MATCHED PEARLS (24 page)

“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.”

It was very still in the room. Far away over toward the country club a meadow lark trilled out a long, sweet note, and a little breeze came in at the window and cooled Constance’s hot brow, blowing back the tendrils of gold hair. Grandmother just laid her hand softly on the bowed head again and waited.

At last Constance raised her head and asked tremulously, “Do you think I should get up before the congregation and publicly state that I did not mean what I promised? Should I try to undo it somehow?”

“No,” said the old lady thoughtfully, “I don’t see how that would do any good, unless you wanted to publicly testify that you had come to a different way of thinking. But even that would be something that would come afterwards. And it is not always best to confess your wrong before the world unless the world has a right to know or you can help somebody by it. There is something that must come first, and that is to make it right with God.”

After a much longer silence Constance asked huskily, “How could one make it right with God, Grand?”

The old lady was slow in answering, with a shy reserve about her as if she were treading upon too holy ground to speak freely. “There is prayer,” she said solemnly. “Have you taken it to God yet, Connie?”

Constance shook her head. “I’m not sure I would dare,” she said softly.

“There’s nothing to fear, child. He’ll search you, of course. But that’s the only way to get right. Make a clean breast of it and don’t hold anything back even to yourself. I remember when your mother was a little girl she had eaten some fruit that I had told her not to touch. She didn’t seem to know I knew it. I waited for days for her to come and confess, but she went right on as happily as ever. It didn’t seem to bother her, except at night I noticed that she didn’t like to have the light out, and she always begged me to sit by her till she fell asleep. But at last one night I left her alone in the dark, and then she got to crying. I came in and she told me that the eye of God was looking down on her, seeing how naughty she had been. And then she told me what she had done. I remember how I gathered her in my arms after she had confessed and how she snuggled down in my neck and went to sleep. We don’t need to be afraid of our Father, child, if we really want to get right with Him.”

Then in marched the nurse. “This dear lady is sitting up too long. I’m surprised at you, Miss Courtland! She must get right to bed.”

Constance, dewy eyed and somewhat comforted, arose in haste and helped to get the patient back into bed. As she stopped over her to smooth the sheet across her shoulders, she pressed a quick furtive kiss upon her forehead and whispered, “Thank you, Grand; it’s so good to know you forgive me.”

Grandmother said fervently, “Of course, child!”

Thus closed the most intimate talk that had ever passed between these two in all the years of Constance’s life, and Constance tiptoed out and left her to sleep, feeling that the experience had been wonderful, a break in the long years of reticence and formality. It might close in tomorrow again and the wall of reserve rise as gray and high as ever, yet there would always be this afternoon to remember, always a bond between them. For a few short minutes she had seen into her grandmother’s heart and had a vision of her own relation to God. It was not merely sentimentality that had kept the pearls for her first communion day. It was a real faith in God and her Savior that had made her long to seal such a moment for her loved grandchild with the most precious thing she owned.

Constance, in her room alone reading her Testament, thinking of Seagrave as she always did when she read, remembered telling him something to the effect that Grandmother didn’t know what it was all about, that she thought if one stood up in the church and took vows, that did the trick. But now she had found out that Grandmother did know what it was about, that she had a real, living faith, and neither was she so gullible as she might have seemed, for she had seen right through her granddaughter’s sham, and she had probably been deeply dismayed to find out how superficial she was.

Then suddenly in the startled thought she sat up and stared at the verses about being separated from the world. Did that mean herself? Is that what it would mean if she did what Grandmother wanted her to do, went and made it right with God? Was she willing to do that? Or would the world be like another string of pearls that would keep her from making good the vows she had uttered?

After a long time she turned out her light and knelt down beside her bed in the moonlight, waiting for an audience with a God whom she had insulted, waiting with her heart beating in a frightened way at what she was about to do. At last she said in a broken whisper, “Oh, God, I’m sorry and ashamed. If there’s any way for me to make it right, please show me, even if You want me to be separate from the world.”

That night Constance had the first full rest she had enjoyed since her grandmother was taken sick.

T
he next morning the house was in a perfect whirl. Frank announced that he was going to a weekend conference and everybody had to help him get ready. The plan seemed to have developed overnight.

“A conference?” said his mother. “What kind of conference? Why should you be going to a conference?”

“Why, it’s a young people’s conference. A Bible conference. It’s for the young people of this district, and they’re mostly all delegates from different churches around here. Dillie’s a delegate from her church, and if you pay your way you can go even if you aren’t a delegate, and I’m going. I havta have two sheets and a pair of blankets and some clean shirts and my bathing suit. Towels, too. Will ya get them for me? I’ll take that old football bag.”

“Why, how long are you going to stay?” asked the bewildered mother. “Isn’t there a hotel or something? Why do you have to take sheets?”

“Oh, it’s a kind of a camp,” said the impatient youth. “Didn’t I tell ya? They live in log cabins, sort of dormitories, with a lot of cots in each one and a man ta look out fer each dorm. Dillie’s mother is a chaperone for the girls. That’s how I got a chance ta go. They have meetings and athletics and a swell time. It only lasts from Friday till Monday. It doesn’t cost much. Say, are ya going ta get me some blankets? No, I don’t want a suitcase for them. I’ll jut tie them up in a brown paper. That’s the way the others do. Bill Howarth is going. He went last year. He says it’s great. He says they had a swell time. They’ve got a crackerjack athlete along and a lotta swell speakers.”

In growing amazement Frank’s family danced attendance upon his commands, were duly scandalized when he refused to take his best clothes along for Sunday, demurred at the old sweater he elected to wear, produced more towels and shirts and sheets than he could be persuaded to take along, and in every way hovered about him with hindrances and suggestions till his departure.

Constance drove him with Dillie and her mother in the Courtland car to the rendezvous where they were to meet the bus that would take them to the camp. Dillie’s mother was sweet and young looking with a peace in her eyes that reminded Constance of the look in Seagrave’s eyes. She wondered if the same cause made all these people have that look of utter content as if they had a source of strength beyond the ordinary. Perhaps she wouldn’t have noticed this a few weeks or months earlier, but now her attention had been called to that look in some eyes, and she was growing quick to detect it. Was Dillie’s mother also one of those peculiar people who knew God?

When they drew up at the rendezvous, Constance had a new experience. A large bus, heavily placarded with P
ELHAM
G
ROVE
Y
OUNG
P
EOPLE’S
B
IBLE
C
ONFERENCE
, was drawn up in front of a church. Young people were arriving from every direction, from trolleys and private cars and on foot, all piling into the bus. The bus driver was good-naturedly busy disposing large canvas duffel bags and brown paper bundles in a rack on the roof of the bus, and everybody was talking and laughing and getting introduced to everybody else.

They were nice-looking young people, but they were not dressed up. Most of them wore plain garments and sweaters that had seen better days, but they had happy faces full of anticipation.

Presently another bus drew up beside the first, labeled
South District Delegation
and underneath in smaller letters a magic phrase that Constance never would forget,
John
3:16. Why! That was the verse she had read to Doris when she was dying! And these boys and girls were flaunting it on a banner! What possible connection could it have with a weekend camping trip?

And while the thought was passing through her mind, even before the driver had parked his bus to suit him by the curb, the young people who crowded it to capacity broke forth into song, every word as clear and distinct as if it were being recited:

The verse was scarcely ended when a third but also crowded to overflowing bus labeled N
ORTH
D
ISTRICT
D
ELEGATION
arrived on the scene. It had come up so quietly during the song that Constance had not noticed it and now it started another song: