The Heart Remembers (3 page)

“I'm sorry that the prospect of being a guest in my home depresses you so terribly,” drawled Jim as they left the last tidy little house behind and once more the giant pines swallowed them up. “But you needn't look as if you were being marched off to be hanged.”

“Oh, please,
please
,” she was honestly contrite. “I'm sorry that I've been so rude. I think it's grand of you to take me in, and I appreciate it terribly; it's only that I felt I had imposed on you so much, and all that. I do appreciate everything you've done—truly I do!”

Jim took his eyes off the road long enough to look down at her and to nod curtly, before he started the car again.

Shelley looked with keen interest as the station wagon drove on through the little town. Harbour Pines' Main Street was a brief thoroughfare, bordered for a block or so with so-called business houses; the frame houses were tucked between and farther along. There were pigs rooting in the soft, sandy road; giant water-oaks bordered the road on each side, and long festoons of Spanish moss stirred ever so faintly in the wind. Here and there a cow moved languidly aside to let the station wagon pass. Beside the road, just barely off it, a half grown Negro boy lay sound
asleep, his hands folded peacefully, a mongrel dog idly kicking at fleas between naps at his feet.

When they had left the small village behind, Jim said dryly, “And that, Fair Lady, constitutes the town of Harbour Pines. Still think it could support a newspaper?”

“I'm going to give it a chance to try,” said Shelley stubbornly.

His jaw hardened a little and a moment later he turned the nose of the station wagon from the rambling sandy road down a narrow twisting lane between live-oaks and lower growing underbrush and came out at last in front of a beautiful old house with gracious, mellow lines which spoke of an almost regal stateliness before the evil shadow of decay and neglect had fallen upon it.

It was a big house, square, solid-looking, with four tall white columns guarding the wide front gallery and steps. A lovely fan-light filled in the space above the arched front door. Windows were full-length to the porch, with green shutters. Paint was flaking from the white house and from the green shutters.

The lawn and the garden were infested with weeds, so that they were little more than a ghost of what must have been a former glory.

But it was obvious that to Jim the house required no explanations or apology. It was home and he probably saw it with the eyes of affection that refused to accept its signs of decay. Eyes that had watched a disintegration so gradual that he was hardly aware of it.

He slid out of the car, swung the door open for her and said politely, “Welcome to Oaklawn, the home of the Durands and Hargroves, Miss Kimbrough. Will you come in?”

The big front door was open, and he led the way into a square, old-fashioned reception hall, from the back of which curving stairs led upward. He put
down her suitcases, and glanced through an open door on the left that was obviously, judging by its decoration, a woman's sitting-room.

“I'll have to find Aunt Selena,” he said carelessly. “Make yourself at home. I won't be long.”

He did not see the tightening of her body at the mention of his aunt, and she was deeply grateful that he turned and went out without hearing her small, caught breath.

She stood very still, hearing his footsteps go away down the hall. In a handful of moments now she was going to be face to face with Selena Durand, a name that had held a very special place in her thoughts for fifteen years. A name that she had heard, and that she had come to hate with all the resentment inspired by the burning injustice done her mother and her own childish, bewildered pain. The woman had played an ugly, if unseen part in the tragedy of Shelley's childhood, a tragedy that had blighted three lives.

She was so shaken that she was not aware of the passing of time. She could not be sure whether it was five minutes or many times that long that Jim had been gone, when at last she heard him returning. She braced herself, her hands clenching tightly as she heard the sound of other, lighter footsteps accompanying his.

Shelley had moved instinctively so that her back was to the window, so that her expression would be somewhat hidden, when she looked on the woman beside Jim.

She was, like the house, a ghost of what must once have been a great beauty. Tall, too thin, her graying head held high, her gaunt face composed, her dark eyes cold, she stood beside Jim in her neat flowered cotton dress, faded from too many washings, as Jim said quietly:

“Aunt Selena, this is Shelley Kimbrough. I've told
her we would put her up for a few days until she can get her own place cleaned and ready to occupy.”

There was such an expression of violent protest on Selena Durand's thin face for a moment that Shelley shrank from it almost visibly; but the next moment the expression was gone and Selena was saying thinly, “Of course. We'll be happy to have her. But I'm afraid, Miss Kimbrough, I won't be able to make you very comfortable. We have no servants any more and we only use a portion of the house.”

Shelley had a wild desire to flee and managed to control it only with an almost superhuman effort.

“It's very kind of you, Miss Durand—” how hard it was to force that hated name from her lips—“but I do feel it's a very grave imposition. I am sure I could easily travel by bus to and from the hotel in the county seat until my place is ready.”

For a moment Selena looked as though she would agree to that thankfully. But Jim cut in sharply, “Nonsense, it's all settled. You're to stay here, of course. We'll be delighted to have you, won't we, Aunt Selena?”

And as though she felt a compulsion in his voice that she dared not fight, Selena said lifelessly, “Of course. Naturally you will stay here. If you will come with me, I'll show you your room. Supper is in an hour or so.”

She turned to the stairs, and Shelley followed her, wanting to run the other way. If he suspected that emotion, Jim did not reveal it by so much as a glance as he followed them, with Shelley's suitcases.

The room was big, airy—and shabby. The furniture was old and beautiful, but it needed polishing badly, and the window curtains, though spotless and crisply starched, were old and neatly mended. The rag rugs scattered over the floor had been faded by washing. But the room was neat and clean and quite comfortable.

When Selena and Jim had gone, and Shelley was alone, she stood very still and looked about her. She was shaking a little and she fought hard to control that trembling. Was it a good omen, or otherwise, that she had been brought so suddenly and with so little ceremony into the very home of her secret enemy? That the first person she had met there had been related to that enemy? That she was already accepted, though with obvious unwillingness, by that enemy herself?

By the time she had freshened up in the one bathroom down the hall and changed from the gray
suit to a softly tailored dinner-dress of pale blue that she told herself was quite suitable for country dining, she had herself under control. And she had warned herself that she mustn't let herself think of the unlovely fact that although officially there as a guest, covered by the ancient law of hospitality, she was in reality a spy.

By the time she found her way down the stairs, dusk was setting in and she hesitated at the foot of the stairs, not quite certain which way to go. The door to the small sitting room was open and soft yellow lamp-light spilled out. But the room seemed quiet and deserted.

From down the hall beyond the stairs, in what she knew must be the service quarters, she heard the subdued murmur of voices, the faint clatter of pots and pans that told her of preparations for supper, and she was relieved that she was not going to be late. To be a tardy guest at mealtimes in a servant-less house, she knew, was one of the cardinal sins.

And while she stood hesitantly at the foot of the stairs, Jim came in from outdoors, and looked startled at sight of her there in the yellow lamplight.

“Oh, hello, there you are; come on in here,” he said lightly, and drew her toward the small sitting-room. “Supper's almost ready. There's a fire in here. Even if it is spring, these nights are a bit chilly, and Aunt Selena and I enjoy an open fire.”

“As who doesn't?” agreed Shelley, politely making conversation, liking the small, cheerful room, the comfortable old furniture with its faded slipcovers of flowery chintz, the bowls of fresh flowers and the small, cheerful apple-wood fire leaping companionably beneath the old-fashioned stone mantel.

“Miss Durand said you didn't have any servants. Do you suppose she'd like me to help with supper?” Shelley suggested uneasily.

Jim grinned as he offered her a chair.

“Mam' Cleo would have a fit and fall into it,” he assured her. “Mam' Cleo has been here ever since she was a pickaninny two years old and her mother was cook. She must be close to seventy now, but she's most definitely not a servant. She, Aunt Selena and I are a family, and it's a toss-up who's the boss—but I think Mam' Cleo has a faint edge on the job.”

“She sounds like quite a person,” Shelley answered. “I didn't know that ‘old family retainers' still existed.”

“The race is fast dying out. That's one reason Aunt Selena and I treasure Mam' Cleo so fondly.”

“I don't suppose it would be possible for me to find a Mam' Cleo to help get my place cleaned up, but what about a reasonable facsimile?” asked Shelley.

Jim looked down at his cigarette for a moment and she saw a curious expression touch his mouth, before he looked up and straight at her. And now that curious expression was in his eyes.

“I hardly think it's likely,” he said quietly, “since the colored folk hereabouts are very superstitious. They always detour widely around any place that's reputed to be ha'nted.”

Shelley stared at him, startled, momentarily offended; and then suddenly she laughed with honest mirth.

“Oh, for Heaven's
sake!
” she protested derisively. “You've tried every other way to make me leave Harbour Pines, surely you don't think me childish enough to be frightened away by ghost stories!”

“You, being a Yankee, wouldn't understand.” Jim was unimpressed by her mirth and his eyes were still grave and steady. “But in these parts where livable quarters are so hard to find, a house that has been unoccupied, deserted for many years, where ruin and desolation have had their way, gets itself a lot of legends
and rumors as time goes on. ‘Ghos'es trailing long white garments and wailing in the dark o' the moon; and strange sounds as one passes on a midnight.' ”

Shelley couldn't be quite sure whether there was a slightly mocking note in his voice; whether there was a bit of special significance there. She stared at him for a moment, and Jim stared back at her and his expression did not alter.

“Oh, but that's perfectly ridiculous,” she burst out.

“Sure.” And now, to her secret, intense relief, Jim grinned, and suddenly looked startlingly younger, more boyish. “It's impossible to convince the colored brethren that since the
Journal
plant and the cottage are on the edge of low, swampy ground, there's ground-mist that the slightest breath of air twists into odd, floating shapes; or that even on a still night there is a certain amount of air stirring in the pines to make sad, sighing sounds; or that a whippoorwill or an owl sending forth his midnight call has a weirdly human sound.”

Shelley laughed at him in swift relief.

“Well, thanks a lot! Of course I don't believe that there are such things as ghosts. But I do appreciate such a logical explanation just the same!”

Jim chuckled.

“Oh, I've never for a moment thought you stood in any danger from anything as unreal as ghosts, goblins and the like. What worries me is that you'll go into bankruptcy and break your heart trying to educate Harbour Pines up to its need for a paper.”

“You needn't worry about that,” Shelley assured him gaily. “Ever since I was a kid I've wanted to run a small-town paper; and while I was overseas, I saved my pay and made my plans.”

Jim stared at her, his brows raised.

“You were overseas?”

“I'm an ex-G.I. Jane,” she told him lightly. “I was in the Women's Army Corps for twenty-eight months; fourteen of them in Italy and France.”

“Well, blow me down!” Jim was wide-eyed and admiring.

“So you see I'm not quite the helpless, lily-handed child of idleness you seem to think,” she pointed out. “Life in the WAC wasn't all beer and skittles, but I wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world.”

Jim was frankly excited and quite as frankly admiring. Whole-heartedly so for the first time since she had met him, she realized, and felt a small, warm glow at the thought.

“Of course you wouldn't,” he agreed. “I saw some of them out in the Pacific. A grand bunch of gals. We were all as proud of them as though they had been our own family. And boy, what a lift it gave us when we saw them in there punching! Cute as a bug's ear and as independent as a multi-millionaire's bank account!”

Flushed, bright-eyed, Shelley made a little deprecating gesture.

“Oh, of course, we didn't exactly win the war single-handed,” she admitted gaily. “But one day General Eisenhower came to see us and he said we helped a lot, and so did General Bradley!”

“Why, of course you did, and plenty! Well, my girl, us ex-G.I.s must stick together, else why did we fight a war, anyway? Any time I can do anything, just say the word.”

“Thanks!”

He frowned at the fire for a moment and then he demanded, “See here, you didn't finance this new venture of yours with one of those justly celebrated G.I. loans, did you?”

Without resentment, because now she sensed that there was a warm friendliness in his voice, and an interest far beyond mere curiosity, she answered
promptly and completely.