There is always love

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

FOR THE space of a split second Linda Bourne thought that the man in the open, low-slung black roadster speeding out of the orange-red sunset had waved and called "Hi!" to her. As he came on she realized that he was a stranger. Instinctively she turned to see whom he was hailing with such exuberance.

No one behind her. On each side of the broad, tree-bordered New England street, white houses with green blinds had the appearance of having sat placidly in the midst of their shadowed lawns for generations. No sign of life on the porches. No curious eyes at the windows—none visible. Had he waved to her?

"Don't tell me I'm wrong. That this isn't the date you set for me to dine with you."

Linda wheeled. The opulent, clean-lined black roadster had drawn to the curb. The engine breathed softly as only a top-drawer engine would breathe. The smile of the hatless, dark-haired man leaning toward her waned, his eyes widened with surprise. Was he putting on an act? If so, he was doing it well. She shook her head:

"Sorry, but that's the story. Wrong number." There was a hint of amused derision in her voice.

"You don't have to tell me." He was out of the car looking down at her. "I know now that you're not the girl I thought you were. Just to keep the record straight, it isn't my habit to speed about the country hailing strange females. Your name isn't Bourne by any chance?"

Linda smiled suddenly, adorably, with a flash of perfect teeth and a deep dimple in each flushed cheek.

"Not by chance, by marriage. One Evelyn Carter did become the wife of one John Bourne and I'm an offspring, one of them."

'Then I didn't make such a break after all." He drew a long breath of exaggerated relief. Now that they were clear of surprise she could see that his eyes were a warm gray, at the moment brilliant with laughter.

"Last week in Plattsburg where I've been in training, I met one Hester Bourne." His imitation of her inflection was perfect. "She invited me to dine at her home tonight on my way back to New York. You have a sister, Hester, haven't you? Stop me if I'm wrong. You look enough like her to be a twin. She, also, wore white with a big cartwheel hat. Same tawny

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hair with a hint of auburn; same brown eyes that just now look enormous. Same heart-shaped face. Your mouths are different. Yours tips up at the corners and you have a dimpled chin, she hasn't."

"You've forgotten something. Hester is in possession of four wisdom teeth and I lost one last week, impacted, in case you care."

She wondered that she could speak flippantly when her throat was so tight. She knew why her mother had urged her to accept Ruthetta Brewster's invitation for the evening. She had wanted her out of the way when Hester's guest, th^ tall, lean, bronzed, terribly good-looking gray-suited man arrived. It had happened before. She had been bitterly resentful when two men had cooled toward her elder daughter and had tried to rush the younger, who had promptly snubbed them. But that last fact hadn't helped.

"Hope that it isn't the prospect of having me for a dinner guest that has struck you dumb. Miss Bourne?"

His voice was light but two sharp, vertical lines had cut between his eyebrows. His intent regard was oddly disturbing. It was as if while listening to her words he was reading her mind and knew of the hurt suspicion simmering there.

"Disappointment, not the prospect, has stolen my tongue." Her voice matched his in lightness. "I'm not going home, worse luck. I'm on my way to keep a supper date, Mr. '*

"Gregory Merton's the name. My friends call me *Greg.' Going to be my friend?"

She smiled as she placed her hand in his extended.

"Of course, any friend of Hester's is mine. I'm Linda. My friends call me—"

" 'Lindy,' I'll bet my hat. *Lovely Lmdy,' if you ask me. Hop in and 111 take you to your date. Noble of me to offer because I'm pretty sore that you weren't enough interested to stay home when you knew I was coming."

"But, I didn't . . ." She broke off the admission and substituted, "I made this date long before I ever heard of you." Which was gospel truth. No need to tell him that she had felt something festive in the air when she reached home from the oflace, that her mind had been so full of the not-to-well-suppressed ogling of her boss that she had dashed up to her room without stopping to speak to anyone, that later as, refreshed by a shower, she was dressing, her mother had tapped at her door to tell her that Ruthetta Brewster was on the phone, wanted her to come for supper and go on to the Clubhouse Committee Meeting with her.

"You'd better go, dear. Ruthetta is so alone since her parents died suddenly. She needs you. Living with that hatchet-faced Liberty Hull must be trying. Of course she's a marvelous 2

housekeeper, but I'd rather wade in dust and have a few more smiles."

She had intended to sidestep the committee meeting, had told Skid Grant not to call for her, had planned to devote the evening to intensive consideration of what to do about her job, which was fast becoming unendurable, but if Ruthetta wanted her she would go. And here she was stopped on her way by one Gregory Merton who was regarding her with narrowed eyes.

"Apparently you're not a believer in the spoken word, Lovely Lindy," he teased. "Do you always go into silence when you meet a new man or shall I attribute it to my devastating charm? What's the matter? Afraid to get into my car? Don't you believe that your sister invited me to dinner? Come on home and let me prove it." The hand with which he indicated the tan-leather seat of the sleek roadster was strong, perfectly shaped. A green signet ring was on the Uttle finger.

"Of course I'm not afraid. Of course I believe that you're dining with Hester, but I want to walk. I've been sitting at a desk all day. I'm a working girl. Good-by."

She looked back once as if attracted by a magnet. He was still standing beside the car. She waved and hurried on. Exit Mr. Gregory Merton from her life.

His face and smile were disturbingly clear on the screen of memory as she and Ruthetta sat on the porch steps after supper. The western sky was a faint crimson. One adventurous star blinked In the cool twilight blue above. There was a premonition of autumn in the August air.

"The days are shortening too fast," she regretted. "I like the country but when the afternoons get dark I love the bright lights of the city."

Ruthetta caught a leaf as it flitted past like a green butterfly.

"So do I and I'm going. Nothing to keep me here, now. I've been living in the past, in an atmosphere of collector's items acquired by my forebears before they were antiques. It's deadening. I'm about to tear up my roots. I've always wanted to paint—don't laugh when I say portraits—never had a chance to take a brush in my hand. I'm starting from scratch, but the point is I'm starting. I've made all the arrangements. Come with me, Lindy? You aren't happy or satisfied here. That isn't a criticism, that's an observation—your job is a bed of nettles. There is only one common-sense move when you don't like your life. Do something about it. Get out. Go somewhere. Follow a rainbow. Who knows, you may find the legendary pot of gold at the end of it It's not only the oflBce that's getting you down, it's your mother. She has hurt you again, hasn't she? I recognize the symptoms."

Linda nodded and looked at the girl beside her as if seeing her for the first time. She was twenty-five, only two years older than herself. They had been friends for years but never before had Ruthetta admitted that she wanted more than she had in a life which had been devoted to parents who were middle-aged when she was born. She had lately been through tragedy but her hazel eyes were steady and unclouded, her lips parted in a gracious curve; her satin-smooth dark hair was waved and gathered in a soft knot at the neck. She was not pretty, but her face was interesting; there was color imder her skin which made it lovely. She was an understanding person and an I'm-here-when-you-need-me friend.

"You've guessed it, Ruthetta." Linda tried to keep her voice clear of resentment. "Is it my fault that Mother hurts me so often? She is a wonderful woman in many ways. Am I touchy and supersensitive?"

She told of meeting the man in the black roadster, of her ignorance of the fact that a guest had been invited for dinner, of her realization that her presence at home was not wanted. Something in her friend's face prompted her to ask:

"EHd Mother suggest that you invite me here tonight? You needn't answer. You've gone the color of a red, red rose."

"Suppose she did? Mighty thoughtful of her. She knows that I adore being with you. You're so gay, so inoredibly sincere, so absolutely without malice and so lovely to look at. She knows that I hesitate to ask you to come here now that I'm livmg quietly." She indicated her black frock. "Don't think for a minute that she isn't proud of you, doesn't love you, Lindy. It's only—"

"I get you. It's the 'Not that I love Caesar less but Rome more' tradition. For Rome substitute Hester."

"Don't be bitter. I understand your mother. She doesn't love Hester more, it's just that she feels a deep sense of protectiveness. She realizes that her elder daughter hasn't the younger's take-it-on-the-chin spirit; in short, that she's a trifle dumb, that Life is bound to step on her; and she's trying to stand between her and Life. It's a fool thing to do. She'd better let her get knocked down and struggle to her feet again, especially when it comes to boy friends."

"I agree with all you say but this last crack makes me so mad I could cry. It's so unjust. I've never, never tried to attract a man, never have encouraged one who has shown the faintest symptom of liking Hester."

"You're telling me. Haven't I seen you shunt them off with a flippancy that made me want to beat you? No matter what your mother thinks, Hester isn't entitled to the attention of every male who bl0ws into this town. She'd be a whole lot better off if sh'' had a job."

"Mother wouldn't let her take one. She insisted that Dad left a sufficient income for us to live like ladies. Hasn't that a before-the-World-War flavor? However, when I proved to her that there wasn't enough if I depended on that same income for my expenses, she consented to the secretarial course for me. I believe I drew the world's worst boss. He brings out the savage in me. Sometimes I'm going to forget I was brought up to be a perfect lady and slap his fat face hard or bite him." She snapped her teeth. "So what?"

"Change. Break away. New friends. New surroundings. New problems, harder ones perhaps, but new. Your father left you a legacy, I heard."

"You heard right. A legacy and his stamp collection which is quite valuable. Hester resents that last. She stages an aggrieved, he-left-you-more-than-he-left-me act, when even an ordinary postage stamp is mentioned. To my mind one of the most tragic aftermaths of a death is the fact that things are so apt to cause trouble in families."

"Was Hester interested in your father's hobby?'*

"Bored her to distraction. I loved it. After Dad was confined to the house I spent hours working with him, mounting and sorting stamps. He had a lot of cronies with whom he traded and he and I would tingle with excitement when he acquired an item we had needed. I haven't looked at them since he—he went. I—I couldn't."

"I understand, Lindy. You feel that way now, but someday you'll begin arranging and collecting again and it will bring him very near. You have money enough to stake yourself till you find work. Come to New York with me."

"New York!"

"That's what I said, dearie. Your voice wouldn't have been more shocked had I suggested Timbuctoo. Take a chance. It might not be such a chance. The sensational blond guest of the Grants' who camped on your trail last June told you he would give you a position, didn't he?"

Linda braced her elbow on her knee and rested her chin in her pink palm. Her eyes were on the one blinking star.

"You mean Keith Sanders? Sure, he offered me a job in his real-estate office."

"Mr. Worldly-Wise in the flesh plus a sardonic smile."

"And the yellow hair of a Viking, the biggest, bluest eyes I've ever seen, colossal charm, and a caressing voice for which I fell hard. I had had all the childhood and adolescent diseases but I never had an attack of love at first sight before. I burn with humiliation when I remember the night I sat beside him at dinner at the Grants'. I felt like a million when I entered the dining room in my spiffy gold-dotted white net; when I left I felt like thirty cents."

**You with an inferiority complex! I don't believe it." "It*s true. I had fairly prattled of tennis, Club affairs, our dramatics. When I rose I could see 'Small-Town Girl* in his sophisticated eyes, such cold eyes, as plainly as if the words had been set in neon hghts."

"Pity you couldn't have given a demonstration of your capability on the spot. Your present boss, fat Sim Cove, boasts that he has the smartest secretary who ever took dictation. He has. I haven't forgotten the hours I read aloud to you that you might gain speed in shorthand. The Sanders person may have thought you small-town but I noticed that he trailed you like a G-man in pursuit of a suspect while he was here. He had your steady, Skidmore, Heir to the House of Grant, glaring at him until I sniffed battle, murder and sudden death."

"Skiddy isn't my steady, Ruthetta, and you know it. He's a sort of cousin. We've grown up together. As for Keith Sanders' devotion, that was what is known to the literati as character-study. He had helped finance a show and had picked up the writing bug in the process. He declared that as far as he could see playwriting was a cinch, he intended to make a stab at it when he had time. I heard later that he was being trailed by a night-club singer who wanted him to back her in a musical comedy."

"If he was after copy he should have stayed one week longer to have been at the Grants' when the priceless diamond bracelets, rings and other jewels were stolen. He might have caught the merry burglar while a-burgling. Small-town girl plus an experience like that would have given him material for a smash hit. So long as he offered, why not ask Mr. Woridly-Wise for a job?"

"I'm not quite so naive. Were I to send in my name I wouldn't crash even the outer gate of his business citadel; besides, I'm in real estate here, I want to try something else. Ill keep him for a last resort. You've given me an idea, though. Father used to say that there is more power in an idea than in anything else in the world. You're a grand person, Ruthetta. My heart has stopped smartmg about that dinner at home. I hope Mother and Hester are enjoying their precious Greg."