Hour after hour Constance sat there with that small, frail, roseleaf of a hand in her own young, warm one, and hour after hour the minutes ticked out thoughts for her, pictures of another bedside scene, words from a little book she had read and read until they had beaten their way into her soul never to be erased.
She watched the delicate waxlike features, cut sharply against the dusk of the afternoon as the day began to wane, watched the slow, faint breath come and go, struggled to keep back the tears that smarted to flow, as if the other breath had stopped. Sometimes a gray look would come over the beloved face and she would make a frantic, silent little motion for the nurse to come and look.
The nurse would come and touch the brow, listen, lay a practiced finger on the wrist, then wave an infinitesimal signal that there was no new cause for fear, and the afternoon slowly changed into the evening.
Constance would not leave her except when the doctor insisted that she should eat something. She was afraid to miss a word, a last smile perhaps.
Once, late in the evening, the invalid roused and opened her eyes, looked toward her granddaughter with a faraway light in her eyes, a strange, pleased surprise of a light.
“Why, I saw my Savior then,” she said in a clear voice, looking straight at Constance with a look of wonder and deep pleasure, “and your grandfather was right there by His side!”
Then she closed her eyes again and slipped off into another sweet, deep sleep.
Constance sat in fear and watched, expecting to see that change of death come over her face, as it had to Doris’s at the end, pondering, wondering. Why then, Grandmother had that something, too, that the others had, that joy and peace. The peace that Seagrave wore in his eyes, that the old man Emil had shown when he pulled out his Testament and offered it, that had come to Doris before she went away. Grandmother had it, too. It was something real and tangible. In spite of Grandmother’s funny little conventional ways and insistence upon forms and ceremonies, Grandmother seemed to know God Himself, to have known Him well enough to recognize Him in the dream or vision or whatever it was that she saw.
A great longing possessed Constance to have that something for herself, too, but a weight oppressed her heart. She had taken false vows upon her. Likely she had committed the thing she used to hear ministers sometimes preach about as the unpardonable sin. Seagrave had seemed to think she had done a dreadful thing in just taking those vows without actually knowing much about them or believing them, and he hadn’t known the half of her heinous offense. He hadn’t known she did it for a string of matched pearls.
Perhaps if she had gone and talked with Grandmother before she was taken sick, told her just how selfish and wrong she had been, and given her back the pearls—let her send them to her cousin Norma—there might have been a way for her soul to come clean so that she, too, might be saved and find peace and joy in living or dying as these all seemed to have.
So she sat waiting, expecting the shadow of the death angel to fall upon that beloved flowerlike face at any minute.
Quite unexpectedly the nurse touched her softly on the shoulder and she started and looked up, expecting to be told that the change had come without her recognizing it.
But no, the nurse whispered softly, “She is much better. She will sleep all night now. The doctor says you had better go to bed and get a good night’s rest so that you can be with her in the morning if she wants you. I will call you at once if you should be needed in the night, but I don’t think you will be. The doctor says she has rallied most unexpectedly this last hour. Now go and get good rest.”
As a dream Constance slipped out of the room and to her own bed, throwing herself down upon it, her heart breaking with the joy and tears of sudden relief.
Oh, God had been good! Perhaps there would yet be a chance to somehow make amends for what she had done! So she fell asleep.
Meantime down in the front hall, Frank was keeping watch, answering a muffled doorbell, taking in boxes of flowers for his sister from Whittemore, Ruddy Van Arden, and others, answering anxious inquiries and offers of help from friends and neighbors. He had the pleasure of telling Whittemore, who had called twice, “where to get off” as he expressed it to himself, though he had couched his conversation in polite, firm language, making it very clear that his sister would not be able to participate in any fiesta, either that evening or the next and probably not all that week.
So Whittemore left his box of expensive gardenias and took himself away. Frank sat down with satisfaction and glared at his shoes. He thought over the story he had heard his sister tell the other day when he sat in the library while Doris’s father and mother were calling; thought about that unknown Doris’s death. Would Grand be dead by tomorrow perhaps? Would she look like herself lying in a narrow place among flowers, or would her face seem like a vacant house with all the window blinds closed and the occupant moved out forever?
Life! How strange it was! Death, how inevitable! Why was one put here to live just awhile, death always at the end?
Was Grand sorry to die? Did she know how ill she was?
So he sat manlike and bore his pain alone, just a boy whom nobody realized was suffering.
Once in the evening he answered the soft whir of the muffled telephone, and a voice clanged drawlingly over the wire.
“Hello, old thing! The gang are going out on a whoopee party, wantta go? Ef ya do we’ll stop by.”
“Nothing doing!” said the boy and slid the receiver down with a click.
Frank stole into the darkened living room after a while and tried to rest his aching head, looked out through the window, and watched the lights in the Fairchild home twinkle softly among the trees. The light in Dillie’s room went out. A few minutes later there came a soft tap at the door, and when he opened it, there stood Sarah Ann, the maid from the Fairchilds’ with a note in her hand addressed to him.
After Sarah Ann had gone away across the lawn to the opening in the hedge, he took the note to the dining room light and read it where nobody would interrupt him. It read:
Dear Frank:
I am asking our heavenly Father to let your dear grandmother get well if it pleases Him, or if not to make you at peace about it. But I think—I hope—He will let her get well. You pray, too.
Your friend,
Dillie
So Frank locked the front door and the back door, looked after the many window fastenings, and then stole up to his room. In the dark he knelt down with his face turned toward Dillie’s home, his heart looking up to heaven, and perhaps for the first time since he was a little child, he really prayed to God.
Chapter 18
There followed a couple of weeks of anxiety, when life took on a different aspect and all normal activities were hushed to their lowest terms.
Two nurses instead of one were installed, a day nurse and a night nurse, and the family grew accustomed to tiptoeing about and conversing in whispers.
Pageants, festivals, the country club, all were forgotten; even golf and tennis were a thing of the past. Dillie and Frank took sober walks in the country lanes at times when Grandmother was resting and improving. Constance could not be persuaded to leave the house. She hovered near the sickroom even when she was not actually in it, until the doctor and her mother grew anxious about her. Yet even then they could not get her to go out farther than into the garden for a few minutes. She had a nervous fear upon her that while she was gone her only opportunity might come to confess to her grandmother about the pearls.
She read her little Testament a good deal, but in such a feverish way that it brought her no comfort. All the verses seemed either warnings or hopeless for her, because she felt she was forever outside all the blessedness of things offered there so freely. She had mocked God with her false vows. Even Seagrave had said something like that to her that morning on the hillside among the blue flowers.
She grew pale and thin. Her mother and the doctor offered a tonic, but it could not reach her soul.
She
thought of Seagrave now only as a faraway dream, like her thought of God. He was gone out of her life forever likely, had never really been in it except as one who had perhaps been sent from God to bring her to a knowledge of her own careless, giddy, sinful life.
Oh, if her grandmother would only get well, perhaps somehow she could begin again, give back the pearls and make a fresh start. She sometimes even considered whether it might not be required of her to stand up before the church and confess what meaningless vows she had made, asking them to release her and forgive her. The whole thing had become an obsession with her. Sometimes she threw herself down on her knees and tried to pray. But her lips had been unprayerful so many years that they refused to utter the longings of her heart. All she could stammer out was a feeble, frantic petition for her grandmother to get well.
Slowly but surely the frail, ethereal little woman was getting her hold on life again. They wouldn’t let her talk much, and when she did speak a few words, her voice was weak and trembling, but she was gaining strength every day and she could smile almost like herself again. She could even press a hand feebly when one of the family came softly in to kiss her and bring a flower or something good to tempt her to eat.
Since her repeated refusals to join them even for an hour or two, the young people of the neighborhood and the country club had ceased to depend upon Constance. They simply could not understand such devotion. That grandmother had two nurses, didn’t she? And a doctor? And a whole household of people to look after her? She was only a grandmother anyway! There wasn’t any sense in Constance making a martyr of herself! So they reasoned, and said as much. Constance froze when they suggested such ideas and the next time excused herself from seeing them. So they just dropped her, made a few caustic remarks about her, and calmly left her out of their calculations. If she ever got over this “phase” as they called it, she would be welcomed back of course, but at present she was hopeless, impossible! One couldn’t carry on festivities and make time for funerals that held off and never came.
After repeated attempts to draw Constance back, Whittemore had solaced himself with Carolyn Coxe, and the rumor that he seemed altogether satisfied with the change was wafted even into the dim light of the sickroom where Constance sat reading sweet old-time books of a beloved past to the placid little old lady.
But Constance, if she ever thought of Whittemore in these days, had only scorn for him. She remembered his impressive attentions to herself, the tender way in which he had pressed her hand, the eloquence of his eyes that searched deep into her own. He had almost stirred her own emotions sometimes. She recalled the possessive way in which he had treated her before everybody, as if there was an understanding between them of a much closer friendship than people saw, his arm about her on the slightest occasion, the intimate way in which he had held her when she danced with him. The memory of it all made her cheeks burn. And he a twice-divorced man, not even divorced yet this third time! How dare he insult her? Yet it had in a sense been her own fault. She had allowed his familiarities, questioned them perhaps and worried a little about them, because it was her nature to be aloof. She did not like to be treated lightly. Yet she had not protested. It had been a little like her one brief experience with Thurlow Wayne, only Whittemore was subtler. He had gone like a whirlwind, carried her with him laughingly, not as if it mattered much, and she had been all too ready to plunge into frivolities and forget the serious things of life. She had been made with a desire not to have time to think, and she had lent herself to his carelessness, his lightness, his impertinence.
How degraded she felt as she sat hour after hour in the dim shadows of the sickroom and thought things over, how utterly unworthy of a friendship with a young man like Seagrave. Well, that was over at least. No answer had come from him. He had probably forgotten her. The flowers at commencement had been merely a polite gesture. Her answer had reached him in some far journey and he had not thought it worthwhile even to respond. And of course it hadn’t been necessary. She had only asked him to give her opportunity to tell him something when he came home, but now she knew with sudden pain that she had counted on a letter from him and her heart was sore that none had come.
Foolish! Crazy! Why should he write to her? He had no interest in her aside from her salvation, of course. He was not her kind, and she never could be his. He knew enough of her to understand that, even though he did not know all. It would be enough for him that she had been the kind of girl who would take sacred vows without a thought! That would stamp her at once to him as a trivial creature, of light nature, who might be saved of course, but would never be a strong, true character. He would not want such a girl for a friend. He was likely trying to make her understand all this by his silence.
And she had striven in that first meeting of theirs to emphasize this very idea. Oh, it was her own fault, and she had no one but herself to blame!
Constance was very quiet in these days, timorously thankful that her grandmother was getting well. Oh, she would never be really strong again perhaps, would always have to be cared for like a fragile flower, always kept from excitement. But she was still with them for a while longer at least.
There came a day when Grandmother was sitting up in a big easy chair and seemed stronger than she had been since her illness. She had taken a little walk across her room leaning on Constance’s arm, and now was back in her chair again—“And not a bit tired,” she said with a smile.
Constance dropped down at her feet on the little footstool and rested her tired head lightly against the silken lap of the old lady, closing her eyes and drawing a deep breath.
“Oh, Grandmother, I’m so thankful you are truly better,” she sighed.
The old lady put out a fragile roseleaf hand and laid it on her head. “Poor child!” she said with an unwonted tenderness in her usually reserved tones. “You take things so hard! I’ve been watching you. We’re closemouthed, you and I, but we take things hard inside. But it would have been all right, child, if I had gone then, you know. My time has come and I’m ready to go when God calls me.”
“Yes, I know,” said Constance with a trembling breath, remembering that wonderful look in her grandmother’s face when she woke and said she had seen her Savior. “But oh, Grand, we couldn’t spare you!”
“Dear child!”
“And besides—” Constance caught her breath and stopped short.
“Besides what, little girl?” The gentle hand patted her head again.
“Oh, just something I want to talk over with you when you get real strong again.”
“I’m strong!” said the chipper old lady, sitting up smartly in her chair. “Tell me now, child. There’s no time like the present, you know. It’s the only time we’re sure of.”
“Yes, but you might get excited and too tired,” said Constance. “It isn’t important—to anyone but me—and it will keep.” She tried to smile but it was like a wan ray of sunshine.
“Fiddlesticks!” said the little lady with her old sprightly manner. “It’ll excite me much more to have this thing going on. You don’t suppose I haven’t seen there was something wrong with you, do you? Out with it, child, and have it over. I’ll promise not to get excited over any little thing that belongs to this old earthy. I’ve been too near the other side to feel they matter so much anymore. Come, tell me quick, child! I knew you had a burden.”
“But maybe you won’t think this thing belongs just to earth, Grandmother,” said Constance with a troubled look.
“Well, if it belongs to heaven it’s all right somehow or can be made so. Come. Out with it. You’re a dear, good girl, and I want nothing between us. We haven’t any time left for clouds between us.”
“But that’s it, Grandmother. I’m not good,” said Constance, lifting her sorrowful eyes. “Not as good as you think, that is.”
“None of us are good!” said the old lady crisply. “What have you done, Connie?”
“Well, Grandmother, I didn’t join the church because I wanted
to last Easter; I didn’t even join it to please you, though I was glad it did that. I joined because I wanted to get those matched pearls! And now I’m just afraid this will make you sick again, but I had to tell you!” And Constance’s head went down in her two hands again, her cheek resting lightly against her grandmother’s knee.
Softly the warm, roseleaf hand came down upon her head with its gentle touch like a blessing. “Well, child, I’ve been suspecting as much for a long time, so you needn’t worry lest you’ve shocked me. I’ve got eyes in my head and I could see you were more interested in the world than in the church. But I began to look back, and I thought it was perhaps as much my own fault as yours. I shouldn’t have put those pearls into the matter at all. I meant to give them to you anyway. I always intended them for you. But it did give me great pleasure to have you have them and wear them first at your first communion as I wore mine. Still, I see now I shouldn’t have done it, or at least I shouldn’t have let you know anything about it.”
“But Grandmother, I’m so ashamed!” wailed Constance like a little child, putting her head down in her grandmother’s lap under the soft, comforting hand.
“Well, little girl, it’s always a good sign to be ashamed when you’ve done something wrong. It’s not till we begin to see ourselves that we get ashamed, and you’ve got to see yourself before you can set things right. So now, child, what are you going to do about it?”
Constance was still for a minute, the big tears stealing out from under her lashes and rolling down her cheeks till Grandmother’s fine, soft handkerchief wiped them off. Then the girl spoke again. “I’m going to give you back the pearls, Grandmother, and let you give them to Cousin Norma.”
“No,” said Grandmother after a moment, “the pearls are yours. I’ve given Norma their equivalent in something she wanted more than pearls, the money to go abroad and study. You’ll have to work out the cure without giving back the pearls, child. I don’t want the pearls. I have always wanted you to have them ever since you came into the world. I planned to give them to you the night you were born. And even if you were to punish yourself by giving them back or not wearing them, that would not undo the thing you did. Because, child, it wasn’t me nor the pearls you sinned against; it was God. You trifled with His holy things. You’ve got to make it right with Him somehow. I’m glad you came to me and were honest. It’s taken a great load off my mind to think you have found yourself out. But you haven’t really gone to the root of the matter yet until you’ve made it right with God.”