So Constance, in spite of all her activity, was not happy and was constantly seeking more excitement in the hope of relief from her restlessness.
Delancey Whittemore more than any of the others seemed able to fill her days with excitement and interest.
Perhaps there was something in the fact that all the other girls were crazy about him and were jealous of her for having interested him more than anyone else in their circle. And Constance, of course, was flattered.
For one thing, he had an air of mystery about him which flung a mantle of romance about him. And then no one seemed to know much of his history. It was said that he had traveled much and could, on occasion, tell strange stories of his experiences. He talked well, too, and seemed always at his ease. He intrigued Constance. Sometimes treating her as if she were an old friend of years’ standing whom he might at any moment take into his confidence, a friend to whom he could talk or not as the whim seized him. And perhaps this was a relief to Constance, who often in his company found her own thoughts straying to matters of her own life, while he seemed to be musing on profound problems, his eyes great dark pools of what might be sorrow or remorse.
Yet there were other times when he startlingly reminded her of Thurlow Wayne, that same thrilling look into her eyes, that same electric touch as he helped her into his car or danced with her; and when he was like that, a strange fright seemed to possess her, and she drew herself away from him and answered him coldly. She did not like him when he was like that. He reminded her too keenly how she had once despised herself, and just now she was attempting to whitewash over all her sins and become flawless in her own eyes so that when Seagrave should return she would not feel it incumbent upon her to confess.
But Whittemore never forced himself upon her. He seemed to sense her coolness and became himself at once so formal that she presently forgot he had been anything else, began to think it was all her imagination, told herself that she was getting hypersensitive since Doris’s death. Probably it had been a case of mere nerves even the night she went to the dance with Thurlow Wayne. Then she would fling herself into frivolities with renewed fervor, and there grew up a comradely fellowship with Whittemore that pleased her more and more as he took her into his confidence and asked her help in the metamorphosing of his estate. What girl does not enjoy having her whims carried out in marble and landscape and furnishings with unlimited money to make it possible? So Constance more and more became involved in the scheme of things at the Whittemore place.
The days passed on one after another, and no word came from Seagrave. Sometimes she counted the hours when she might hope to have a reply to her note and then told herself how foolish she was and sought to forget the hour and the day. What was Seagrave to her? A few forget-me-nots, what were they? She had thanked him; that was all that was necessary. And maybe by the time he came home she would have so successfully forgotten him and his words that the matter of the pearls would no longer worry her.
Delancey Whittemore was most attentive. He came to the country club every day, and often he came to the house after her. She wondered that Frank did not notice and remark, but Frank was helping Dillie make a landscape garden now, studying colors and forms of beds. He was over at the Fairchild place every waking minute.
So Constance went her way unbothered through the week. She got up early to find something interesting to tell her girls on Sunday morning and then frequently played golf all Sunday afternoon, after the manner of the pagans round about her, and thought nothing of it. She was rather amused and pleased to find that her Sunday school class was not such a drag after all.
They were sweet, pretty things and looked adoringly at her. They simply swarmed out to receive her and tell her how delighted they were to have a new teacher and to have that new teacher be herself. Constance, flattered, smiled at them all and told them what rare times they were going to have together. She suggested a possible tea or something in the near future. Then she went her way into the bright new week and told herself she was getting on famously.
Delancey Whittemore had evolved a pageant that was to be held on his estate as soon as ever it was in shape to receive guests. He had put the house into the hands of an interior decorator, and he frequently took Constance out there to approve and suggest. More flattery. Constance found herself drawn farther and farther into his schemes.
He had traveled abroad a great deal. He was fascinating to talk to. He had hunted lions, been to Siberia, and flown over frozen seas; he had dabbled in art and letters and knew great people, among them many notorious people, or at least he said he did.
Then before his house was ready for guests he gave a little affair at the country club. Quite an exclusive affair he said he wanted it to be, yet he gave Constance carte blanche to invite whom she would.
Constance, happening to arrive late at lunch one day about the time her brother came in from planting Fairchild delphiniums and Madonna lilies so they would make a heavenly picture in the corner of Dillie’s garden, and feeling especially gracious toward him, thought to grant a large favor.
“How would you like to take Dillie up to the country club tomorrow night, Frank?” she asked. “There’s going to be a lovely, exclusive little dance in the East room, and I can get you tickets if you’d enjoy it. Mr. Whittemore told me I might ask who I liked.”
Frank looked up without enthusiasm.
“Thanks awfully, Connie,” he said with an air of absorption in something else, “but I guess you don’t need to bother. You see, Dillie and I don’t dance.”
“You don’t dance!” said Constance in amazement. “What do you mean? You both went to dancing school!”
“Dillie never did,” said Frank decidedly. “Her dad didn’t care for it, and she thinks the same about it as he does now she’s grown up. She thinks it isn’t a good thing for a Christian to do. And I don’t know but she’s right. Must say I don’t want my girl going around in some man’s arms. Anyway we talked it over and we don’t dance, see? Just as much obliged, Connie, though. Well, s’long. I gotta get back and finish planting those lily bulbs.”
Constance stared after him as he went whistling out of the house. What had come over her young brother? Talking about what “Christians” ought to do? Saying “we” didn’t dance. Why, two weeks ago, or three at the most, he would have jumped at the chance to take Mary Esther to the country club to a private dance! She marveled and looked out of the window thoughtfully. Strangely enough it came into her mind just then to wonder what Seagrave thought about worldly amusements. The question had never been presented to her mind before. Well, what did it matter anyway? Life was a terror anywhere you looked unless you just whirled on and tried to forget. “What are you going to do when you have to die? What are you going to do when you have to die?” The question had become a fearful refrain that chanted over and over in her brain.
And then when she went upstairs that night, what should she find in the little Testament, which had become in some sort a fetish to her, but the verses about coming out from the world and being separate, and she threw the book down and herself on her bed and buried her face in the pillow. She wasn’t their sort, Seagrave and Grandmother and Dillie! She was just herself. How could she be grave and get ready to die? Maybe she wouldn’t die for years and years. She must have a good time while she could.
So she went to bed and tried to sleep, but even in her dreams she saw first Doris and then Seagrave and woke at early dawn unrested. Her heart was not at peace.
Chapter 15
A most unexpected thing happened the next day. There came a haggard-eyed, sorrowful father and mother from California, who wanted to know every minute detail of Doris’s last hours. They had taken a room in the city in a hotel, and they hired a taxi and drove out to find their daughter’s roommate the first morning they arrived.
Constance met them with consternation. Must she go over all that awful time again and put it into words that would not cut too deep for the sorrowing family to hear? How cou
ld she soften the hard details?
But she found that was impossible. The mother watched her like a hawk and seemed to detect every sentence that was meant to cover up suffering or fright on the part of Doris. She would pierce Constance with a keen question, and equivocation was of no use. She seemed to know by intuition just how Doris must have felt.
Perhaps she had lain at death’s door herself and remembered.
“Wasn’t she wild with fright at the thought of dying?” asked the mother in a high, quavering voice. “Oh, my poor little girl! She was always so afraid of death. She never wanted to go to a funeral if she could help it. She just simply wouldn’t. She said it made her physically ill.”
Constance found that, short of actually lying, there was no way to escape without telling the whole truth. So she began to tell the story just as it had happened, and the mother sat and sobbed softly, while the father fixed a stern, unseeing glance out of the window across the room, now and then wiping his eyes.
It was a terrible ordeal for Constance. She found her heart aching for the two, her own tears flowing in spite of herself, and her whole heart crying out to be able to comfort them. It was as if Doris somehow had put them in her care to comfort.
There was only one kind of comfort she could give, and because she did not have it as her own she shrank inexpressibly from even trying to tell about it. She found herself longing for Seagrave again. If he were only here, these two sad hearts could be comforted about their only child. If they could but have watched the fright die out of her eyes and the look of peace come! If they could have seen the smile as she said, “Now I can go!” it would surely ease their pain. And there would be something that Seagrave could give them for themselves, a hope. She knew that in her soul. But as she did not own it for her own, how could she pass it on to them? She thought of a verse marked heavily in Seagrave’s little Testament that she had read that morning. It had not made its meaning very clear when she had read it, but now it seemed to start out in her memory with sudden clarity. “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection—” There was more to it than that, but it was gone from her mind. Still, this was the thing that would make comfort possible to these people, to know Christ and the power that He brought with Him when He rose from the tomb. Dimly she perceived and understood that it was something she did not have, something she was not willing to have, because it entailed something else which she was unwilling to give. But she did not have this something by experience, and how could she be expected to tell it to others? And yet there was upon her strongly the necessity to do so.
Then astonishingly she found herself telling in detail the story of that terrible afternoon, going over conscientiously every harrowing word, how Doris had begged for someone to tell her how to die, and how she in her desperation had remembered a certain young man at home whom she happened to know was very spiritually minded and had dared to call him on long distance and summon him; and he had come.
Doris’s father took out his fountain pen and notebook and wanted to get the young man’s name and address and go to see him at once. He was most disappointed to hear that he was in Europe and would not be home for perhaps three or four weeks. “Then I think, if you don’t mind, we shall have to ask you to tell us in detail just what he said to our daughter,” said the father. “I feel that it is imperative that my wife have some ease of mind. She has suffered greatly all these days of our journey. It seems as if she just must know Doris’s state of mind before she died.”
Constance did mind very much. There was nothing short of dying herself that she thought she would not rather do. She tried to edge out of it, to say that she was not sure that she could recall everything that had been said. Yet she knew that was not true. Every word, every syllable that Seagrave had uttered, every fleeting expression on the dying face of her friend was graven on her heart in letters of fiery anguish. She had gone over it and over it in the nighttime. She would never be able to forget it.
So presently she found herself telling it, forgetting herself and just making vivid the scene. How Seagrave had given her a Bible verse to read; she even told of hunting for the Bible and having to borrow Emil’s Testament, and the father stopped her to get old Emil’s address. He said he would like to buy that Testament from him if he would sell it. It would be a comfort to have the book that helped their precious child to die.
Constance marveled at herself, her unaccustomed lips speaking such things, telling of matters of the spirit, unembarrassed because she was so overwhelmed with the need of her visitors. She told how she had read those verses over and over to soothe her dying friend. She even repeated the verses twice over for the father and mother, who took note of the reference and fairly hung upon her words. She was amazed at her own fluency. And now that she was started, it seemed somehow a relief to tell somebody about it. Perhaps after this she would not have to keep going over and over that awful experience.
Presently she found herself to her own amazement telling the way of salvation just as Seagrave had told it, unconsciously using his very words, and her little audience of two hanging on her story, drinking it in, wiping their flowing tears away, relaxing just a little the agony and tension in their faces.
She hurried on to the end, telling of the light that dawned in Doris’s eyes at the last, of her surrender and prayer, and then of her last words, “Now I can go. Good-bye!” And she described the peace in Doris’s face, earnestly, tenderly, with a vividness that carried blessed conviction to the hearts of her eager listeners.
When she had finished, it was very still in the room save for the soft sobbing of Doris’s mother. Constance sat there embarrassed at what she had done. She realized that the story she had told had not been of her own will. Something outside of herself had carried her along, passing on the story to those who needed it so greatly. She would not have chosen to tell it. She was half frightened that she had. A great shyness was descending upon her, and to add to it she suddenly heard a book drop to the floor in the library just behind the heavy curtains that shut it away from the living room. Was someone in there? Who could it be? Her mother had gone out on an errand. Her grandmother was up in her own room she was sure, for she was not feeling well this morning. Frank, of course, was away on his own pursuits, and her father was in the city. It must have been a maid, of course, but now that she had come down to earth again and realized how strange any member of her family would think it for her to be talking of such solemn things, she felt most uncomfortable.
Suddenly Doris’s mother arose and came over to her, putting both her arms around her and, stooping, kissed her on the forehead.
“My dear,” she said softly, “I cannot thank you enough! What you have told me has greatly comforted me. I did not know my daughter was interested in religious things. That is what has worried me ever since the news came. You see, I was brought up in a church, and I’ve always been troubled that Doris wasn’t interested in it. But I should have been so much better satisfied if I had known that she had a Christian roommate.”
“Oh,” said Constance, raising a protesting hand, “you don’t understand! It wasn’t I who did anything—”
And Constance felt the mantle of hypocrisy drop down upon her shoulders once more. Ever since that awful day when she had joined the church for a string of pearls, people would persist in believing her better than she was. It was like a curse upon her. Her eyes filled with despairing tears. And Doris’s mother went right on in spite of her protest.
“My dear, don’t say a thing. I understand. Of course the young man you sent for was marvelous, and I am deeply grateful to him, always shall be, but it was you really who was the comfort to her. She must have known what a Christian you were or she would never have asked you to help her in her distress. It is the daily life that counts, you know, my dear, and I’m sure she loved and honored you. She often wrote about you. She loved you very much. Oh, Miss Courtland, you have been wonderful to my darling! Wonderful! “
But Constance r
ose now in deep distress. “Oh, please don’t say that,” she protested. “I’m not—anything at all. I never have been much of a Christian! I—You—You don’t understand. I don’t want to pose as something I am not.”
“It’s quite all right, my dear,” said the sorrowing mother. “You are very sweetly humble about it, but I thank God that my child had a Christian roommate and that she knew what to do for my darling when she was dying!” And the mother buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed quietly.
Then up rose the father.
“I’m not able to express my deep gratitude,” he said huskily. “I’ve never been much of a Christian myself, but my mother was one, and I’m glad my little girl died believing. I can’t thank you enough for having given us this blessed picture of Doris’s last moments. I, too, thank God that you are a Christian. You know, nobody but a truly consecrated person could have told that story in just that way. It has comforted us greatly. I don’t know how to talk about religious matters very well. I’m just a plain man of the world. But when I see a real Christian like you I bow before her, and I cannot express my thanks as I would like for what you did for our little girl.”
It was of no use to make further protest. They would not listen. They insisted that Constance was an angel of light, a wonderful young woman, the most wonderful Christian they had ever met!
When they took themselves away at last, Constance stood in the doorway and watched them drive off with a terrible sinking in her heart. Here she was a hypocrite again, posing as a great Christian, when she knew she was nothing in the world but a great sinner! Oh, what should she do? How should she get out from under this awful weight of spirituality that everybody seemed determined to put upon her? It was getting more than she could bear. She felt as if she must run away from home and from everybody she ever knew. She must get away from a reputation that she could not live up to. How could she have known that that one little act of standing up before a congregation and lightly taking vows upon her lips was going to have such wide-reaching consequences?