Getting back to college again was always an interesting occurrence. There was the happy stir of fellow students’ greetings, the unpacking and getting in order again, the running back and forth to other rooms to chat and hear the news, to tell all that had befallen one during the few days’ absence. In the excitement Constance snapped back to normal and was as cheerful and flippant as the rest. The hillside and the stranger and the lovely blue flowers, even the steady, earnest brown eyes, were forgotten. Constance was her former self again.
It was not until Doris Hampden, her roommate, after a burst of confidence about a new admirer she had met at a dance, said, “Well, Connie, what’s the news? Any great thrills? Meet any new men?” that Seagrave’s face came back to her and his eyes seemed to be smiling at her again.
The color, to her utmost confusion, flamed into her cheeks without warning. She was not a girl given to showing emotion and it annoyed her.
“Oh yes,” she owned in a drawl of indifference, “one perfectly stunning one, but wait, Dorrie, I haven’t shown you my pearls yet.”
“Your pearls? The real pearls! You princess! How come?”
Constance twisted a little grimace. “Oh, my grandmother gave them to me,” she said lightly.
“But I thought they were to be a graduating present if you got them. You weren’t at all sure when you went home, you know.”
“Well, there they are,” said Constance, proudly exhibiting them, “but I had to pay the price.”
“What do you mean ‘pay the price’?” asked her friend curiously. “Was there a string attached to them?”
“Yes,” said Constance, shrugging her shoulders, “a theological string. Grandmother got these pearls herself the day she joined the church, and she had set her heart on giving them to me when I joined the church. I found she was going to be quite stubborn about it. There was even danger she might give them to my country cousin who happens to be quite religiously inclined, so I gave in. I joined the church last Sunday. What do you think of that after all my noble renunciation of the faith of my fathers?”
“You don’t mean it, Connie; you really joined the church? Say, isn’t that rich? But I don’t blame you, of course, for pearls like that. They’re wonderful! I’d have done it myself, of course. What harm could it do? It doesn’t mean a thing, of course.”
“Of course not,” said Constance and felt suddenly a pair of steady brown eyes upon her soul, a keen, disappointed look in them.
“But to think of you standing up before the congregation joining church! Con Courtland. It’s a scream! What’ll the girls say when they hear it?”
“It’s none of their business, of course,” said Constance gravely. Somehow she wasn’t enjoying the sensation as much as she had anticipated when she had thought of going back to college and telling the girls what she had done. She had thought it a good joke at first. But now somehow she shrank from it. Was she always going to have that man with his brown eyes following her around censoring her acts? She must certainly snap out of this and do it quickly.
So she joined in the laugh as two other girls came into the room and Doris proceeded to tell the tale and show the pearls. She even added grotesque touches, describing her nunlike appearance in white and the throng of her former Sunday school mates, who were not her friends any longer. As the thorn in her conscience stabbed her and the prick went deeper, she grew more flippantly eloquent, until she had the girls in screams of laughter and the news was noised abroad that Constance Courtland had joined the church. They all flocked in to hear the tale and view the pearls and added each her witty sarcasm, until suddenly Constance felt as if she were going to cry. She seemed to have cast aside all tender ties to home and family and fine, true things. She knew she had said things she did not mean. She knew that if Seagrave could have heard her he would have turned away with hurt, disappointed eyes and would never have wanted to see her again. And he had said he would pray for her! Perhaps he was even now praying for her! The thought stabbed her like a knife.
Suddenly she snatched the pearls from Rose Mellen’s hands and put them away, snapping sharply the little case that held them.
“Come, girls,” she said breezily, “let’s go down and take a walk.”
So they all trooped down to the campus and went cheerfully arm in arm down the broad cement walk. But Constance’s heart was very sore. She was deeply ashamed of herself. She said bitterly to herself that she wouldn’t wear her pearls. They were spoiled for her, utterly spoiled by the false light in which she had allowed them to place her.
She went to bed early that night professing to have a headache and, turning her face to the wall, began to think again about Seagrave and all that he had said, and most of all about the steady, true voice and the deep look in his eyes and the way he had seemed to expect the best and finest things of her. She felt somehow degraded by her own acts.
Never in her life before had Constance felt that sense of utter humiliation. It would sweep over her at times with a strange, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the hot blood of shame would burn in her cheeks against the cool pillow. It seemed to be an actual physical ailment. It fairly choked her with a sense of her own worthlessness as she lay there with her face burning in the darkness.
She tried to summon her former self-respect, to call to mind that she belonged to two very old, respected families. It ill became a Courtland or a Van Vleck to discount herself. She had always been respected. Her family had always been respected. She had not done anything to merit this inferiority complex. She had merely lived up to the code of the day. And she had humored a dear, foolish, little old grandmother, pleased her beyond anything, and got the lovely pearls in return. Why should she have this feeling that she had somehow erred in a moral way?
Why, she had always been almost ridiculously moral in comparison to her comrades, and they were considered perfectly all right girls anywhere. Yet they did a lot of things that she wouldn’t do. Surely she wasn’t to blame that she couldn’t believe in some fusty old traditions in which her grandmother was brought up. And just for that should she hurt the dear old lady? If, as she firmly believed—or had believed until she got all upset by that fanatical stranger—there wasn’t anything in this religious stuff but traditions and dogmas, what harm had there been in going through the gestures just to satisfy Grandmother? It wasn’t her fault either that the pearls were a part of the business. It was just her luck.
So she reasoned with herself hour after hour and tossed cautiously upon her bed lest Doris across the room should hear her. And Doris finally did rouse sleepily and say, “What’s the matter, Con? Have you got a toothache again? I thought you had it out!”
“I did!” snapped Constance, taking a deep breath. “I guess I ate something that didn’t agree with me!”
“Better get up and take a dose of soda,” advised Doris, turning over her pillow and returning to her dreams.
But Constance continued to toss, and just when she would think she had exorcised this demon of wakefulness and would be dropping off to restfulness, Seagrave’s face would appear before her, his eyes looking trustfully at her as they had done on the hillside that morning. No, decidedly, Constance was not at rest.
Chapter 5
She took herself severely to task next morning when, having at last dropped into a troubled sleep, she woke to find herself very late for the day and was dressing with haste and annoyance.
“This is ridiculous!” she told herself. “It’s just a case of nerves! I didn’t have enough exercise when I was at home. I ought to have played tennis all Sunday morning instead of sitting in that melancholy church service and getting all upset. I always said religion was mainly a case of emotions, and how I know it! Well, this has got to stop! How absurd to let a fanatical stranger get hold of me in this way. What do I care what he thinks of me?”
And then suddenly she knew in her heart that it wasn’t just what the stranger thought; it was this strange feeling he had given her that there was a God
, and that God was looking at her and thinking about her and was not pleased with her attitude.
“And that, too, is absurd!” she said aloud. “There likely isn’t any God, nothing but a Power somewhere, and if there is, He wouldn’t bother about me. Of course Grandmother believes He does, and that likely has affected my imagination. I declare, it’s a crime to teach little children such unreasonable dogmas!”
Later in the morning there came a dainty package addressed in Frank’s scrawling handwriting, which, when opened, proved to be a tin box containing the last surviving blue hepaticas done up in wet moss.
Constance was alone in her room when she opened them, and a sudden constriction caught her throat, a flashing memory of the giver as he had stood with his hands full of them looking down at her that morning, a breath of the hillside where they had sat and watched the wind blowing the little frail blue cups, and the maidenhair fern bending low in the breeze over them like loving nurses over the baby flowers. Something almost like a sob caught in her throat, and she put her face down for an instant on the brave little drooping blossoms and cried a few tears, a great wistfulness coming over her.
An instant later she dashed the tears angrily from her face, and going to the open window she threw the flowers out and down behind the shrubs that grew around the dormitory. A great panic came over her lest Doris should come and find her weeping over dead flowers. Doris could make a lot out of a thing like that.
She hurried to splash water on her face, dab it expertly with a soft towel, and then apply powder deftly till all traces of her recent emotion were obliterated.
As she turned away from the mirror, she experienced a wild wish that she could as easily erase the memory of those flowers from her heart.
But she went over to her desk with a firm resolve to get to work and drive this nonsense out of her mind. When Doris came in a few minutes later with her hands full of letters, she was working away at her thesis.
“Listen, Connie,” cried Doris, sitting down beside the desk, “pay attention! I’ve got a letter!”
“A letter?” said Constance, looking up coolly. “Is that unusual? You seem to have many letters. And really I’m awfully busy, Dorrie!”
“But this is a special letter!” said Doris, sparkling. “It’s from Casper Coulter!”
“Again?” said Constance coldly with disapproval in her voice. “I thought you said you were done with him.”
“Oh, I am as far as that goes,” laughed Doris. “I gave him back his pin before Easter, but it doesn’t seem to faze him in the least. After all, why shouldn’t I have a good time with him? He understands that I’m not committed to him. Besides, Connie, he certainly shows a girl a good time. But anyhow that’s not the point. He’s coming down for the dance on the weekend. He just pestered the life out of me. Besides, he has a new car that is simply sublime. I couldn’t resist.”
“He’ll get drunk!” said Constance with a lifting of her chin and a slight curl of her lip.
“No, he won’t!” said Doris. “He promised me! He hasn’t been drinking at all since Easter!”
“He says so, I suppose,” commented Constance loftily.
“Yes, he says so, but Sam Warner says so, too. And anyhow, that’s not the point. He’s bringing a perfectly stunning man down with him, and he wants to know if you’ll let him take you to the dance. Now, Connie, don’t begin that I-am-better-than-thou frown! Wait till you hear. He’s not Casper’s chum. He’s ages older than Casp. He graduated four years ago. He’s a perfectly stunning man! A real thrill! He’s dark and interesting and tall. I saw him once while I was in New York last week, and Casper pointed him out to me. He’s written a couple of successful plays, and he’s all kinds of clever, musical and artistic, and awfully popular. Casper is just crazy about him. He’s your line, clever and intellectual and all that.”
“I’m sure I ought to be greatly honored that Casper Coulter considers me clever and intellectual,” said Constance haughtily, “but really, I must decline to entertain his friends. I just can’t stand Casper’s kind of men.”
“Now, Connie, don’t be horrid. Just because you’ve joined church don’t go and get disagreeable. You’ve practically got to do this for me, because, you see, I told Casper it would be all right and for him to bring him if he could. And you won’t go back on me now after I’ve given my word, and he’s already been asked.”
Constance flashed a look of annoyance at her roommate.
“You had no right in the world to do that, Doris. You know Casper Coulter is not my kind, and I don’t want to have anything to do with him or his friends. I don’t like to go with strangers either. I hate this way of forcing a man to go with a girl he hasn’t even met. I’ve always made it a rule to go only when the man himself asks me. I don’t approve of somebody else picking out partners. And you needn’t give that nasty fling about joining the church. You know it has nothing to do with that. I just don’t like Casper’s crowd or his way of doing things.”
“Now listen, Connie,” said Doris, settling down earnestly to plead her cause. “You’re all mistaken about this man. Casper has been telling him a lot about you, how beautiful and clever you are, and he’s wild to meet you. It seems he saw you last year in the distance and has been asking Casper to bring him down ever since. He calls you the girl with the gorgeous gold hair. And Connie, you needn’t go again if you don’t like him, but you won’t let me down this time, will you? I’ve told the girls he’s coming down to take you, and they’re all crazy to meet him. Rose Mellen went to the opening night of his first play and she says it was a wonder, just full of thrills and pathos. And you know, Connie, if you turn him down flat that way, the girls will all say it’s because you’ve got religious.”
“I don’t know why it should matter to me what the girls think,” said Constance coldly, though she knew in her heart that it did. “If Rose Mellen is so crazy about him, why don’t you let him take Rose? Her hair is a much brighter gold than mine.”
“Because Rose Mellen is going with Pat Fraley, of course. And anyway it’s you the man wants to meet, not Rose. She’s not his type at all. You don’t know how interesting he is, Connie. It’s not every day a girl can meet a man who is crazy about her before he even knows her.”
In the end Constance gave in and promised, as Doris had been confident she would. But Doris would have been amazed if she had known what made her do it. Just the sudden sight of a little, withered blue flower lying on the rug at her foot, a little faded flower that had slipped away from the rest and remained behind to linger with a memory of a windswept hillside and the dawn of a dewy sunlit morning.
Constance saw it with a dart of remembrance, put out her foot quickly, casually, and covered the little crumbling flower, grinding it into the rug. But the vision of the tall stranger with the light of the morning in his eyes and the blue flowers in his hand had done its work. All her worries of the night before seemed suddenly to rush back upon her. Well, why not one stranger as well as another? And perhaps this new one would be able to drive out the vision of the other and bring peace back to her soul again.
So, reluctantly, she consented, telling Doris firmly that she would do it this one time, but that she must never again make any promises for her.
Doris hugged her ecstatically and went joyously on her way to her next class. Constance tried to bring her mind back to her thesis, but it would whirl on in circles until she got up in despair and carefully brushed every vestige of the little dead flower from the rug. Then she sat down and went vigorously to work at her thesis once more, telling herself that she would simply refuse to think at all of that incident of Easter. She would plunge into work and play—any play that offered itself during the few weeks that remained—and get rid of this ridiculous obsession.
So with the lingo of the classroom and the patter of the campus, Constance lashed her startled conscience into quiescence once more and went forth into each day welcoming any diversion whether of work or play that would make her for
get utterly her doldrums, as she called them.
But college life began to sweep in a strong tide and left no room for repining. There was much to be done in the next few weeks, for commencement was almost upon them. There were rehearsals and speeches and invitations and clothes to discuss and plan. Each day was more than full. Shoes and gloves, white dresses and rainbow-colored dresses, caps and gowns, and all the other paraphernalia of commencement. There were class meetings galore, presents for teachers and graduating classmates, fraternity meetings and business, much discussion about pledging new members. It was all most absorbing and fascinating.
Constance was swept along with the rest with little time for dreaming or harking back to Seagrave and what had happened at Easter.
One day she asked Doris: “Well, how about this thriller that I’m to take to the dance Saturday night? You’ve raved a lot about him, but you haven’t even told me his name.”
“Oh, surely I have!” said Doris, laughing. “It’s Thurlow Phelps Wayne.” Doris pronounced the syllables impressively.
“Why the Phelps?” asked Constance dryly. “Wasn’t Thurlow enough to uphold the Wayne prestige?”
“Oh, you, you make me tired!” said Doris in a vexed tone. “Here I’ve gone and got you a man with a real background and you make fun of him before you’ve even seen him.”
“Well, isn’t that better than doing it after I’ve seen him?” mocked Constance. It still went against the grain to take up with any of Casper Coulter’s friends. She felt that Casper Coulter was a bad influence in Doris’s life and she could see that more and more. Doris was becoming deeply interested in him.
“Well, just wait until you see him, that’s all!” said Doris petulantly. “And you may as well know that the Phelps is distinguished. He belongs to the old Phelps family of New England, an old, old family and quite notable. I believe they were all literary, and the Thurlows were distinguished, too. I forget for what. But they are awfully smart and quite popular.”
MATCHED PEARLS Page 5