Then he spoke, and his words went thrilling down into her soul with that same wonderful ecstasy again.
“Oh, I am glad to see you again!” There was a fervency in his tone that brought back all the dreams of him she had dared to harbor.
She went with him down the flower-bordered walk to the taxi, but every time she dared to lift her eyes, there were his eyes looking into hers and there was that glad thrill again.
He put her into the taxi, and she had one glimpse of that fiendish young brother of hers standing on the dining room porch gazing after her, waving a saucy hand for farewell and executing a clog dance for the benefit of any pedestrians who might be passing.
And Constance sat there smiling and tongue-tied! Constance, who was always so easy in her manner, always so ready with a cheerful word, could think of nothing whatever to say!
But it did not seem to matter.
Seagrave took his place beside her and reaching out possessed himself of her hand once more. Not as most casual free and easy young men hold hands. Rather as if it were something for which he had come a long way and waited eagerly. He looked down into her eyes and said again, “I am glad to see you!”
And again came that wonderful flood of joy in her soul, that ecstasy like to nothing she had ever experienced before. Did it mean that she had fallen in love, Constance Courtland fallen in love with a man who could never even respect her, let alone love her? Her fingers trembled in his and he released them with a lingering pressure.
“Say, aren’t you the least little bit glad to see me?” he asked wistfully.
Constance, trying to summon her manner of the world and say something bright and flippant, couldn’t think of a thing and blundered out fervently, “Oh, I am!” and then retired into mortified shyness again. What was the matter with her? She felt as if she were going to burst into tears. She gave him a radiant smile, her eyes growing starry with looking into his, because she could not take her gaze away. His eyes held hers.
Then all too soon they were at the station. It hadn’t seemed possible to have gone those five blocks so swiftly.
He left her an instant to get the tickets, and she stood in a daze, weak with happiness. Then the train was coming and there were other people about. She noticed with keen delight the purple and gold of the sunset sky, the dash of coral against a pale green field, the flecks of gold fading into a violet depth. He stood beside her, their eyes met, and he seemed to read her thought about the sunset.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” he assented with a fleeting glance toward the panorama of the sky. Then the train swept up and shut off their vision.
The lights in the long, narrow world of the train shut off the glory of the sky, and there were people about whom Constance knew, people who recognized Seagrave and spoke. Formality descended upon them as they sat down. That brief moment alone in the taxi seemed at once a dream that had fled, too exquisite for the garish light of an evening train.
Yet still she had that sense of being waited upon, guided, protected, cared for as none of her other young escorts had ever seemed to do. That feeling of entering into an adventure of joy.
There could be no quiet personal questions here, no looking deep into eyes to search for something that words dare not got after. There were other curious eyes about, wondering who was this good-looking stranger with that air of foreign travel about him. Furtive glances were cast toward them. There was Evelyn Earle three seats back across the aisle. Constance could see her eager glances reflected in the glass of her window.
They kept to conventional talk that anyone might have heard. Their eyes sought out the window again as the town fled past and the open country gave another view of the dying sunset sky, wide and wonderful. But she was intensely conscious of Seagrave sitting there beside her, of the strength in every line of his face, of his courtesy, of his evident gladness to be with her, conscious of their shoulders touching as he leaned forward to raise her window a few inches higher. She wished that the way into the city were twice as long. She wanted to get her breath, find her bearings, get used to the delight of having him near. Oh, how was she ever to go through the program she had planned? But she would first have this little time to remember before she shattered her dream.
So the minutes of the ride flew, and all too soon they were in the big city station, then rushing along in another taxi for there were but five minutes before that meeting would begin and he must not be late.
The city taxi was a noisy one. They could not talk much. He did not take her hand again, but he helped her from the taxi and up the church steps as if she were something infinitely precious, not just a girl whom he was taking out somewhere. There was something about him that made him different from all other men. She had thought that it must have been an illusion that would be dispelled when he came back, but it was there again, a charm, a fascination. Oh, it would have been better for her if he had never returned! She would have forgotten him after a while and dropped back into her world where she belonged and where she had always been perfectly contented until he came!
But she shivered a little inwardly and realized that she did not want to drop back there now, would never be contented there again as she had been.
Now they were in the great church, rapidly filling to capacity. Hot weather, midsummer, and yet a vast church full!
He seemed to know just where to place her most comfortably, and people around looked at him, stirred and whispered, and looked at her. They seemed to know Seagrave, and a young man came down the aisle to welcome him. An older, gray-haired minister arose from a pulpit chair and came with outstretched hand to greet him. Suddenly Seagrave was no more an obscure shabby stranger whom she had picked up at an Easter communion table. He was a man of commanding presence with many friends who were overjoyed to see him. She noticed the stir all over the church as he took his seat in the tall velvet-cushioned chair at the left of the old minister and bowed his head for a moment in prayer. And at once that action of bowing his head on his hand seemed to set him apart from her. She shrank away into herself with an infinite pain in her heart. And now he was the man on the hillside talking of God among the flowers!
The singing amazed her. So many bright young voices like jewels flashing into sound, such volume and sweetness, such power and strength and sincerity in song. She had never heard a great audience like that singing as unto the Lord, singing from the heart. College choruses, even choirs of trained voices, could not sing like that. It was different. They were singing as if they meant every word. Offering real praise to God. She was tremendously impressed with it.
The other men who took part seemed so in earnest, too. The prayer by the old minister, sweet and tender, the scripture reading by the younger man read so impressively. Everything seemed a part of a new environment, a world she did not know, a world that she looked at wistfully as the service proceeded.
Then came Seagrave’s address.
And now she was transported to the hillside as she listened to his talk. He was telling how sin began in heaven, with Lucifer that bright, perfect angel, and then went on to the Garden of Eden, how we as children of Adam came to be partakers of sin and its consequence, death. Constance sat and saw herself an abject sinner more clearly than she had ever seen it before.
But now her sin was not just merely an act of one bright Sabbath morning, the taking of false vows upon lips, not just the hypocrisy she had been planning to confess to the speaker; it was something infinitely deeper and graver, more terrible than anything she had conceived of before. Something that merited a spiritual death.
She saw herself scarred and spoiled with sin, and then she was made to see how the Lord Jesus with infinite love had taken that loathsome sin upon Himself and borne its punishment that she might go free!
Before Seagrave was finished, the tears were on Constance’s face, and she was so absorbed she did not know it. Oh, more than anything else in life she longed to be at peace with that Savior who had died for her. During Seagrave’s cl
osing prayer wherein he asked if there was even one soul in the audience who had not accepted that great salvation that was bought on the cross by the precious blood of Christ, that God would grant that that one might take Him now and go out of the house a saved soul, her heart cried out wistfully, “Oh, God, I do!”
The meeting was over at last, the throngs who surged up to shake hands and thank Seagrave for his message were all greeted and dismissed with that grave, sweet smile, and he came down the aisle to Constance with eagerness.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said with a smile. “We’ve missed the early train by about half a minute. Do you mind? Of course we could take a taxi all the way home, but how would you like instead to walk in the park a little while? It’s wonderful down there by the river. I went down a number of times after you were gone to college before I sailed and thought how pleasant it would be to come there together sometimes. It’s moonlit tonight. It will be great! It’s only a five-minute taxi ride from here and we’d have a little over an hour before we’d have to drive to the station for the later train. It would be a good quiet place to talk, and cool, too. Would you enjoy it?”
Constance was trembling with the joy and the sadness of it, for she knew she must carry out her purpose of confession now. But her eyes were bright as she lifted them to his face, and there was a ring of gladness in her voice.
Just a few minutes now before she must confess. This beautiful way he was treating her was the way it might have been between them if she had been his sort. Oh, the sweetness of it! Oh, the sadness!
She tried to tell him on the way how much she had enjoyed the meeting! How much his message had meant to her soul, but she could not find the right words and stumbled along with halting speech, feeling more and more how impossible it was because she did not speak his language.
She was trembling visibly as he dismissed the taxi. Now in just a minute or two she must begin her story. There could be no more reprieve.
He drew her arm within his own and they walked slowly along the wide, paved walk amid the cool, earthy smell of ferns and other growing things, the moonlight dripping through the feathery branches of the trees and mingling with the garish blare of the many arc lights along the way.
They passed several benches where people were sitting, some talking, some drowsing, a pair of lovers, the man’s arm about the girl, oblivious of the world. He led her along till they found a seat near the riverbank deeper in the shadow than the rest, a trifle off the beaten path. Their only neighbor was a man stretched at full length on a bench over by the walk, his hat drawn down over his eyes. He was asleep. He would not trouble them. It seemed as if they had withdrawn into a little world of their own.
“I have thought a great deal about the time when perhaps you and I might come here,” said Seagrave as they sat down. “It seems wonderful that my dream has really come true. This is a wonderful place to talk. I have been longing to tell you a lot of things. But you said you had something to tell me. Shall we begin with that first?”
Constance looked up with a frightened little shiver of a smile and knew that her time had come.
Chapter 23
I have to tell you that I am not what you think I am,” she began sorrowfully. “I’ve been miserable ever since I found out how despicable I am, since you came and talked with Doris and since I’ve been reading your little book. I have been so utterly wretched over it that I’ve got to be honest and tell you the whole thing.”
“Yes?” he said and there was something tense and strained in his voice, as if what she had to say would mean a great deal to him.
“Don’t tell me unless it will help you,” he added. “I can trust you.”
“No,” said Constance, “you can’t trust me. You think you can, but that’s just it. You’ve got to know the whole truth. I’ve done something that you will think is terrible! You know just a little part of it, but you’ve got to know the whole. I can’t stand it any longer.”
“Then I shall be glad to listen,” said he gravely.
She put her hand to her throat.
“I wore these pearls tonight to help me to tell you,” she said. “They are real and very valuable. They are matched pearls, and my great-grandfather paid a good many thousands of dollars for them. He gave them to my grandmother the day she united with the church when she was a young girl.”
“Yes?” He looked down upon her with a tender light in his eyes, but she, hurrying on with her story, did not see.
“My grandmother had said for a good many years that she was going to give them to me when I united with the church. However, that church part of it seemed to have dropped out of sight, and later it came to be understood that I was to have them when I graduated from college. I was most eager to have them for an especial occasion, a weekend house party to which I was invited just after Easter, and I got Mother to feel around judiciously and try to get Grandmother to be willing to give me the pearls at Easter instead of waiting for my graduation. Then what was my disappointment to find out when I got home that Grandmother still had her heart set on the pearls being given when I joined the church. Mother found out that she had been deeply disappointed that I had not done so long ago, and when she discovered that my former Sunday school classmates were all joining at Easter, she made it a point that I join also. She seemed to feel it meant almost disgrace that I was not a member of the old church that my great-grandfather had helped to organize. She had even gone to the length of considering whether she would not give the pearls to a little country cousin of mine who could have no possible use for them but who was quite a devoted church worker. Now, can you begin to see what I did?”
“Perhaps.”
“It was Saturday night, and I was going to a dance at the country club. I felt it was archaic to join the church. I didn’t believe in anything. I was just a little pagan. But I went Sunday morning and appeared before the session, consented to everything they asked me, stood up beside you that Easter Sunday morning to confess before the world a Christ in whom I did not even believe! You thought I did it to please my grandmother, and even that was bad enough, and you let me see how false it was, but you did not know that I sold my honesty and mocked God for a string of matched pearls!”
Suddenly Constance felt a rough, coarse hand brush across her shoulder and touch her neck, and looking up, startled, she saw an ugly gun pointing straight into her face, held by a slouchy-looking man with a handkerchief tied over the lower part of his face and an old hat pulled down over his eyes.
“Now you two set right still and don’t you make no noise,” he said in a tone that struck terror to Constance’s heart. “You won’t neither of you get hurt ef you do as I tell ya! Now you, lady, you just hand me over them pretty white babies round your neck and keep still about three minutes and you won’t be interrupted in yer talk anymore.”
Her pearls! Constance’s heart sank! Oh, why had she been such a fool! Sitting here in the open telling how valuable they were! Retribution had come swiftly. But oh, to lose them in this way! How humiliating! It would have been one thing to have to give them back to Grandmother and let her give them to Norma. That she recognized as just. But for her to have wantonly lost them outside of the family, a family heirloom! The thought, added to her fright, was sickening and it came in a flash as one can comprehend a whole chapter of truth in an instant under great stress. She felt paralyzed. She couldn’t open her lips. She couldn’t move her hand.
The man was growing impatient.
“Unfasten them pearls, sister, and give ’em to me! Be quick about it ur I’ll shoot yer young man and snatch ’em, see? I gotcha both covered. Ya can’t do a thing! Hand ’em over! Ya don’t want yer man shot, do ya?”
Constance lifted an unsteady hand toward the clasp of her pearls, but suddenly, just behind her it seemed, there came the sharp, shrill scream of a policeman’s whistle, almost in her ear! It was so loud and close it made both Constance and the bandit start. As if he had been but a bad dream, the intruder slither
ed into the shadows and disappeared. It all happened so quickly that Constance thought she must be losing her mind.
But Seagrave had caught her hand and spoken one word: “Quick!”
On limbs that seemed powerless to bear her she fled with him across the grass, blindly, not seeing her way ahead, her breath coming in quick, frightened gasps, having much ado to keep her footing as Seagrave fairly dragged her along.
It was only a moment and they were back on the safe, bright pavement again where people were coming and going and a traffic cop could be seen half a block away holding up cars while a great green bus swung into its waiting place at the curb.
Straight toward the bus they ran, still hand in hand, Constance breathless and frightened, still holding her other hand tight over the pearls about her neck, and only aware that she was being guided and cared for.
No one noticed them. It was not an infrequent sight just at that spot to see people running for a bus. The world went right on about them.
Then all at once a great comforting policeman loomed ahead of them, and Seagrave drew him aside for a moment and told him what had happened.
The officer put a bright little whistle to his lips and let out that same shrill, terrifying whistle that she had heard behind her ear down on the bench by the river when the bandit was ordering her to hand over her pearls, and the chills went down Constance’s back.
She couldn’t hear all that Seagrave and the officer were saying, but she saw the policeman look toward her pearls comprehendingly. She glanced around fearsomely, half expecting to see the bandit lurking off in the shadows.