Spring Always Comes, page 8
“I told you it hadn’t broken up, but we live in separate worlds now.”
“And which world is Jefferson Gray in?” Seeing her expression he gave a low laugh of triumph. “So that’s it.”
“Nick!” She clutched his arm. “Nick, Sandra loves Jeff.”
He opened the door.
“Nick, please.”
“I’ll keep in touch.”
When the door had closed behind him, Connie started toward the kitchen to do the dishes. There was a metallic sound outside and she went swiftly across the room, threw open the door. Nick was getting up from his knees.
“Dropped my fountain pen,” he said. “Is it always this dark out here?”
“Always. Here, let me help you.”
“Don’t bother, it wasn’t worth much anyway,” Nick said, and he went down the hall.
As Connie turned, light from the living room floor lamp revealed something on the hall carpet. She bent over to pick it up. Nick’s fountain pen. She turned it over, her fingers moved, a light flashed on.
“Nick!” she called. But Nick had already gone.
She went back slowly. What had Nick been doing with a flashlight?
When she had switched out the light in her room Connie lay for a long time staring up blindly at the ceiling. Nick a thief! Nick involved with criminals. She was glad with all her heart that her father could not know. And yet — and yet Nick had seemed to be in earnest when he said that if she helped him once more, just once more, he would reform. He would become the kind of man his father had wanted him to be.
For a moment she thought about his implied threat that if she did not come to the rescue his friends would punish her. She dismissed it. Things like that did not happen.
She would have to get in touch with John Kent, ask to borrow money until she could sell Stony Brook. It pinched her heart to think of the lodge going to strangers. That would be the end of her dream.
Her cheeks burned at having to ask Kent for money. She hadn’t wanted the Kents to know she was in New York. More than that, she hadn’t wanted Jeff to know. She had been afraid to see him again, afraid that her precarious courage would fail her, afraid she would betray her love for him, afraid he would turn from Sandra to her and so spoil his life — and Sandra’s.
Well, the time had come when she would have to get in touch with the Kents, pocket her pride, borrow money. She writhed with shame.
Sleet pattered against the window. Connie pulled blankets higher around her shoulders against the bitter winter night. Her tired thoughts were in a jumble. Somewhere Nick was out in the night but she did not know where he was going, where he lived. From Nick to Kent. Perhaps she could get in touch with him without Jeff knowing about her.
“Jeff,” she whispered in the darkness. “Oh, Jeff!” The pillow was wet with her tears.
Nine
Next morning, Colin Emery passed Connie’s desk with a gay greeting but he did not as usual ask her to have lunch with him. In his own office he buckled down to work, making a valiant effort to catch up with the cases he had been neglecting. When he was not interviewing clients or dictating, dealing with arrears of paper work, he was in the law library looking up references.
“What’s happened to Junior?” Jane demanded over the lunch table in the cafeteria. “I’ll bet the boss clamped down on him. He’s a changed man. He has given me about twice as much work as he ever did before and no ‘come hither’ look about him either. He’s all business. Though I must say, try as hard as he can, he’ll never make the kind of lawyer the boss does. A round peg in a square hole, if I ever saw one.”
“Then why did he become a lawyer?” Connie asked.
“For four generations the Emerys have been lawyers. You’ve seen those musty old portraits in Mr. Emery’s office.”
“Didn’t it matter whether they were interested in the law or not?”
Jane shrugged. “Family tradition is hard to ignore, especially when the boss is there to remind you of it. All Junior was interested in was — you’d never guess — having a dairy farm! He spent a summer on one once when he was in college and fell for the rural life. He wanted to put his money into cattle and the boss hit the roof. So Junior —”
“Don’t keep calling him that,” Connie said. “He hates it. It just underlines what everyone thinks, that he’s a kid brother being led firmly along in the right direction. It’s humiliating.”
Jane’s eyebrows rose in an astonished arc. “Do my ears deceive me or have you fallen for our pet wolf?”
“I haven’t fallen for him,” Connie said crisply. “I’m just sorry for him.”
“Sorry for him! For a professional playboy who thinks all girls are fair game? A man who’s practically never done a real day’s work in his life?”
“I think he’s been forced into a profession that is all wrong for him and he doesn’t know how to fight it except by, well, by goading his brother with his playboy ways. I don’t believe that is the kind of person he really wants to be.”
Jane leaned back in her chair and softly whistled the wedding march.
Connie flushed and then laughed. “I’ll never fall in love with Colin Emery.”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” There was an amused grin on Jane’s face.
Connie shook her head firmly. “No, I’ll never — it isn’t —” She broke off in confusion, feeling hot color stain her cheeks.
After a startled look at that telltale blush, Jane tactfully changed the subject, describing in great detail a television program she had watched the night before.
As employees were not encouraged to use the office telephone for their private calls, Connie had to wait for evening to get in touch with John Kent. All day the prospect hung over her like a dark cloud. The humiliation of having to borrow money was bad enough; the fact that Sandra and Jeff would know she was in New York was intolerable. She could hardly avoid meeting them. And what would happen then?
When dinner was over that evening, the telephone rang and it was Lil, as usual, who answered it. After all, the calls were generally for her. She held out the telephone to Connie.
“For you,” she said.
Connie’s heart sank. It would be Nick, of course, and she would have to put him off. Instead, it was Sandra’s voice, familiar and yet oddly different.
“Connie! Why on earth didn’t you let me know you were in New York?”
“Well —” Caught unprepared, she was at a loss for an answer. “How did you learn where I was?”
“Mary told me weeks ago she had seen you but she didn’t know where you were staying or how long you planned to be here. Then today I ran into Nick, of all people. He said that you are working here in New York.”
“That’s right. And it’s great fun.”
“I must see you, Connie. Have dinner with us tomorrow evening.… No, I simply won’t let you off. There’s no telling when I’ll have another free evening, not for at least ten days, and I want to hear all about what you have been doing.” Sandra laughed, and again there was that odd sound in her voice. “No more hiding away. Tomorrow at eight. Promise?”
“I promise,” Connie said reluctantly.
Next morning she was haunted by her promise to have dinner with the Kents. She would have to ask Kent to lend her money. She would have to find some plausible explanation for not having informed Sandra that she was in New York. There had been something strange about Sandra. She had seemed to want to see Connie, and yet — and yet —
Connie jerked away from her wandering thoughts to realize that she had not heard a word of what Stephen Emery was dictating in his quiet, precise manner.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Emery. I just let my mind wander.” And if there was ever a lame excuse, she thought, that was it.
“So I observed.”
“I’m sorry,” she said inadequately.
“Where were you?” he asked in amusement. “It seemed to be far away.”
“In a cloud, I guess. It won’t happen again.”
As she was gathering up notebook and pencils he commented casually, “I shouldn’t worry too much about a slight lapse of attention. We are very glad to have you here at Emery & Emery. Very fortunate.”
Connie’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. Never before had the senior partner been known to pay anyone a compliment.
“You seem to have a good influence on my brother,” he added. “He is really working for a change. I have an impression that the credit belongs to you.”
Connie was horrified to hear herself say impulsively, “I think he’s the one who deserves the credit, Mr. Emery. It’s fun to buckle down to work that you love but it’s sheer drudgery to do work that’s not congenial. There doesn’t seem to be any reward in it for its own sake.”
Why did I say that? she wondered when she got back to her desk. She had been impertinent, inexcusable. In any case, Colin Emery was old enough to fight his own battles. They were no concern of hers.
She tackled her notes, typing briskly. She was relieved that Stephen Emery was not in his office when she went in to leave the letters for his signature.
By the time Lil got home that night Connie had finished her bath. “Don’t cook for me, Lil,” she called. “I’m going out to dinner.”
“Oh, swell!” Then Lil joined in Connie’s laughter. “You know what I mean. I’m so glad you’re going out for a change. Who is it — a new boy friend?”
“No, a girl I knew in college,” Connie said evasively.
“Oh.” Lil’s disappointment was evident in her voice but when Connie came into the living room the other girl stared at her. “Connie! You’re simply dazzling. That jade green satin is perfect with your hair, and that style, with one shoulder bare — Céleste has made a specialty of it this season. People love it. You look — I never saw you look like that before.”
Connie smiled, touched by Lil’s honestly expressed admiration that was completely without envy. It helped to restore the confidence that had been badly shaken by the knowledge that tonight she must face Sandra in a different relationship from any they had had before.
Connie found that she was oddly breathless, that her heart was beating hard and fast when the doorman at the Kents’ Park Avenue building opened the taxi door and greeted her.
He beamed at her. “Miss Wyndham!”
She smiled, “Horrid night, isn’t it, Brixton?”
“Not when you come home,” he declared.
When you come home. But she wasn’t coming home, Connie remembered as she went up in the familiar elevator, when she was greeted by the familiar parlor maid, when she entered the familiar long drawing room with the draperies of the many windows drawn against the night, the vases massed with flowers.
Then Sandra came running into the room to greet her warmly, Sandra in a stunning white evening dress, exquisitely groomed, but still with that queerly withdrawn, half-alive look she had worn so often in the past, a look that made her almost plain.
What was I afraid of? Connie wondered. Everything is the same. Everything is all right. There is nothing to be afraid of.
“You look wonderful,” she said. “I’ve missed you so much, Sandra.”
Sandra stood with her hands on Connie’s shoulders, looking at her with searching eyes. “You look wonderful, too,” she said and, though she smiled, the smile did not reach her eyes, did not warm her sober voice. To her own surprise, Connie found herself thinking of Lil’s warm smile. She wondered whether Sandra had always been so remote. She hadn’t said a word about missing her.
A moment later John Kent, short, stout, ruddy-faced, came in with his deliberate walk that just escaped being a strut, and shook hands with her.
“Well, Constance, this is pleasant. I hope we’ll have some opportunity to discuss your plans.”
She looked at him uncertainly.
“Specifically, what do you want to do about Stony Brook? Your father asked me to keep an eye on your affairs, you know.”
“Father, Connie won’t want to discuss her problems the very minute she gets here,” Sandra protested.
My problems? Connie wondered. There was something here she did not understand.
“But I thought that was the whole point. The fact that you canceled all your appointments for tonight — oh, well, later then,” Kent said, somewhat surprised. “But it is a mistake to let these things drift. I’ve made reservations at the Wiltown.” He ushered the girls out and down to his waiting car.
The Wiltown, although it had opened only a few weeks earlier, was already one of the most fashionable Manhattan restaurants. Kent’s table was beside the dance floor and the members of the band were just returning to their places after a brief rest when the headwaiter led the way to the table. There was always, Connie remembered now, a certain amount of bustle when John Kent entered a restaurant. The days when this spotlight effect had been a commonplace seemed like part of another life. Looking around her, seeing the people in evening dress, the hovering waiters, the violinist softly touching his strings, Connie thought of the noisy cafeteria at which she usually ate, and she grinned to herself.
The grin helped to relax the strained tension around her mouth that had been there ever since Kent had made clear, though inadvertently, that Sandra had deliberately lied. She had not called Connie because she had a free evening. She had rearranged her plans in order to see Connie. For a moment she had looked chagrined when Kent made the revelation but she had not attempted to explain.
As Connie sat down she glanced at the nearby tables. They provided a cross-section of this world of luxury: a famous senator, a Broadway producer, a well-known sportsman, industrialists, people from the Social Register. Her eyes rested on a table where, to her surprise, Stephen Emery sat with a group of friends. There was no reason, of course, why Emery should not frequent fashionable restaurants, but somehow she imagined him always in his own library, surrounded by law books, when he was not in his office.
Emery recognized her with equal surprise, he bowed and then his eyes moved on to Kent whom he obviously recognized, passed to Sandra where they lingered, and finally were raised to someone who was joining the Kent table.
Connie’s eyes raised, too. A tingling along her nerves had given her a second’s warning.
“Hello, Jeff,” she said coolly.
“Connie!” For a moment his face lighted, warmed with delight. Then, his voice as colorless as her own, he said, “Sorry to be late, Sandra. Good evening, sir.”
Connie looked up straight into Sandra’s eyes, and her heart was cold at what she read there. Something had roused Sandra’s suspicion and she was watching every move, every expression, alert to every word spoken by either Connie or Jeff, for any glance exchanged between them.
This, Connie knew in a flash, was Nick’s doing. His meeting with Sandra had been no accident. He had deliberately planted a seed of distrust in her mind. But what had he hoped to gain?
The dinner, outwardly pleasant, was a long punishment to Connie. Over her hung the realization that, before the evening was over, she would have to borrow money from Kent. And there was another factor, one she had not foreseen. When she had made her sacrifice, and made it freely, without bitterness, she had not imagined what it would be like to be in the company of Jeff and Sandra. The pain seemed to be more than she could bear.
As the meal progressed, she was aware that she need not have worried about Jeff. The past appeared to be entirely forgotten. After that first moment of spontaneous delight he had paid her no attention beyond the requirements of good manners. For a short time Kent threatened to engross all his attention, discussing business until Sandra insisted, with a half-annoyed laugh, that he let it go for the evening.
“Jeff is yours during the daytime,” she declared, “but this evening he belongs to me.” There was a faint challenge in the smiling look she gave Connie, who smiled back gaily.
When Jeff asked Sandra to dance, Connie made up her mind not to watch them, but in spite of her determination she could not look away as they circled the room. Obviously they had danced together many times. They talked little but when they did it was with an easy camaraderie. There seemed to be no indications of a deep attachment between them. She scolded herself when she was aware of a secret feeling of relief.
She turned her head to find Kent watching her with a curious expression. Then he, too, looked at the dancing couple, a sudden question in his eyes, which lingered even after Jeff and Sandra returned to the table.
He suspects, too, Connie thought in alarm. What could Nick have said? Or else I must wear love like a banner. I was off-guard. I should have known that he sees everything.
“Well, Constance,” he said, “I understand you are earning your living. Very sensible of you. What are you doing?”
When she had explained he said, “A stenographic pool? With the education you have been given surely you could do better than that.”
It was the first time he had ever reminded her of what he had done for her. Connie felt herself flushing.
“It may not be glamorous as jobs go,” she said defensively, “but I like it better every day. I had never realized before that our whole civilization depends on the kind of law we have and on the way it is administered. Stephen Emery says —”
Sandra began to laugh. “I simply can’t picture you in a law office, drawing up deeds, or whatever they do.”
“Don’t,” Jeff said with a half-laughing grimace, “mention the law at this moment. Today I had a terrific struggle to get excused from jury duty.”
“Why didn’t you simply refer the matter to me?” Kent asked. “You are indispensable to the business.”
“Stephen Emery says that no one is indispensable.”
“Your friend isn’t infallible,” Kent remarked in the tone that usually ended any discussion. He was not accustomed to having his remarks questioned.
“After all, Connie,” Jeff said, attempting to justify himself in answer to her implied criticism, “there are men who need the extra money they earn on jury duty. They are the ones who should be in the jury box, as a matter of justice.”
