Spring Always Comes, page 1
SPRING
ALWAYS
COMES
Emilie Loring
© Emilie Loring 1966
Emilie Loring has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1966 by Bantam Books, Inc.
This edition published in 2019 by Lume Books.
The characters in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
One
Constance Wyndham was only dimly aware of the audience around her in the darkened theater, of frequent outbursts of laughter, of the actors moving across the lighted stage. She might as well have been separated from them by a glass wall. She heard nothing of the crisp, sparkling dialogue that had been so enthusiastically praised by the critics; she saw nothing of the brilliant acting that had made the play a smash hit.
Automatically, over and over, she drew her long white kid gloves through her fingers, trying to sort out the jumble of her thoughts. Once she shook her head impatiently. She had to think things through, make up her mind about the future.
How could she have drifted so long, put off the time of reckoning until it was upon her? Always she had been aware that, sooner or later, she would have to leave behind her the luxury and protection of John Kent’s great Park Avenue apartment, that she would have to face the world on her own feet, using what abilities she might possess to build her own life.
Up to now, she had made no preparation beyond learning to type and to take shorthand during her last year in college. The truth was, she confessed to herself, that she had always hoped, in some secret corner of her heart, that something would happen, some miracle that would make it unnecessary for her to work, that would enable her to go on living this pleasant, cushioned life. Hoping that her future would be like Sandra Kent’s, luxurious, sheltered, free of worry.
Once more she pulled the long soft gloves through her restless fingers and Sandra turned, trying to make out her expression in the darkened theater. Connie kept her eyes on the stage, pretending not to be aware of her friend’s movement. Friend? Of course Sandra was her friend. From the day when John Kent had offered to send Connie through college, had taken her into his spectacular duplex in New York City, had arranged for her to spend her summer vacations with him and his only child, his daughter Sandra, the latter had adopted her as a sister. Not once had she ever made Connie feel like an outsider; not once had she ever been condescending; not once had she ever implied that their futures could not be alike.
Could not be. That was the point at which Connie had refused to look honestly. Sandra’s father was an immensely wealthy industrialist; Connie’s father was a guide in the Maine woods, a man who loved three things: his daughter, the well-worn books on the shelves that lined the walls of his living room, and what he called the “wild air” of the woods.
Four years earlier, John Kent had been advised by his physician to get away from his responsibilities and to spend a month hunting and fishing in Maine. No two men could have been more different than John Kent and Bill Wyndham, whom Kent had hired as a guide, but they had developed a mutual esteem and, to their surprise, a warm and steady friendship.
Toward the end of that month, Kent, restless and impatient at having his actions directed by someone else, had insisted on going off by himself, against Wyndham’s strict orders, had sustained a serious injury, and his life had been saved by Wyndham.
The latter had dismissed the incident as of no importance, simply a routine part of his job. But Kent was a man who never forgot his obligations, a man who always paid his debts. He not only set Wyndham up in a camp called Stony Brook but he educated his daughter, an expense that Wyndham could not have afforded because of the extravagance of his son.
When Wyndham had received Kent’s letter, offering to provide Connie’s education, he had handed it over to her, smiling at some thought which amused him.
“What’s the joke, Dad?”
“John always does the right thing.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Connie laughed.
“Nothing, of course. But when a man is always right he becomes a little inhuman. He demands too much of others. He loses his understanding and compassion for human mistakes.”
She had read the letter and cried out impulsively, “Oh, Dad, how wonderful! A good college and a Park Avenue apartment and New York City. A great metropolis to live in, things to do and see and experience, instead of this —”
The brightness had died out of his eyes, a shadow of disappointment had passed over his face. Seeing his expression, she had broken off abruptly. She would have given anything to retract the spontaneous words and undo the pain they had inflicted.
It was, she knew well, her worst fault, this tendency to speak without thinking. Why couldn’t she learn to think first, to avoid the words that so often brought pain with them?
“It’s your decision,” he told her quietly. “You must do what seems right for you.”
Connie had made her decision, and for four years she had lived in a world of glamour and wealth. And now it was all over. The telegram had come just as dinner was being announced: father very ill urge immediate return. It had been signed jefferson gray.
Father very ill. It was difficult to picture Bill Wyndham incapacitated, let alone seriously ill. A lean, bronzed man in his early fifties, he had a hard, disciplined body that was as powerful as it had been at thirty. He had never in Connie’s memory been ill.
It couldn’t, she assured herself, be anything serious. Perhaps he had broken a leg. Accidents were always possible in the woods. By the time she got there he would be recuperating and probably he would be annoyed because she had been summoned. For all his deep devotion, or perhaps because of it, he had never made any demands on his daughter. Connie was aware that he had always hoped that she would share his love for the woods, but he had never tried to persuade her to remain with him.
After the arrival of the telegram, Kent took charge of the arrangements, having his secretary make plane reservations, instructing Sandra’s maid to do Connie’s packing. But it was Sandra who, after a look at Connie’s white face, had insisted that they go to the theater that night as they had originally planned. That would be better than sitting at the apartment brooding, or waiting alone at the airport.
During the first act of the play Connie recalled her childhood in the Maine woods. Her mother had been a city girl who had never become reconciled to the long, harsh winters of Maine, but who had stayed there out of a sense of duty when all her efforts failed to persuade her husband to take a city job. Connie recalled clearly how her mother had hated the cold and the isolation of the winter; how she had talked, huddled close to the blazing logs in the fireplace, of the lights and warmth, the gaiety and excitement of city living.
When the first intermission came, the two girls joined the crowd that thronged the theater lobby. As usual photographers snapped pictures of Sandra, who was always news because of her father’s prominence and the power wielded by the many interlocking businesses he controlled. Sandra waited passively until they had finished — it was an ordeal she always dreaded — and then she drew Connie away from the people who had inevitably turned to stare.
“So he is still there,” she said unexpectedly.
Connie looked around the lobby. “Who is?”
“Jefferson Gray. The man who sent you the telegram about your father. Still at Stony Brook.”
“You know him?” Connie asked in surprise. She had not even wondered who the man was, she had been too startled and dismayed by the import of his message to think of anything else.
“He is one of father’s most promising young executives. Father has great hopes for him. But he works too hard; he was run down and too thin and not sleeping, so Father—”
Sandra’s father was a stickler for formality; she had never dreamed of calling him Dad.
There was a deeper color than usual in her face. “Father suggested that Jeff go up to Stony Brook to rest, because it had done him so much good. That was nearly a month ago. I was wondering why I hadn’t heard from him. I thought maybe —” Again the color deepened. “But he is still up there. You’ll like him, Connie.”
“You like him, don’t you?” Connie said, struck by the glow on Sandra’s face, a kind of radiance.
“Yes,” Sandra said softly, “I like him. When you meet him you’ll understand why. He’s a wonderful person.”
“Attractive?”
“Wildly attractive.”
Connie’s face glowed with delight. “Sandra! Is this serious? You mean you have found the man who is right for you?”
The glow faded from Sandra’s face. “What would be the use of finding the person who is right for me?”
Connie was startled by the unexpected bitterness in Sandra’s voice. “What on earth do you mean?”
“My father wanted a son,
“But you can’t do that, Sandra! You can’t marry without love,” Connie cried out in protest.
“Why not?” Sandra said drearily. “Let’s face it, Connie. I might as well marry to please my father. No one has ever been interested in me except for my money. So why not make my marriage satisfactory to my father as long as it can’t be to me?”
“Oh, Sandra, that’s all wrong!”
“Is it?” Sandra pulled Connie around so that the two girls faced the long mirror in the theater lobby.
For a long time they looked at their own reflections and then at each other. Connie was tall and slim, with russet hair that swung in soft loose waves, deep brown eyes, hollows under the delicately molded cheekbones, a passionate red mouth whose softness contradicted the firmness of her chin. The first impression she made, even before people noticed her stunning beauty, was the vivid impact of her personality.
Beside her Sandra seemed colorless, though her features were good, her blue eyes really beautiful, her brown hair thick and glossy. She was, Connie thought, like a negative that had faded in the light. Behind her face there was no acceptance of life, no vibrancy, no assurance.
“All you need is to believe in yourself,” Connie told her firmly.
Sandra laughed, still with that note of bitterness in her voice. “You are wrong, Connie. All I need is to have someone believe in me. To have someone find me attractive in myself, just as I am.”
“But people do,” Connie insisted.
“People like Jim Baker?” Sandra said.
The previous evening the girls had double-dated. Before the end of the evening Sandra’s escort had asked Connie for a date. She had refused, of course, but she realized now that Sandra had overheard; that she had, understandably enough, been hurt in her self-esteem, if not because of the young man himself.
Remembering all that the Kents had done for her, Connie felt wretchedly guilty about causing Sandra any pain, however unintentional it might be on her part. The worst of it was that the incident had not been the first of its kind. Frequently Sandra’s dates had shown a preference for Connie. Never again, she vowed, would she permit any man in whom Sandra was interested to pay her the slightest attention.
While she was wondering what she could say, Sandra gave her a quick smile. “Forgive me. I don’t like self-pity. I don’t know what got into me tonight. Just feeling alone, I guess. Now that you are leaving, I have no one but my father and he always seems so far off.”
“I have only my father,” Connie pointed out, “and now he is ill.”
“He’s going to be all right. And you have Nick, of course.”
“Oh, yes, there’s Nick.”
“Do you ever hear from him?”
“Not unless he wants something,” Connie said dryly.
Nick Wyndham, her father’s son by an earlier marriage, had been a problem all his life. It didn’t seem possible that anyone as fine and as honest as Wyndham could have had such a son. He was always in trouble of some sort, trouble that seemed to become more serious as the years passed. He drank too much; he didn’t like to hold a steady job: he was continually out of work and making demands on his father.
Up to a point Wyndham had done all he could to help his son, steadily impoverishing himself and stripping Connie of her fair share in order to provide the money Nick needed so urgently. The breaking point came when Nick struck a child while driving under the influence of alcohol. He had driven on, been caught, and had managed to wriggle out of a jail sentence by some plausible story, which had convinced the judge but failed to convince his own father, who knew him too well.
Wyndham had sent for Nick, had faced him across the big table in the living room at Stony Brook. Connie could still remember the flickering light of the fire on the two faces that were so much alike and yet so different: her father’s lean and purposeful, her half brother’s flabby and vacillating.
“I’ve carried you too long, Nick. Propped you up whenever you began to sag. But from now on it is up to you; unless you can learn to stand on your own feet now, you never will.”
“You mean,” Nick demanded, concerned by only one factor, “you won’t give me any more money?”
“I mean I won’t give you any more money,” his father told him.
Nick had slammed out of the lodge without saying good-by. Later he had hitched a ride away from the camp. After that, Connie had had only three indications that he was still alive: once he wrote from Portland, saying he needed a small loan to tide him over for a few days. Once he telephoned her collect from Boston to demand a hundred dollars immediately, this time dropping the fiction of a loan. Once she ran into him in Times Square in New York and he swerved out of her way as though anxious to escape recognition.
But he would show up again. Sooner or later, he always did.
Connie was so deep in her memories of the past that she was startled by the storm of applause. She had paid no attention to the play. Now the curtain was falling on the bowing cast. The house lights went up. She drew on the long white kid gloves Beside her Sandra was pulling an ermine coat over her smooth shoulders.
“There’s plenty of time,” she said reassuringly. “Your plane doesn’t leave until twelve o’clock.”
“Midnight,” Connie said. “That sounds more romantic.”
Sandra laughed. “Won’t you ever grow up? Never mind, I like you as you are.”
“Just the same, we had better get out of here,” Connie said, worried. “I may have trouble getting a cab just when all the theaters are closing.”
“You may have trouble? Constance Wyndham, did you think for one single minute I’d dream of letting you go off by yourself, with no one to say good-by? Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going to the airport with you. Father is having George call for us both here.”
As usual the Broadway district was a blaze of light when the two girls went out of the warm lobby. Theaters were disgorging their audiences, taxis were crawling along the jammed streets picking up passengers. There was bustle and excitement everywhere. On the sidewalks crowds of people were hastening towards Times Square and the subways. Kent’s long dark car moved smoothly toward the curb and the chauffeur opened the door for them. As they sped away toward Long Island Connie wondered bleakly when she would see all this again. If her father were really ill it might be a long, long time. It might be — never. A knife seemed to pierce her side at the thought and she made a tiny strangled sound.
Sandra’s hand covered hers. “Don’t worry,” she said gently. “He’s so strong. He’s always been so healthy. Whatever is wrong with him, he has the strength to fight it, and with you there he’ll have a better chance. It’s going to be all right, Connie. Really it is.”
Connie forced a gay smile. “Of course it is.”
George had stopped the car, was opening the door for her. This was the end, the very end of her New York life. The clock had struck midnight for Cinderella and she must go back to her corner and the ashes. She did not want Sandra to see the tears she could not conceal.
“Don’t get out,” she said quickly, “and don’t wait for the take-off. It’s bad luck to see people go away. And thank you, Sandra. For four years you’ve been all that a sister could have been to me. I’ll never, never forget it. I wish there were something, one single thing, I could do for you.”
Sandra smiled. “There is. Give Jeff my love.”
Two
Feeling somewhat conspicuous in the evening dress she had no opportunity to change out of, Connie pulled the collar of her coat closely around her throat, fastened her seat belt, and looked out with the pang of excitement she always felt just before take-off.
