” called back Frank. “They’ll probably bury you in a hole someday.”

“Oh, Frank, don’t talk so!” said his sister with a catch in her breath and then called back coldly, “You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Whittemore. I wish you would get Carolyn Coxe. She will plan it for you. I’m definitely out of this! I really have to go at once.”

Panting, out of breath, her eyes wide with fear, Constance climbed into the car, and Frank was almost instantly beside her with his foot on the starter.

But Whittemore had followed them and was calling imperatively, motioning them to wait.

Frank, however, sent the car shooting forward with a bound.

“Don’t you answer that rotter, Con,” he ordered as if he were several years her senior. “Where’d you pick him up anyway? He isn’t fit for you to wipe your shoes on.”

“Frank! How terribly you talk!” said his sister. “You mustn’t be so excited that you lose your sense of decency. You mustn’t be rude to people!”

“Sense of decency!” snorted Frank, stepping on the gas and grimly noticing in the little mirror that the owner of the estate had given up the pursuit. “You’re the one that needs to hang on to a sense of decency, going with a rotten egg like that!”

“Why, Frank! I never heard you talk so about anyone before!”

“No, I guess not!” said Frank grimly. “But I know what I’m talking about all right. And it’s time you knew what he is, too. Has anyone told you anything about him, I’d like to know?”

“Why, I was introduced to him by the Fishers, and he’s a distant relative of the Wards, I understand.”

“Well, they didn’t tell you, did they, that his first wife is living in California with her two children, and his second one in Boston, and his third is down in Reno getting a divorce from him right now? And he has a lotta other children living around in schools and with relatives. Did they tell ya that?” He looked at her fiercely, the blue of his eyes almost black with his excitement. “If that isn’t enough to turn you against him for a playmate, you aren’t the sister I thought you were.”

Constance sat back with a stunned look.

“Frank!” she exclaimed. “That can’t be so.”

“Well, it is so. If you want proof, I’ll take you over to the next county and show you some of his recorded marriage licenses.”

“How did you find out?” She looked at him aghast.

“Well, I found out all right and I can prove it to you. I hoped you’d have sense enough to see what he was without my telling you. Gee! How a girl can run around with a two-timer like that when you’ve got a perfectly good friend like Seagrave, I don’t see! If you really care for this poor fish, I’m off you for life.”

Then Constance came to her senses.

“Care?” she said. “Why should I care for him or them or anyone? For pity’s sake, get that out of your head. I was only helping him get ready for a big party, but I hate the thought of it now. It’s nothing to me if he has a dozen wives all over the United States. Let’s forget it. And as for Mr. Seagrave, get him out of your head, too. He’s a bare acquaintance and nothing more. Now don’t let us speak of them anymore. Tell me about Grandmother. How is she and when did it happen?”

Frank drew a long breath of relief. He had done his duty at least and she hadn’t tried to argue about it. Great Scott! That was a relief. Then the larger trouble loomed again. Grand was desperately sick.

“Why, she was just taken about three quarters of an hour ago,” he said, his voice softening into gentleness. “I don’t really know so much about it. Mother called me and said go quick for the doctor, and then she had Martha phone for Dad, and when I came back with Doc Waters she told me to go quick for you. She said Grand had asked where you were.”

“Oh, she isn’t dying, is she?” Constance asked with a sob in her voice.

“Well, Doc said she was a little better,” soothed Frank. “But he said you oughtta get there, for she seemed so anxious to see you. But he told me to tell you she mustn’t talk.”

Constance sat back and tried to relax. She closed her eyes for an instant and tried to take a deep breath. Here it was all over again, Death come to menace her, coming nearer now, into her very home. Would Grandmother feel afraid? Would she know she was dying? She couldn’t think of her grandmother as afraid, yet it seemed so awful for the little sprightly woman who had firmly, sometimes sternly managed them all through her long, placid life, to be met and vanquished now by Death. She couldn’t think of Grandmother and Death together somehow. Oh, Grandmother mustn’t die. At least not just yet. Somehow before Grandmother died she must atone for the way she had got those pearls. Oh, if Seagrave were at home now she would go on her hands and knees if necessary and ask him to pray that her grandmother might get well and live long enough for her to atone for cheating her that way about the pearls. But Seagrave was not there, and this time she could not summon him by airplane. She must do her own praying!

“Oh God,” her frightened heart cried out, “please! Please help!”

Death! Death! Death! Was she to be pursued by this adversary the rest of her life, because of that one act of making false vows on a beautiful Easter Sunday morning?

They had reached the house now, and Constance had the door open ready to step out even before the car stopped. She tossed off her hat as she ran up the stairs and appeared at her grandmother’s door with wildly beating heart and panting breath.

A linen-clad nurse slipped out of the door and down the hall to the bathroom with a thermometer in a glass of water in her hand. Mother came to the door with a finger on her lip and drew Constance into her own room across the hall from Grandmother’s. There was an air of sudden hush and awe upon the house. Constance looked at her mother and tried to read the truth in the drawn smile that she turned toward her.

“She’s just a little better,” she soothed. “She was almost gone!

If it hadn’t been for Maggie who saw her fall and caught her, we would have been too late, the doctor thinks. Maggie was making up her bed and saw her in the mirror of the bureau suddenly put her hand to her heart and turn very white and then just slip down, and she whirled around and caught her before she reached the floor.”

Then the nurse appeared.

“The doctor says Miss Courtland may come in very quietly and sit by the bed, but she mustn’t speak. No, wait, Miss Courtland, till you get your breath. She mustn’t be excited. Just take her hand if she seems to want it and smile at her. Don’t let her talk. Yes,” in answer to an anxious look of Constance’s mother, “I think she is resting easier now, and it seems as though the immediate danger is passed. But she’ll have to be kept very quiet.”

So Constance, in a little, soft, white silk dress that would not rustle, passed into the sickroom like a wan wraith and took up her place in a low chair by Grandmother’s bed.

The old lady seemed to be sleeping when she entered, but as Constance sat down she opened her eyes and smiled. Constance gathered the frail little patrician hand into her own, and the slim old fingers just slightly pressed hers, showing that the old lady was glad of the beloved contact.

Hour after hour Constance sat there with that small, frail, roseleaf of a hand in her own young, warm one, and hour after hour the minutes ticked out thoughts for her, pictures of another bedside scene, words from a little book she had read and read until they had beaten their way into her soul never to be erased.

She watched the delicate waxlike features, cut sharply against the dusk of the afternoon as the day began to wane, watched the slow, faint breath come and go, struggled to keep back the tears that smarted to flow, as if the other breath had stopped. Sometimes a gray look would come over the beloved face and she would make a frantic, silent little motion for the nurse to come and look.