“She was so pleased, Constance,” said Mary Courtland. “She’s been all strained up over this ever since she heard you were coming home at Easter and the girls in your class were all joining the church.”
“Well, I suppose it was an easy way to please her,” laughed the girl. “Of course I wasted the whole morning, but then it was worth it. Mother, it’s to be simply great having those pearls right now before college closes.”
“You forget, Connie,” put in Frank, “the comely giant. You wouldn’t have met him, remember, if you hadn’t gone to church. Pearls and a giant all in one morning. I’ll say the time wasn’t wasted even if poor Ruddy Van did have to cool his heels at the country club with Mildred Allison.”
But nobody was listening to Frank. His father was reading the morning paper, his sister acted as if he didn’t exist, and his mother went right on talking, deeming it the best way to get rid of the pest to just ignore him.
“You’ll have to be very careful about those pearls, you know, dear,” her mother warned Constance. “They are valuable of course. Your grandmother will probably tell you before you leave just how valuable they are. You’d better arrange to keep them in the college safe. And be sure you don’t tell people indiscriminately that they are real. For really they are very valuable.”
“Yes, and Connie,” chimed Frank again in his nicest tone, “you better be careful about that good-looking giant, too. He might turn out to be valuable yow. You never can tell when you have the real thing in a man right under your thumb, you know.”
Something in Constance’s mind clicked at that, but she went right on ignoring her brother, even though she did register a wonder whether he might not happen to be right concerning this particular young man.
Then Ruddy Van Arden slid up to the door in his new gray roadster and Constance, with a breath of relief, hurried off after her racket and presently was gone into a great bright day of her own world. A world that had nothing to do with odd strangers who made odd remarks and gave lovely gifts of sweet wildflowers done up in fine linen handkerchiefs that smelled of lavender and had a hand-embroidered initial G in the corner.
All day long Constance enjoyed herself, playing tennis with Ruddy Van Arden in the morning, taking lunch at the country club with a party of young people, golf in the afternoon with Sam Acker from Harvard, then another eighteen holes with Ruddy to make up for Sunday morning, a hurried dinner at home with her stately little grandmother in black taffeta watching her across the table in her new rose evening frock and the pearls, a rush to the theater with a Mr. Montgomery whom she had met at luncheon and with whom she attended a play then late supper at a roof garden, and home long after midnight. Constance really had very little time to think of hepaticas and handsome, presumptuous strangers. The little hepaticas in their crystal bowl on the dining room table were all curled shut into sweet buds against the lacey green of the maidenhair when she stopped in the dining room for a drink of water before going up to her room. Little sleepy buds. Probably they would be dead in the morning. Flowers of a day. Like the handsome stranger-acquaintance of a morning.
As she tumbled into bed, Constance remembered the half-appointment for the morning. Half past five! Well, she never would make it now even if she wanted to, and of course she hadn’t meant to any of the time.
And then she fell asleep.
But strangely enough, a young early robin, or was it a starling or some other bird with a heavenly voice, flew down on a twig beside her open window and trilled out a bit of celestial song just at a quarter past five. The clear sound dipped deep into her sleep and brought Constance back to earth and day again. She tried to turn over and go to sleep again, tried to tell herself that of course it was absurd to think of getting up at that hour and tramping off to the woods with an utter stranger who said and did odd things. But all the time that fussy little bird by the windowsill trilled out a love song of blue hepaticas growing on a hillside against a tiny forest of maidenhair blowing in the breeze, dew pearled and lovely with the rising sun upon them.
The morning breeze blew the curtain in at the window, blew sweet breath of flower-laden zephyrs into her face, reviving her, and suddenly she wanted to see that flowery hillside very much and to see if that young stranger was really as interesting as he had seemed the day before. She opened one eye, stole a glance at her clock, and then she was wide awake, stealing out her room. She found the little nymph-green knitted dress that fitted an early trip to the woods and the soft brown suede tramping shoes, gave a hasty rumpling to the big gold waves of her hair, and was ready.
She thought she heard footsteps coming down the pavement in the stillness of the morning as she crept into the hall and down the stairs, softly, not to wake that dreadful brother of hers, and when she opened the front door ever so silently there was the stranger lingering down by the group of hemlocks beyond the daffodils. He gave her his brilliant smile and a quiet lifting of his hat for welcome and seemed to know they would go quietly and not disturb the sleeping town as they walked through it.
Out beyond sight of her father’s house Constance drew a breath of relief. Her brother hadn’t wakened. It wouldn’t matter whether anyone else saw her, although it suddenly occurred to her that it was rather odd to be walking off with a stranger at this early hour in the morning.
“This is simply great of you,” said Seagrave, looking down upon her, his eyes full of light. “I’ve been wondering all night if you would come.”
“Why, so have I,” gurgled Constance with a breath of a laugh. “Or no, not wondering,” she corrected herself, “I was very sure I wouldn’t of course.” She laughed. “You see I really haven’t time. I’m leaving in about three hours.”
“I know,” he said gravely. “I’m sorry.”
“I just couldn’t resist the desire to see where those darling flowers live when they are at home,” she said quickly to hide the commotion she felt in her mind at the serious way he took her going. This really was all wrong, she told herself, but it was fun, and of course it would soon be over.
All too soon they arrived at Hepatica Hill and dropped down to worship the beauty. It seemed to Constance that she had never been in such a beautiful spot before, and she drank her fill of the day and the hour, the sky, and the wonderful flowers.
Then they grew silent, sitting on the hillside with the blue flowers at their feet and the fringe of fern beside them. Looking off over the valley, the town in the distance, taking deep breaths of fine air, thrilling with the song of a bird in the top of a tall tree, they were filled with the awe of the morning.
Suddenly he turned to her with that grave, sweet smile she had seen first on his face at the church.
“How long have you been saved?” he asked, as simply as if he had asked how long before her college would be over.
Constance looked up in a great wonder and stared at him.
“Saved?” she echoed, and again, “Saved? I—don’t know just what you mean? Saved from what?”
He gave her a startled look, and then a great gentleness came upon his face. As if she had been a little child he explained, simply, “Yesterday we united with the church,” he said slowly.
“Yes?” she said with a sharp, startled catch in her voice and giving him a keen look. Had he seen through her playacting? Did he know how loath she had been to parade before the world in that way?
“You united on profession of your faith, not by letter from another church as I did. I was wondering—perhaps I have no right to ask on such a short acquaintance—but I was interested to know if you had been a Christian a long time or had just come to know the Lord?”
He waited in a sweet silence for her answer, and Constance looked up and then down in confusion.
“I—oh, I—why—!” and then she stopped with a half-embarrassed laugh. “I’m not very familiar with those phrases you have used,” she said, and tried to give a glibness to her speech. “They don’t talk much of such things in the college I attend. But I suppose you must
mean something like what they used to call in old-fashioned camp meetings being converted? Well, I’m afraid then I’ll be quite a disappointment. I haven’t really ever given much thought to these things. You see, it was rather sprung upon me, this thing of uniting with the church—” She glanced up with a lift of her dark lashes that gave such a piquancy to her lovely face, and the look she saw in his eyes made her hurry on anxiously, speaking rapidly, trying to get the old-time snap into her words and somehow not making it.
She hurried on, determined to make a clean sweep of it and end this nonsense. After all, the truth was best. She hated to pose as something she was not. That was why she had not wanted to join the church. It seemed to her hypocritical.
“You see, my grandmother was determined I should join. The rest of the girls in the Sunday school class to which I used to belong were joining and she simply had her heart set on my joining, too.”
The young man was so still that she felt uncomfortable. She was afraid to look up and see the look in his eyes. She somehow felt a disapproval and she did not like it. Her young men friends were not apt to express disapproval of her. She resented it. She tried to put on her worldly drawl.
“I didn’t see joining the church. It seemed rather archaic to me. I tried to get by without it, but it simply didn’t go down. I had to either give in and join or hurt my little old sweet grandmother—” She finished her explanation flippantly and looked up with what was meant to be a daring glance at her companion, and she found such a look of sorrow in his eyes that her tone failed miserably. After an instant she dropped her eyes again and sat there, with all the still breezes and the vaulted sky and the blue bed of flowers at her feet dropping away from her and leaving her a lone, little, arrogant atom in a world that had just been full of song and sunshine and now seemed to have withdrawn from her its joy.
After what seemed a long while, the young man beside her uttered a single syllable, just a long drawn breath of a word that almost sobbed as it became audible, like the sound of a soul who was pulling from his own heart a barbed weapon that had gone deep and was trying to be brave, but the pain of it made his breath quiver.
“Oh!”
Love Endures
Grace Livingston Hill Classics
Available in 2013
The White Flower
Duskin
Matched Pearls
April Gold
Amorelle
Rainbow Cottage
Ladybird
The Gold Shoe
The Substitute Guest
Kerry
Coming March 2013 …
LOVE ENDURES
3-in-1 Collection of Classic Romance
Treasure an exclusive collection of three timeless stories from America’s best-loved storyteller, Grace Livingston Hill.
A stranger salvages a wedding gone awry for one desperate bride in The Beloved Stranger.
Believing he is a murderer, a young man hides his identity in A New Name.
A rebellious teenager’s escape brings more than she bargained for in The Prodigal Girl.
With charming 1920s settings, these beloved romances capture the enduring power of faith—and love.
Grace Livingston Hill, DUSKIN
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