Spring Always Comes, page 4
“I have the gun,” Jeff reminded her. “I’ll try to find out in whose name it is registered.”
“What did the man want?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Obviously Nick has been mixing in dangerous company. A lot worse company than he had any idea of. If he would just come out with it, tell the truth about what his problem is, I might be able to help him. But he seems to think he can handle it alone.”
“And you don’t think he can.”
“I don’t know,” Jeff admitted. “The one thing I am sure of is that you must not be involved with Nick or his — friends. Not in any circumstances. I don’t like having to say this about your brother, about Bill Wyndham’s son, but he’s not above making unscrupulous use of you to save his own worthless skin.”
“I’ll be all right,” she assured him. “I heard the man say he didn’t want me.”
“He said that!” The words were almost a shout. Then Jeff cleared his throat. “Connie.” He came to a full stop.
“What is it?”
“I don’t want you to do without me. Ever.”
Four
As she turned to him in stunned surprise he said, “I know this is a poor time to be talking about myself — about us — but now that Nick is gone I can’t remain at Stony Brook unless I can stay as your husband. I love you, Connie. But you must know that.”
Her eyes were wide, the passionate warm lips were parted in astonishment. “Jeff! I didn’t know.”
“That’s why I’ve stayed on. I’ve been fully recovered for weeks but there was no one else to help you.”
For a moment the world wheeled, then righted itself again. Jefferson Gray loved her. He wanted to marry her. After the heartbreak of the past weeks, when she had believed she could never be happy again, a miracle had happened. Jeff! The nightmare of the unknown future was gone, dissolved in sunlight. The future meant Jeff. Jeff to love her, to take care of her, to protect her. Jeff with his kindness and his gaiety, his gentleness and understanding, his devastating attractiveness.
His devastating attractiveness. His charm. Someone else had said that of him. She recalled Sandra’s voice, speaking softly; Sandra with radiance in her face. Jefferson Gray, she had said, was the man her father designed as his successor. And she must marry a man who could take the place of the son her father had never had. She had said, “Give Jeff my love.”
Always, always, Connie thought, I’ve hurt people I loved, people like Dad, like Sandra. I promised myself I would never do it again. Sandra has given me unstinting loyalty and kindness and yet, time after time, the men she liked have preferred me.
Now there was Jeff. Rebellion rose like a flame in Connie. She couldn’t give up Jeff. She couldn’t be expected to. He loved her. You can’t turn love on and off like a faucet, she told herself. Even if she gave up Jeff, there was no reason to believe that he would turn to Sandra.
But that wasn’t true. She was pretending to herself that marriage with her would be the best thing for Jeff. But would it? According to Nick, Jeff had already had trouble explaining to John Kent why he had remained so long at Stony Brook. Perhaps he had already endangered the future that promised to be so dazzling. And she had no reason to believe he could find happiness only with her. That was wishful thinking. Sandra was deeply attracted to him. When he returned to his office, when he was once again under Kent’s dominating influence, he would be thrown with her more and more.
“I love Stony Brook,” Jeff was saying. “I want to buy the place and run it, Connie. Run it with you, my darling. This is the rich, real life.”
“You sound like Dad,” she said again, fighting to keep her voice steady.
“I’d like to resemble him. He was the best and the wisest man I ever knew.”
“Jeff —”
“Don’t say anything now. I’ll take you home, move to that motel in the village for the night, and tomorrow I’ll go down to New York. When you have an answer ready, send for me and I’ll come at once.”
“New York?” She was startled. She was not prepared to have the break come so soon, to have it be so final.
“I’ll have to explain to Mr. Kent, and that’s not going to be the easiest job in the world after all he has done for me. It will be difficult for him to understand why I prefer this life to the one,” and he smiled faintly, “he has all mapped out for me.”
Connie’s thoughts were whirling. Jeff had, she realized, been profoundly influenced by Bill Wyndham’s personality, by the serenity that comes from a fulfilled life. But Jeff had not had time to learn whether, when her father’s influence was removed, he would still find this quiet and almost primitive life as rewarding for him as he would the prestige and power and wealth of the life Kent had to give him.
For the first time in her young life the happiness and welfare of someone else was more important to her than what happened to herself. And staring through the windshield at the drifting snowflakes, Connie discovered, without preparation, without warning, that she had fallen in love. Fallen in love without even knowing that it was happening to her until it was too late.
Too late. Warm as the car was, her hands were cold. No, it was her heart that was cold.
You’ve got to make him believe you, she told herself. Aloud she said in a voice she did not recognize as her own because it was so contemptuous, “You mean you are going to throw away the future that Mr. Kent offered you, give up all opportunity of accomplishing something, of being somebody, give up New York for the woods, give up glamour and comfort and excitement for winter and cold and darkness?”
There was a long silence. When Jeff spoke at last he said quietly, “I guess that’s my answer. But there is something you forget, Connie.”
“What’s that?”
“You think of this life as though it would be a kind of eternal winter. But remember: spring always comes.”
“It comes to New York, too,” she reminded him. “I know Dad loved this life. But he was different; he was special. And he told me, the only time we really had a chance to talk after I came up here, that he didn’t want me to be a sacrifice to his dreams as my mother had been.”
“I — see.”
She shot him a quick look from under long lashes, conscious of the pain she had inflicted, longing to heal it as only she could do, but aware that what she was doing was necessary for his own sake, to prevent him from ruining his life for what might, after all, prove to be only an impulse.
“Jeff,” she said, “you could have a brilliant future. Sandra told me her father hoped that some day you would be in a position to take over the burdens for him.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said oddly.
Sandra would like that. The words trembled on Connie’s lips until she was half afraid that she had spoken them aloud.
At Stony Brook Jeff helped her out of the car, spoke to Mrs. Kennedy, who came forward to take the girl comfortingly in her arms. In a very few minutes Jeff came down the stairs, carrying his suitcases.
Connie’s heart dropped like a plummet. She did not want him to leave. She wanted to have him take her in his arms, tell her he’d never let her go. She wanted to say, in those beautiful words of Ruth: “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
He brushed his lips lightly over her forehead, a brotherly sort of kiss. “Anything I can do for you in New York?”
Head high, she smiled at him gallantly. “Give Sandra my love.”
ii
During the next few weeks Connie, with Mrs. Kennedy’s help, prepared to close Stony Brook. So far she had made no attempt to sell it. That could wait for the future. She could not bear to part with it, but without ready money it could not be maintained. Anyhow, Connie was forced to admit that she was unable to run it by herself.
As the lodge represented practically all that her father had to leave, there was the pressing problem of money for her support. If only Nick were different. If only he loved this place as her father had loved it, as she loved it, they could work together to build a future. But Nick had no interest in Stony Brook beyond any money that might come from its sale and he had been bitter when he learned that it had been left to her alone, in spite of the fact that he had already received far more than its value.
Where was he and what was he doing? For a few days after he had left, presumably to go to New York, Connie was haunted by fear for him. At night she dreamed of a shadowy figure that stalked him along the streets of New York. But he did not write, there was no word at all, and little by little, distance dimmed her fear. Perhaps the whole thing had been a mistake. Perhaps, after all, the man had not been looking for Nick, he had mistaken him for someone else.
Over and over, Connie found herself thinking of her father’s idea of building rustic cottages to attract hunters and vacationers, but a man was needed to cope with the details. There were times when all her will power was required to control the dreams that took possession of her mind, romantic dreams of Jeff sitting beside her, looking into the crackling fire; Jeff’s laughter breaking the stillness of the house; Jeff’s love turning the hours to magic.
It surprised her now to realize how profoundly she had changed in those few weeks at Stony Brook. While she still delighted in New York and missed it, she had discovered in that fleeting moment when she learned that Jeff loved her and wanted to marry her that she could be happy wherever he was. Perhaps only where he was.
No, she told herself sternly, don’t ever dare to think of that. You are going to earn your own living. You’ll have to go to New York, after all. But not in Jefferson Gray’s world. Never again in Jefferson Gray’s world.
Jeff had not written. Every day she had waited for the mailman, had riffled through the letters, had turned back from the mailbox with a sinking heart, feeling curiously forlorn and deserted.
The only word she had received to feed her starving heart was the letter of condolence Sandra had sent about her father’s death. After speaking sympathetically of Connie’s loss, she had mentioned her debut and the resulting heavy schedule of social engagements. At the close of her letter she made a passing reference to Jeff.
“He looks well, I think. Better than he has for a long time. I am glad that his visit to Stony Brook did so much for his health, especially as he is working hard now to make up for the time he spent there.
“Of course we understand why it was. He couldn’t leave while you needed him. After all, there was, as he says, no one else to help you. I do think he’s the best-natured and kindest man I know, but I suppose, like most people of his type, he’ll be exploited. Last night we saw the opening of Black Plumes. He mentioned you.”
Connie had read and reread the letter. He mentioned you. Though not put into words, there had been an impression that Sandra and Jeff had become a closed corporation, one in which there was no place for Connie Wyndham.
And that, too, she reminded herself, was her own choice. She could have married Jeff. Instead, she had sent him away from Stony Brook, sent him back to Sandra and the future John Kent had planned for him. A brilliant future. And she had been right. Jeff’s proposal had been an impulsive action, a part of his innate kindness. He had been sorry for her. And there had been no one else to help.
Connie plunged into the work of closing the lodge, keeping so busy that she fell into bed at night exhausted and too weary to think.
Early in December, when she had turned the key in the door of Stony Brook and said good-by to a weeping Mrs. Kennedy, she took the train for New York. When she climbed the ramp at Grand Central Station she emerged to lights and noise, huge advertisements, trundling carts loaded with luggage, people hastening toward the gates to their trains or lined up before ticket windows or crowded around the great circular information booth in the middle of the huge room.
For a moment she stood absorbing impressions in delight. New York! New York at last. Then, seeing the red-cap pushing a cart that held her luggage toward the Vanderbilt Avenue exit and the taxi-stand, she ran to retrieve the suitcases and leave them in a coin locker. After she had removed the key she stood uncertain, fully aware for the first time that this was indeed a strange arrival in New York.
This time she was not being met by the Kent car. This time she would not be driven to the Park Avenue apartment to take possession of her old rooms. There had been no hint, no suggestion, in Sandra’s letter that she would be glad to see Connie, that she expected her to return to New York. The past was gone. She was on her own.
Why, Connie thought with a shock of surprise, I don’t even know where to go. She went out onto Forty-second Street as a taxi drew up at the curb and two girls got out.
“Plenty of time,” one of them said. “The train for Greenwich won’t leave for ten minutes.”
“Connie!” cried the other. “Where have you been, stranger?”
“Hello, Mary. How nice to see you, Florence.” Connie explained that she had just come from Maine where her father had recently died, and the two girls expressed sympathy.
“I saw Sandra just last night,” the girl called Florence said. “I asked about you. She said she didn’t expect you to be in New York this winter.”
“Oh, well, it was a sudden idea.”
“Sandra was with a dreamboat,” Mary said. “Man named Jefferson Gray. It was easy to see what is going to happen there. She could hardly keep her eyes off him.”
“Neither could you,” Florence laughed.
“I’d try to cut Sandra out if I thought I had half a chance,” Mary confessed.
“You mean they are actually engaged?” Connie managed to retain the smile on her lips. “She didn’t tell me.”
“Not yet, but the poor man hasn’t a prayer. You should watch Sandra’s father. He’s always putting in an appearance at parties, which certainly has never been his line in the past, sort of looking on and watching the competition. He doesn’t want his fair-haired boy straying. I’ll bet if Jefferson Gray so much as dated another girl he would find himself joining the unemployed.”
“And thirty million ain’t hay,” commented the other girl.
Connie was stung into blinding anger. “Jefferson Gray isn’t the man to marry for money,” she said hotly. “What’s more, Sandra doesn’t need to have her father keep an eye on her admirers to prevent them from straying. She is lovely and charming and she has always been terribly popular.”
The two girls looked at each other awkwardly.
“I guess I spoke out of turn,” Mary admitted. “I forgot how close you and Sandra have always been.”
“Time for our train,” Florence exclaimed, and they hurried away in relief.
“Give me a ring soon,” Mary called back.
“Soon,” Connie promised. But she knew she would not keep that promise. There was no place in the life of debutantes for a working girl.
Five
Connie fastened the collar of her coat high around her chin. The sky was as gray as when she had left Maine, but the air was many degrees milder. Instead of snow there was a chilly drizzle; instead of balsam the air smelt of exhaust.
She fumbled for coins, tucked under her arm with some difficulty the huge bulk of the New York Sunday Times, and turned into the nearest lunch room where she sat at a bare table and ordered breakfast.
After a cup of hot coffee her courage began to stream back. The depression left by her meeting with her two friends had faded. Through the rivulets of water on the window her eyes rose from the wet street, the plodding people in plastic raincoats or huddled under umbrellas, up and up the front of an office building across the street. It seemed, literally, to scrape the sky, to thrust its roof through the low-hanging clouds. She imagined the thousands of people who earned their living in that building, the countless ways of earning it, and excitement licked along her veins.
“New York, here I come,” she told herself. “I’m going to conquer you. But I’ll have to plan. First, I must find a place to live and then I’ll look for a job.”
She removed the Rooms for Rent and Help Wanted sections from the paper and began to mark ads. Half an hour later, aware that she had occupied her table much too long, she folded up the list of rooms that she had marked, and went out to face New York, head carried high, eyes shining, walking with the grace and distinction that had always characterized her. Absorbed in her thoughts, she was unaware of the many eyes that turned for a second look at the girl who went past, high of heart, eager to confront the future.
After the sixth disappointment, she realized that the description of a room as given in an ad and the reality were poles apart. “Completely furnished” turned out to mean a studio couch with broken springs, linoleum on the floor, and an electric plate for cooking, set in a tiny and airless closet in the room which served as bedroom and living room.
“Share kitchen” proved to be a kind of community scramble with five other roomers in a big, cockroach-ridden kitchen in an old-fashioned Pullman apartment.
“Walk-up” meant a sixth floor apartment at which she arrived panting, her heart pounding, leg muscles quivering.
Sometimes the block in which the apartment was located was enough to discourage her, a block that just escaped being a tenement section, with screaming children playing ball in the street, ducking agilely among trucks and taxis and buses, with grave risk to life and limb.
One by one she crossed off the places she had inspected. The next address was in the East Seventies and she climbed the subway stairs wearily and found herself outside a remodeled building with an old-fashioned minute lobby and a row of bells. Each one had over it a card bearing the name of a tenant. The one Connie was looking for was Debaney.
The advertisement read:
Will share furnished apartment with another working girl. References exchanged. Cooking privileges. Private garden.
