Spring Always Comes, page 10
“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” he said teasingly.
“Why — of course.” She stood aside so he could enter.
He tossed hat, overcoat, and gloves on a bench against the wall and came to sit facing her, his expression friendly but impersonal. Only his eyes, not impersonal at all, were watching her, watching the nervousness she could not conceal, the drawn expression of her face, the droop of her lips.
“Pleasant place, the Wiltown,” he commented when the silence had lasted too long, a silence she was unable to break.
“Very pleasant,” she agreed. “And didn’t Sandra look lovely?”
He gave her a quick look through the long narrow eyes that were one of his chief charms. “Very nice. But, of course, Sandra is a very nice person.” He grinned. “Your paragon or superman or whatever he is, Emery, seemed to think so, too.”
“He’s not mine.” Connie was stung into reply. “And he’s neither a paragon nor a superman. But he is a fine lawyer with exceptional ability.”
“So I gathered.” Jeff’s tone was rather dry. It occurred to Connie that he was jealous because of Emery’s obvious admiration for Sandra. “It must be quite a load to carry so much perfection.”
“He’s not perfect.” Eager to stick to an impersonal subject, Connie found herself telling Jeff about Emery’s blind spot in regard to his younger brother. “Because he loves the law and feels his family traditionally belongs to the law, he is trying to make Colin over. Sooner or later, unless Colin fights back, he is going to be destroyed, and with the very best intentions.”
“They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Jeff said lazily. “It isn’t what we mean to achieve that counts; it’s what we do achieve. And certainly it’s a risk to tell anyone else how to live his life.”
Connie looked up to find Jeff’s eyes fixed on her in a quizzical look.
“Take Kent, for instance,” he went on. “He would be the first to tell you how good his intentions are, how well he means. But, though he probably thinks he is a wonderful father because he has provided Sandra with every possible luxury, he is an egoist using her for his own ends. If you told him that, he’d blow up. He’d say it’s all for her own good.”
He grinned. “I think Sandra is beginning to get wise to her father. Did you notice that crack of hers last night?” He broke off. “Connie, I’m starving. Come out and let’s have lunch somewhere.” His tone was so casual, the past so deeply buried, that she could not refuse without ungraciousness.
Luncheon at the Plaza was gay and impersonal. Connie found herself laughing more than she had since her father’s death. Afterwards they sauntered toward Central Park and he hailed a hansom cab.
“Will you be warm enough?” he asked.
They moved forward at a slow walk, the cloppety-clop of horses’ hooves drowned out most of the time by taxis, by a riveter somewhere on Central Park South. Here in the park the snow was clean and sparkling under a clear cold sky.
Jeff seemed content to prolong the moment without speech but Connie was made uneasy by the silence in which she could hear so many unspoken words.
“Jeff,” she said abruptly, “I don’t need to ask how your job is going. You’re making the success I thought you would. I could tell by Mr. Kent’s manner.”
“You could, couldn’t you?”
Disturbed by something in his voice she said anxiously, “You like it, don’t you?”
“I’m making money. That’s the main thing. That’s what you wanted me to do, isn’t it?”
She bit back the words she wanted to speak. She did not know this new Jeff. Seeing him hard and without illusions it was difficult to remember the eager man with whom she had driven through a snowstorm in Maine.
“Speaking of money,” Jeff said, “something was all wrong last night. Sandra told me you were hard up. Kent implied as much. Look here, Connie, if you want to sell Stony Brook I’ll take it off your hands now. You’d be doing me a favor and I know how you hate the place.” If there was a momentary bitterness in his voice, it disappeared completely. Perhaps she had only imagined it.
“And what would you do with Stony Brook?” she managed to say. “You have no time now for vacations in the woods.”
“But I could always look forward to them. People need something to look forward to.”
He wasn’t serious, of course. His future was all mapped out. Within a few years he would be taking Kent’s place and the world would be his oyster. He was simply trying to be kind to her. As Sandra had pointed out, he was extraordinarily kind and people were apt to take advantage of that kindness.
“Thanks, Jeff, but I don’t know where Sandra and her father got the idea that I was in any sort of trouble.”
His gloved hand took her chin, turned her face toward him. “Look at me. That’s better. You can’t look at me and lie. Forget the past, Connie, and that foolish dream I had. Remember that before I — spoiled things — we were friends. Real friends. Remember how I felt about your father. Now tell me the truth. I know you so well; right now you are trying to carry a burden that is too heavy for you. Share it with me. You can trust me, you know.”
“I know,” she said huskily. And she knew that she could. Whatever impassable barriers might exist between them, she could rely on him for his understanding and his support, his assistance in carrying a burden that was too heavy for her.
The horse plodded on through the park. The huge buildings that lined Fifth Avenue and Central Park West seemed far away. There was only the moment — and the truth.
She told him the story, holding back nothing. He was silent for so long that she said, as though defending herself, “Nick is Dad’s son. I couldn’t call the police. Could I?”
“Connie, how serious do you think Nick’s trouble is?”
“Really serious,” she said promptly. “He’s scared out of his wits.”
“I knew at the airport that the man meant business and I tried to make Nick believe that. I wish now I’d gone after the fellow, but I had knocked you down to keep you out of his range and you seemed — more important. Anyhow, Nick didn’t want the man caught. Tell me exactly what Nick said.”
He listened intently as Connie repeated the story. “A kind of insurance? You’re sure he said that? And he makes collections. Good lord, it sounds as though he had got himself involved in the protection racket!”
“What’s that?”
Jeff took a long breath. “There’s no easy way of telling you this, darling.” He seemed unaware of his use of the endearment, though she looked up at him quickly through long, silky eyelashes. He was intent on his thoughts, almost unaware of her. “The protection racket has flourished in New York for decades. Briefly, it consists of gangs who threaten small businesses — that is, they usually find small businesses their easiest prey — that their store or factory or showroom or whatever it is will be robbed or burned out or bombed — oh, yes, that has happened, too — if they are not paid a certain amount of money every week as ‘protection.’ ”
“Oh, no!” Connie cried in protest. “How could Nick conceivably let himself be involved in anything as vile as that?”
Jeff shrugged. “Frankly, I am not worried about Nick. So far as ‘letting’ himself be involved, I’d find it just as easy to believe he organized the thing. No, what I am worried about is you.”
“Me?”
“That thing Nick said, that you could be involved, that they might hurt you. I don’t like the sound of this business at all.”
“But that’s not possible,” she whispered, wide-eyed. “I haven’t done anything to them.”
His arm went around her suddenly, holding her against him. “Don’t look like that, darling. Please, don’t. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“But why should it?”
“You are Nick’s sister, a way of using pressure on him.”
“Then what ought I to do?”
“Leave it to me,” Jeff told her. His voice became businesslike and impersonal. “Now let’s be sensible and practical about this and see what can be done. First, how can I get in touch with Nick?”
“I don’t know. He has never given me his address.”
“Then we’ll start with the stamps. We’ve got to find Nick, Connie. That’s the most important thing. We’ve got to make him see reason and, if necessary, I’ll give him enough money to get out of the city, away from those hoods. But I’m not going to make it too easy for him. I’m going to force him to understand that there’s no place in society for men who refuse to carry their own weight honestly.”
“But how are you going to do it?”
“I collected stamps as a kid and I still know something about them, know some of the good dealers. Perhaps we can trace the stamps and that will give us a start toward finding Nick.”
“He has a friend who’s a stamp dealer,” Connie exclaimed. “That’s how he learned about the Nuñoz collection. It was written up somewhere.”
“Good. That will give me a lead. I can find out something about the stamps that are missing. What can you tell me about them?”
“I don’t know a thing about Dad’s own stamps. I never saw them. That one morning after I reached Stony Brook he talked to me about Senor Nuñoz’s collection and he told me a little about them, showed me a few things.”
Her brows wrinkled as she tried to remember. “Oh, yes, I can recall some of them: Guatemalan quetzal birds, red, yellow and green. They were printed wrong so the poor birds stood on their heads. Actually, Jeff, it seems to me that most of those stamps had what they call inverted centers. Do you know what those are?”
Jeff nodded, smiling.
“Well, there were some from Persia, and a United States airmail stamp with the plane upside down.”
Jeff grinned encouragingly at her worried expression. “I’ll bet I can get a line on them if they should come into the market. Anyhow, I’m going to do my darnedest.”
He hesitated, cleared his throat. “Another thing, Connie, there was something wrong in the atmosphere last night, something had changed the Kents’ attitude toward you. Suppose I explain to them that —”
“No!” She cried out violently. “Never. I won’t permit it, Jeff. If you ever betray my confidence, I’ll never forgive you, not so long as I live.”
He was startled by her overwrought condition. “Okay, Connie, I won’t say a word. And stop worrying, please. You aren’t alone in this any more. If you hear from Nick, let me know at once and try to find where he is, though the chances are that if he took the stamps, as we both believe, he’ll sell them. That would get him out of his dangerous spot, and so it’s more than likely that he won’t get in touch with you at all. Meanwhile, I’ll run down those stamps if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
“Oh, Jeff,” she cried impulsively in her heartfelt gratitude, “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
There was a long pause. Then Jeff said, his voice cold and strange again, “You seem to be managing.”
Eleven
When Jeff had left Connie at her apartment he stood hesitating for a moment on the sidewalk and then turned rather aimlessly to walk toward the East River. New York, as he was constantly rediscovering, was made up of thousands of neighborhoods, each leading its separate life, with its own stores, its own churches, its own schools, its own small community interests. Small towns. Villages. Separate yet a part of the whole complex civilization of the great city.
Within a block of the shabby neighborhood where Connie lived he found himself on a block of huge, luxurious apartment buildings. Here trees were planted, canopies protected the tenants from the weather while they waited for taxis or entered their own cars. A doorman in uniform was in attendance. All you had to do, Jeff thought, was to cross the avenue with its heavy stream of traffic and, presto, you had moved from one world to another, as separate and distinct as night and day.
To make the transition on foot, as he was doing, was easy. To make it, as Connie had made it, as a way of life, was a tremendous change, one she had deliberately chosen for herself. But why? Why? The thought kept pace with his footsteps. Why? He could still remember the scorn and contempt in her voice when she had lashed at him for wanting to cast his lot in the quiet, untroubled world of the Maine woods. She had made clear that what she valued was success, money, power, influence, the glamour and excitement of New York.
And yet she was living in a shabby, rundown building; she was working in a minor clerical position. There was something he did not understand about Connie; something that it was desperately important to understand.
On one point he had no doubts at all. With her exceptional beauty and charm, with the electric quality of her personality, Connie could marry any man she wanted, one who would be able to give her the things she seemed to want. If she had not yet attained them it was because she had made the choice herself. He came back to his unanswered question. Why?
He had reached the river now and he stared down, fascinated as always by the water traffic, by the soaring bridges with their endless lines of cars, by a jet leaping through space toward some unknown destination, by Long Island spread out across the river.
Connie. It seemed to him that she had never been out of his thoughts since he had left her in Maine, his heart sore from her rebuff. And yet he had forgotten how beautiful she was, how lovely, how lovable.
In the weeks since he had left Maine he had doggedly tried to suppress the dream he had had, the dream of living in the Maine woods with Connie, of building a life like Bill Wyndham, of having a family of laughing, healthy children growing up around him, of Connie beside him, comfort and delight and reward.
Well, that was out. That was over. What Connie wanted was New York and glamour, excitement and success. He would give them to her if he could. But there were two huge obstacles to that dream, to the dream that was almost good enough, the dream that was second best. The first, the overwhelming obstacle, was that Connie had rejected him because she found a life of wealth and ease more important than a simple one. If she were to accept him only because he was wealthy and successful, would they ever be happy?
The second obstacle loomed larger from day to day. From the beginning he had realized that John Kent had displayed a great deal of interest in him; that he had encouraged him, helped him to advance more quickly than other men. More than once the older man had implied, without being definite about it, that he had Jefferson Gray in mind for his successor. Until he met Bill Wyndham, Jeff had been dazzled by his good luck; it seemed to him that life offered nothing he could not obtain in time. Even now he was profoundly grateful to Kent.
He did not know when he had first become aware that Kent was deliberately throwing him and Sandra together. In the beginning he had paid little attention. Then Kent began to drop hints. The man who succeeded him would require more than salary. He would need the support of a solid fortune behind him. Sandra was to be his sole heir and she would have a fortune on her hands, one that would, of course, be available to her husband.
More than once Jeff had planned what he must say to Kent, some tactful way of explaining that no one could decide for him whom he was going to marry. He was held back partly out of a real regard for Sandra, partly because he knew that she was no more in love with him than he was with her. When and if the time came, she herself would make clear to her father that she intended to be the mistress of her own fate.
Lately, however, there had been a change. Sandra seemed to take for granted that he would invariably be her escort, that he would be on hand when she wanted him, that he would fill in at dinner parties, that he would be a dancing partner. Then, last night, when they had been dancing at the Wiltown, she had spoken of the opera.
“Pick me up tomorrow about a quarter of eight,” she said.
He had looked at her in surprise. “Sorry, Sandra, I have other plans for tomorrow evening.”
“You’ll have to change them,” she told him, a touch of sharpness, a touch even of command, in her voice. “Father helps support the opera, as you know. He doesn’t like having his box unoccupied and he can’t go himself. He would be rather — annoyed if you couldn’t make it.”
“I — see,” Jeff remarked thoughtfully, and at that moment he began to see a great deal.
Sandra smiled slightly. “I thought you would.” After a few moments she added, “Oh, by the way, Jeff, do be nice to Connie tonight, won’t you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he asked in surprise.
“The poor girl has finally got in touch with us to borrow money and it must embarrass her when Father has already done so much for her. I knew when she called that she would want something. She always does.”
Jeff stared unseeingly down into the East River, remembering that conversation. For a bleak moment he wondered whether Sandra and her father were right. Was Connie simply after money, after what she could get from her friends? She had practically told him herself in Maine that money was what mattered, what she respected. He recalled her quoting her father, who didn’t want her to be a sacrifice like her mother.
For a long time he stood there. Suppose she really were a gold digger. Suppose she didn’t, couldn’t love him. Suppose — what did it matter, after all? Whatever she was, he loved her. And she — was it Colin Emery she loved, the lawyer whom she had defended so warmly, whose brother she had praised so lavishly? The brother who had obviously fallen with a loud thud for Sandra.
What would happen, he wondered in some amusement, if Stephen Emery and Sandra Kent should become serious about each other? They were alike, he suspected, in many qualities: an exceptional regard for appearances, a deep respect for business and professional success, a need to be a leading part of the social fabric of their world.
What would Kent do in that case? Jeff found himself wishing that it would happen. As things were, he felt like a fly in a spiderweb, caught up in Kent’s ambitions rather than his own. One thing was sure: Kent would not accept lightly having his arrangements changed, his plans upset. He was not a man accustomed to having his wishes disregarded.
