DUSKIN (28 page)

The color flew into Constance’s cheeks again to her great annoyance.

“Oh, for sweet mercy’s sake, won’t you stop being ridiculous? He happened to be passing and I admired them. Of course he had to give them to me.”

“Oh, was that the way it was?” mocked the imp of a brother. “I thought you were stooping down with your back to the street smelling daffodils when he went by and he had to come away around through the gate in the hedge and walk across the grass. But I must have been mistaken. Probably you called out to know what on earth he had done up in that handkerchief and he had to come in to show you. However, I should say in any case he was getting on fast.”

“Oh, shut up, will you?” said Constance, quite vexed and devoting herself to placing the airy stems in the fern-fringed bowl. The entrance of the rest of the family created a diversion, and Constance’s mother exclaimed over the beauty of the centerpiece.

“Wherever did you find them, dear?” she asked.

“Just an offering from one of her throng of admirers,” answered Frank quickly with an eloquent look. “They begin quite early in the morning, you see. I must wonder what it’s going to be like around here this summer if they come as thick as this in the spring.”

“Frank!” said his mother in a reproving tone. “You promised me last night you wouldn’t tease your sister anymore.”

Frank opened his eyes wide in wonder.

“Why, Muth dear, I wasn’t teasing, I was just admiring her tactics. She certainly has acquired good technique while she was at college.”

But Constance with a murmur about washing her hands hurried upstairs, and when she returned with coolly powdered cheeks and a placid exterior her brother had somehow been subdued until only a pair of dancing eyes reminded her that he had not forgotten.

They sat down to breakfast and bowed their heads for the formal mumbling of a grace by the head of the house, the same old mumbled blessing he had used since Constance was a baby and his wife had told him it was not seemly to bring up children at a table without some sort of grace being said.

During the grapefruit and oatmeal, the passing of cream and sugar and hot rolls, the serving of eggs and bacon, there was pleasant conversation. Grandmother was not present. She took her breakfast in bed. They could speak about her freely.

“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!”

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 …

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