He helped her into the seat, disposed of the bags and her coat comfortably, arranged the windows to please her, and treated her exactly as if she were a visiting lady. Constance rewarded him with a grateful smile as he took his place at the wheel, and when they were well under way so that his voice was covered by the sound of the motor, he said gruffly, “Say, kid, you’ve got more sense than I thought you had!”
Constance looked up, astonished at the commendation in his voice, touched with a sudden impulse to tears in her throat. She couldn’t understand herself. Crying had never been in her line before. She studied his face for a moment till she was sure of herself and then said in a light tone, “How come?”
He whizzed past a large moving van, which was taking too slow a gait on the highway to please him, before he answered.
“How come yourself?” he retorted. “I don’t know what made you do it, but I certainly was proud of my sister giving that Ruddy Van the go-by! I didn’t think you had any interest in your family anymore now you’ve got the pearls, but it seems I was mistaken.”
“Oh, that!” said Constance, adopting his own vernacular. “I couldn’t be bothered with Ruddy Van. What’s the use of having a perfectly good family come to your commencement if you don’t go home with them once in a lifetime?”
“I’ll say!” said Frank.
There was a long pause and then he added, “If you knew the kind of girls he plays around with when you aren’t here, you wouldn’t ever go with him. All painted up and mascara on their eyelashes like black dew! They’re a mess!”
Constance considered this for a moment and then asked gravely, “And you don’t think I ought to go with him to save him from them, Brother?”
“I should say not!” said the boy indignantly. “If you’d once see them you’d say so, too. Any fella that likes that kind of girl to play around with when he hasn’t got any better has no business coming around my sister!”
There was a manly ring to his voice that made Constance look at him in new surprise. She was touched with his vehemence and his evident desire to protect her. After a moment she said, “Thanks for the tip, buddy. I’ll watch my step.”
Frank was evidently deeply touched by the way she had taken it. It would seem as if the brotherly advice had been a great effort for him and he was relieved at the way she accepted it, for he hastened to change the subject.
“Gee! See those young colts over there! That sorrel one is just like the polo pony Bill Howarth rides. Some horse!”
Late in the afternoon as they were nearing home there had been a long silence. Grandmother and Father were dozing in the backseat, and Mother was placidly planning schemes of her own. Frank suddenly spoke again, musingly.
“I like yer other boyfriend fine!” he growled in a tone that would never reach to the backseat.
Constance’s heart gave an odd little leap that surprised her, but she sat with calm exterior apparently undisturbed.
“Boyfriend?” she managed to ask quite casually. “Have I a boyfriend? I’ve been away from home so long I scarcely know any of the boys at home anymore.”
“Say, come off! I ain’t so dumb as I may seem. When a man gets you up to take a walk at sunup and loads you up with fillylou-blue-weeds and then sends you forget-me-nots—and you leave seven-dollar-a-dozen-roses in yer room and wear the blue weeds, things aren’t so cool as you try to make ’em appear. I guess I got eyes in my head all right, and I’m just saying I like your boyfriend, see?”
“Oh, you mean the tall stranger that came to church Easter Sunday, don’t you? What was his name? Seagrave?”
“You’ve said it. Graham Seagrave! I thought you weren’t quite so forgetful as all that. You see I took the trouble to look him up. I didn’t want another poor fish like Ruddy coming around after my sister, and I thought there was nothing like taking precautions early, so I made it my business to investigate. And he’s all right!”
“That’s awfully kind of you, I’m sure,” said Constance, putting a little amusement into her tone, although she felt strangely touched at her brother’s interest and definitely pleased at his commendation of Seagrave.
“Well, he’s all right,” said Frank again earnestly. “Bill Howarth tells me his dad thinks he’s great. They wouldn’t have sent him to Europe so suddenly on important business if they hadn’t had all kinds of confidence in his judgment.”
“Oh,” said Constance, trying to make her tone sound mildly interested, though her heart felt suddenly heavy, “they’ve sent him to Europe, have they?”
Frank gave her a searching glance.
“Say! Didn’t he let you know?” he queried. “But maybe he didn’t have time yet. He just sailed day before yesterday. Only had an hour to make the boat. You know Mr. Howarth himself was going, had his passage all engaged and everything, and then just at the last minute he got a telegram his brother out West was dying and he had to go. Mr. Wells is sick in bed, and there wasn’t anybody else in the firm they could very well spare, so they sent Seagrave. I guess it was a lucky shake for him. He’s going to stay six weeks and do a lot of traveling. Gee! I wish I had his chance to see all the places he’ll get to! He’s a lucky devil! But he wouldn’t have got it if he hadn’t been the right kind. Bill says his father would have had to give up going to his brother if he hadn’t felt Seagrave was the right sort, for the business was awfully important and meant a lot to the firm.”
Constance found her heart sinking. Six weeks! Then she would have to carry her burden all that time!
“That sounds interesting!” she managed to say with a voice that seemed to herself very small and far away.
“He’s going to bring me one of the balls they use over in England for that game they call bowls. Ever hear of it? We were talking about it one night when I was over with Bill, and he said he’d get us each one. He’s going to look up the regular rules for us, and we’re going to try to start it over here. It’ll be something new.”
“That’s kind of him,” said Constance, feeling a strange elation. “You know him then pretty well, don’t you? Better than I do, I guess.”
“Well, he’s a crackerjack tennis player. He played with our bunch all last Saturday afternoon. Say, he’s got some serve! It’s just about impossible t’return it. Ever play with him?” he asked, scanning his sister’s profile keenly.
“Oh, no,” said Constance, reflecting that when she got done with her confession she would lose her last chance of ever having that experience. “Oh, no,” she said again quickly, “I really know him very little indeed, although you seem to have made a lot out of that little. By the way, you haven’t said a word about Mary Esther Cowles. Are you as fond of her as ever?”
Frank’s face went down several notches and a cloud came over his expression.
“Aw, I’m off her for life. She’s getting nutty. She dolls up with paint on her face and makes her lips so red they stand out like a sore thumb. She’s had her hair cut a new way, and she wears earrings like the glass chandeliers down at the old Masonic Hall. She used to be sensible, but now she goes around with that Elmer Baldwin in his red sports roadster, and last week she let him take her up to that roadhouse on the Pike. I’m disgusted. When you got home at Easter and ran around with Ruddy so much, I decided I was done with women. But I’m getting a little hope again since you turned Ruddy down.”
Suddenly Constance began to laugh. She laughed almost hysterically, in little nervous catches, and then she patted her brother’s arm tenderly and nestled her cheek against his shoulder.
“Oh, you’re a cherub, Brother!” she said affectionately. “I never did care so much for Mary Esther myself. Her eyes are too light a blue.”
“I don’t see what’s the matter with her eyes!” growled Frank inconsistently.
“Oh well,” soothed Constance, “if you really feel that way, then why don’t you get some other girl and take her around somewhere? If Mary Esther really likes you best, she’ll probably take notice.”
“Who’d I
go with?” growled the boy.
“Well, there is that little Dillie Fairchild next door. She’s rather stunning looking I thought when I was at home Easter, with those short dark curls and her great big pansy eyes. I used to wonder why you didn’t like her. She’s really a sweet little thing, you know.”
“She’s nothing but a kid!” said the boy very indignantly.
“She isn’t any more of a kid than you are,” said Constance. “She was in the third grade when you were, and scarlet fever doesn’t make her much younger. Why don’t you take her to the tennis tournament? Doesn’t that come off pretty soon?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if I were you, I’d ask her to go. It would at least show Mary Esther that she wasn’t the only girl in town. And incidentally I believe you’d have a good time with Dillie.”
“Yeah?” said Frank in an enigmatic tone and thereafter drove silently into the dusk with an inscrutable look of thoughtfulness on his young face, while Constance on her part settled back into her own thoughts and speedily forgot Dillie Fairchild and Mary Esther Cowles alike, feeling her heart sinking back again under that burden that had oppressed her ever since Seagrave had left her at the college on the night that Doris died. If she only could get right with him, even though it meant he would respect her no longer, she felt she might somehow climb back into her old free and easy life, where questions of right and wrong had not oppressed her.
She considered the matter of writing a confession and decided it would place her in an even worse light than if she told him. It would make it appear that she cared too much for his opinion, for after all he was a comparative stranger. Though come what might, she would never, after their experience at Doris’s deathbed and the intimate little supper in the tearoom beyond the campus, feel that he was a stranger. They had somehow come so very near to real, vital things that night that she could never again in her heart call him a stranger.
But stranger or friend, she shrank inexpressibly from trying to write out a picture of her true self and what she had done. No, she would have to tell him if she ever had the opportunity.
Still, there were the forget-me-nots and lilies. She must somehow thank him for those. She could not let that attention pass unnoticed.
She tried to formulate a note of thanks, her mind racing fast ahead of her intentions and planning how she might also get in her confession. But her soul writhed away from that thought again. No, she must bear her own depression until a time came when she could get it off her mind by word of mouth. Perhaps it might even wear off as the days went by and she settled again into a normal life. Though she knew very well it would not. She knew that somehow the tall Christian stranger had taken deep hold on her, and she felt she must be right before him, must come clean, though it might lose her any further friendship with him forever.
At this point in her thoughts her brother spoke again.
“Thanks for the idea, Con. I’ll think it over. Dillie is a cute little kid. She’s got a peach of a smile, and she can catch a ball like a boy. They say she’s a crackerjack tennis player, too, and last winter she was captain of the girls’ basketball team.”
“Is that right?” said Constance, summoning her thoughts from afar. “Well, I should think she’d be a pretty good partner for a time or two at least. Try it out, Brother!”
“Gee! I b’lieve I will!” said the brother as he turned the car in at their own drive and drew up before the door with a flourish.
Constance looked up at her father’s house with a new interest. She had come home now after all her years of school and college life to stay, at least as far as she knew. This was different from the other homecomings at Christmas and Easter and summer vacations. She was done with school life and home life would begin again. She wished she were not coming back to it with this dark heavy cloud of Doris’s death, like a pall that cast a gloom over everything, also this new enlightenment about herself that took away the old happy, carefree self-satisfaction and made her see her own imperfections where she had never suspected them before. What was it in the meeting of just one stranger a time or two that could so upset her life? She remembered also with a stab of mortification her experience with Thurlow Wayne. Well, perhaps that, too, was due to Seagrave’s influence. She had thought her philosophy so modern, so altogether up-to-date and satisfying. And she hadn’t time to think about it now. Grandmother was tired, and they must get out and unpack and eat their supper.
So she summoned a cheerfulness she was far from feeling and made herself useful—gathering the small hand luggage together, identifying the larger suitcases, telling Frank where each belonged, helping her grandmother up the steps, giving an old-time greeting to the family servants who bustled out to meet them, helping her father to give directions about her own trunks that had been sent by express two days before.
And it did seem good to get home. After she had helped to get her grandmother to bed and brought up a tempting tray, lingering to coax her to eat and to hear the satisfaction the old lady expressed in the commencement exercises she had witnessed, some degree of peace seemed to come to her. She wondered if somehow there might not be a way in which she could atone for her unworthiness, to make herself better by acts of kindliness. Perhaps after all if she devoted herself to her grandmother, did the things she wanted her to do—church work or something that would please her—it might be that she would never feel it necessary to tell that tall stranger with those pure, keen eyes how she had sold herself to the Lord for a string of pearls. Yes, that was it! Work out her own salvation somehow! Make herself good so that she didn’t have anything to confess, so that she was in reality what she had professed to be. Could she do that?
The thought brought a relief from the gloom that had oppressed her all the way home. At dinner she was her old cheerful self and told them all how nice it was to be at home again and to know she did not have to go away. She was rewarded by a flash of a smile from her brother, as if he were glad, too.
Was Frank at last growing up, and were they going to prove to be comrades after all these years of separation? Of course he was young yet, but she could not help feeling a warm bond between them since what he had said about Seagrave that afternoon.
After dinner there was an exciting hour looking over the improvements and changes that had been made in her own room since she was home at Easter: a new bedroom suite, or rather a very old one brought down from the attic by Grandmother and done over, a relic of Grandmother’s childhood, rare old mahogany, smooth as satin with wonderful markings and lines of distinction; a new rug from Father and Mother; a delightful new tiled bathroom opening from her own room; a new closet room with built-in wardrobe compartments and shoe-drawers; built-in lockers softly cushioned in the wide windows. Why, it was nothing short of a delight to put away the things from her suitcase, and the next day when her trunks would arrive looked full of new interest.
Yet after she had put the things away and got into the new bed with its luxurious fittings, laid her tired head upon the pillow, back like a flash came the whole problem of the stranger upon her. Then she had to live over again that awful day when Doris died and he had come to her rescue in her great need. Hour after hour she lay trying to frame a note to thank him for the flowers. And always there was that tantalizing possibility that she might also tell him all about herself in it and end the matter once and for all right away before it could go any further, for she felt more than sure that that would be the result if she should tell him just what a hypocrite she had been.
So she tossed and thought and cried a little into her pillow until the small hours of the night.
About that time, far out on the ocean, a ship plowed forward over the bright moonlit waves, and one alone upon the forward deck looked up to God and prayed for her, that she might find and know the Lord Jesus as her own personal Savior.
Chapter 12
Constance was up early the next morning in spite of her long vigil in the night. Somehow her restless mind would not let
her sleep. She had that note to Seagrave on her thoughts and must get it written. It ought to go at once. He must not think her indifferent to his flowers.
She thought she had the words that she would write all arranged and learned by heart, but when she came to the writing, other words kept stealing in, that old confession persisting. So she finally yielded and wrote it out just to see how it would look on paper. Then with a shiver of dislike she tore it into little bits and started over again.
When she heard the sound of the breakfast gong, she was no nearer to a note of thanks than she had been when she first started, and she had torn up several sheets of her best monogrammed notepaper.
After breakfast she tried again, destroying more notepaper, still dissatisfied. It was almost time for lunch when her mother tapped at the door and asked her to come down to the garden. She wanted to consult her about some flowers she was having moved.
“I’ll be there in just a minute or two, Mother dear!” she called.
Then she sat down at her desk again in desperation and dashed off a brief note of thanks, the phrases coming clear cut from her heart, and added a line requesting they meet as soon as convenient on his return home as she had something she wanted to tell him. Determinedly she put it in an envelope and sealed it, addressing it care of Howarth, Well and Company. There! She had done it! She would run right down and slip it in the post box at the corner. Then she couldn’t recall it and have it all to do over again. It was a great relief to have it done at last. It would be forwarded to him somewhere on his journey, and she need worry no more till he got back. She had taken the first step toward confession. She had committed herself to tell him something, and now she would have to tell it. Now there was nothing further to be done until his return. Perhaps this ridiculous obsession would leave her for the time and she would be able to get back into normal living and have a good time.
So she ran down to the mailbox, slipped her letter in with a click, and ran back to the garden where her mother was awaiting her.