The officer was writing down something in his notebook. Seagrave took a card out of his pocket and gave it to him. Then three other policemen came hurrying from different directions to answer the whistle. A word and they were scattered hastily, one off in the direction of the bench by the river, the other two sliding away among the shrubbery like shadows on their rubber-soled boots.
Presently Seagrave came back to her where she stood waiting and put her in the bus. There was only one double seat vacant, and Constance was glad to sink down into the deep puffy cushion. Seagrave reached for her hand that lay in her lap and held it firmly in a strong, reassuring grasp as he sat down beside her and, leaning over, peered into her face.
“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.
“Oh yes.” Constance tried to smile but it was a wan and feeble attempt, and her voice was still shaky.
“I shall never forgive myself that I let you in for that by my foolish suggestion.”
“Oh, it was all my fault!” said Constance with a little catch in her voice that might easily have been an incipient sob. “I ought to have known better than to wear them. I ought not to have talked—” and she looked around furtively. “Oh, I’m such an utter fool!”
“No!” said Seagrave gently, speaking very quietly and giving her hand another tender pressure. “Please don’t say that. I was entirely to blame. I ought to have realized that in this strange, uncertain age in which we are living it is not safe to idle about in lonely places with a lady even so early in the evening and so near to city traffic. We have been wonderfully cared for. That was a great escape!”
“Oh yes!” breathed Constance, shivering suddenly at the memory of that sinister gun. “But I don’t quite understand yet how it all happened. What became of our policeman, the one who whistled and drove the man away from us? You don’t suppose he is in any danger, do you? You don’t think we should have waited awhile to thank him, do you?”
“There wasn’t any policeman,” said Seagrave, turning a boyish grin toward her.
“There wasn’t any?” said Constance, amazed, wondering if her ears had deceived her in the general excitement. “But who whistled? It was right behind my ear!”
“I did!” said Seagrave. “It’s a trick I learned long ago. I used to have all kinds of fun as a kid holding up traffic when someone was trying to speed by me. I enjoyed seeing them stop and hunt in vain for the cop who had stopped them.”
“But you didn’t move a muscle of your face. I could see you out of the side of my eye.”
“I know,” grinned Seagrave. “It’s a part of the trick to do it so that no one can tell where it comes from. You see, it was the only weapon I had at hand. A kind of trivial thing to venture, I admit, in such a serious situation, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do just at that stage of the game. I didn’t dare try to wrest the gun out of his hand as I should likely have ventured if I had been alone, lest it would go off in your face. And I knew that the whistle was likely to startle him at least and perhaps throw him off his guard, so that I could get a better chance at him. I scarcely hoped he would fade out of the picture quite so easily, but I guess it must really have scared him.”
“Oh!” said Constance, suddenly taking the whole thing in. “Oh!” And suddenly she began to laugh uncontrollably, to check the tears that threatened to undo her.
And then suddenly they were at the station and had to get out of the bus.
There was still a half hour before the train was scheduled to leave, but the train was open and they found seats and comparative privacy. Only a few people were in the car, away up at the other end, and they could talk without interruption.
Constance sank into the seat wearily and put her head back, closing her eyes for an instant. Seagrave eyed her anxiously.
“I shall always blame myself for having let you in for all this,” he said in troubled tones.
Constance opened her eyes at that and sat up energetically.
“Oh, don’t say that,” she protested earnestly. “I’m glad it happened! Now it’s over, I’m glad for having gone through it. It was what I deserved to lose my pearls. And they would have been gone if it hadn’t been for you. You saved them for me! I don’t feel as if I had a right to them anymore. I’m glad, glad that I saw it all just as it must be in God’s eyes. I think it took that gun to complete the revelation of myself. I found a little story in the Testament you gave me, a story about a man who found a pearl of great price and went and sold all that he had and bought it. I read it a great many times, and I began to think that was like myself. I sold my finer feelings and standards when I joined the church to get those pearls.”
“Ah!” said Seagrave with his eyes alight. “But don’t you know what that pearl is and what the story means? That pearl is the Church, the precious bride of Christ, the Church for which He gave His life. It is a beautiful story when one understands it all. But speaking of pearls, you know how they are formed, don’t you?”
“In oysters,” said Constance, wondering.
“Yes, but they are made by wounds. An injury done to the animal itself is what makes it, a grain of sand, perhaps, that gets inside the shell and presses against the soft body of the animal. And then the mother of pearl, or nacre as it is called, which is really the lining of the shell, is deposited layer upon layer about the grain of sand till a pearl is formed. The pearl is thus, as someone has said, an answer to an injury. The offending object itself becomes, through the work of the injured one, a precious and beauteous gem. It is a picture of God’s divine grace. And pearls are of different degrees of value and beauty, dependent not upon the grain of sand that gets into the oyster but upon the number of layers of nacre that are wrapped about it. This answers to the greatness of the grace that God has bestowed upon us.”
“How wonderful!” said Constance softly, her eyes alight as she watched his face.
“And it is not the things that you have done,” went on Seagrave, “the depth of your own sinfulness, the measure of your own unworthiness, that makes you fit or unfit for belonging to the Church of Christ, His heavenly bride. It is the beauty and glory of Him we crucified by our sin that is put upon us as a robe to clothe us. It is not any righteousness that we could have that would make us fit for such a wondrous calling. It is Christ’s righteousness, put upon us and enfolding us, that makes us a church and a worthy bride for Him, and made of it a pearl to adorn His glory.”
Constance’s eyes were upon him, her mind drinking in all that he said. “How marvelous you make it!” she exclaimed. “And you think He could take me and make me fit to belong to His wonderful Church?”
“He certainly can!” he answered in a ringing voice. “Have you accepted Him for your Savior?”
“Yes,” said Constance softly, her lashes drooping over her cheeks shyly. “Tonight, while you were praying!”
“Thank God!” he said, earnestly, his hand coming out and enfolding hers once more with a strong, thrilling pressure. “This is what I have been praying for since that morning on the hillside.”
“I hoped you were,” she said trying to keep her lips from quivering. “You promised to, you know, after Doris died. And”—she hesitated shyly and went on haltingly—“and you are not ashamed to have such an unworthy one as I am for a friend?”
“Ashamed?” asked Seagrave wonderingly. “Who am I to be ashamed of you? Don’t you know I am just another sinner who has been saved by His glorious grace? And you say you have accepted that offer of grace yourself? He has become your Savior, too. Then you, too, are justified by the blood of Christ which was shed to cleanse your sin, and you are covered by the righteousness of Christ Himself. You are now a member of His precious Church, His pearl of great price. You are no longer unworthy.”
“That seems too beautiful to be true,” said Constance thoughtfully.
“But it is gloriously true nevertheless. We both belong to the wonderful body of Christ!”
“I cannot get used to it!” said Constance wond
eringly. “It does not seem possible that such a thing can be. Oh, you don’t know how I have suffered! I was afraid to tell you what I had done because I couldn’t bear to lose this wonderful friendship with you. And yet I had to. God wouldn’t let me keep it to myself any longer. I had to tell you, even though I was sure I would lose your friendship.”
“Friendship!” exclaimed Seagrave, giving her a mysterious look. “Friendship! “
Then suddenly the train came to a halt and the brakeman drowned out any other words that might have been spoken by calling out their station.
They got to their feet in a hurry, amazed that they had reached home so quickly, and he helped her out as if she were the most precious thing on earth.
There seemed to be no taxi at the station, or perhaps some more alert traveler had seized the only one, but those two did not mind. It was not far, and the pathway seemed all paved in silver moonlight as they started.
Seagrave drew her arm within his own and gathered her hand in a close grasp.
“Now,” said he. “You precious little girl, it is high time you understood me. Even if you may think it is too early in our acquaintance, I’ve got to tell you. Friendship! Darling, don’t you know I’ve loved you from the minute I saw you? Don’t you know my heart has been crying out to God for you day and night ever since that Easter Sunday morning when I saw you in that little white dress with the pearls, standing among the lilies around God’s table?”
“But,” said Constance tremblingly, “your little book says, ‘Come ye out and be separate!’ and I was afraid, terribly afraid that when you knew what I was—”
“Dear heart! I know! But I left all that with Him. I knew He would save you or give me the strength to go alone. But oh, I’ve prayed! Darling, I’ve prayed! But—you say you were afraid? Did you then care a little, too?”
They had been coming slowly up the walk to her father’s home, and now they stopped in the shade of the great lilac bushes that arched the way.
“Care?” said Constance. “Care? I’ve cared so much that I’ve drenched my pillow with tears night after night. I’ve cared so violently that I made a fool of myself trying to make myself forget you because I was sure you could never care for one like me. Care? Oh yes, I’ve cared ever since that first morning on the hillside with the little blue flowers.”
His arms were about her now, her face buried in the clear roughness of his coat. But he lifted her face and laid his lips on hers.
“My darling, my precious beloved! Tell me you love me,” he said. “I want to hear you say it.”
“I love you! Oh, I do love you!” she murmured softly, lifting her glad, sweet face to his.
And there in the shadow of the lilacs, just at the foot of the steps of the big colonial mansion, with moonlight splashing all around wherever a lilac leaf would let one moonbeam through, they stood and pledged their love. Then Seagrave laid his lips reverently upon hers again.
“Friendship!” He laughed softly. “Friendship, I’ll say! Oh, my beloved!”
It was just at that critical instant that the front door of the house, three steps above where they stood, opened slowly, noiselessly, and swung back, revealing in the dim light of the hall chandelier the brother of the bride-to-be, clad in a violently striped bathrobe of magenta and buff, his feet below the green and purple of his pajama legs thrust into Pullman slippers, his hair sticking seven ways for Sunday, and his eyes blinking with sleep.
For a full minute he stood there silently blinking till they became suddenly aware of his presence, and then he remarked carelessly, “Oh yeah?”
Constance turned with quickly crimsoning cheeks.
“Oh, Frank, you wretch! I might have expected as much! Graham, this is my pest of a brother. I hope you’ll excuse his intrusion. Frank, this is—we are—!”
“I quite understand,” said Frank, bending low in an elaborate bow. “It is all too evident, Sister! But I’m glad to be the first of the family to welcome—that is—”
He paused with a grin.
“What I was going to remark is I couldn’t have picked a better brother-in-law, kid, not if I’d gone around the earth to choose. He’s all right, and I’m with ya, kid! Come on in! There’s a whole chocolate cake in the cake box and plenty of ginger ale on the ice. Come on in and let’s celebrate.”
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (1865–1947) is known as the pioneer of Christian romance. Grace wrote over one hundred faith-inspired books during her lifetime. When her first husband died, leaving her with two daughters to raise, writing became a way to make a living, but she always recognized storytelling as a way to share her faith in God. She has touched countless lives through the years and continues to touch lives today. Her books feature moving stories, delightful characters, and love in its purest form.
Grace Livingston Hill, MATCHED PEARLS
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