The Heart Remembers

by Peggy Gaddis

  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.

  “No, I haven’t a G.I. loan. I saved my pay while I was overseas and then when I came home there was a small legacy waiting for me.”

  “Good!” He was obviously relieved. “Then when you lose your shirt on this deal, you’ll still have the loan to fall back on for some more sensible enterprise.”

  And this she did resent, furiously.

  “I’ve never seen anybody with such a ‘down’ on the place he calls home,” she told him sharply. “For Heaven’s sake, if you hate Harbour Pines so much, why did you come back here when you were discharged from the service?”

  He grinned wryly and pitched his half finished cigarette into the fire.

  “A fair question, a fair question, lady, and one deserving of a fair answer. I came back because the family has owned and developed Harbour Pines for more than seventy years. Everything we’ve made has gone back into the business. It’s like the old Bible story of Joseph and his Brethren; you know, seven fat years, and then seven lean years that eat up the fat years. It’s a chancy sort of business but we’re sunk too deeply to have any hope of getting out. The profit from a couple of good years can easily be swallowed up by the losses of one bad one. But you have to keep hanging on. The other reason I stay on is, of course, Aunt Selena. She was born here; she’s lived here all her life; she can’t conceive of living anywhere else. She worked herself almost to death just to keep things going while I was away; she and I are the last two members of the family left. We have a tremendous responsibility to the families who depend on the naval stores for their living; so when the shootin’ was over, there wasn’t anything else I could do but come back and take over.”

  Shelley nodded reluctantly.

  “I can begin to understand why you dislike the place, I guess.”

  Jim eyed her with wry amusement.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Selena stood in the doorway, flushed from her exertions in the warm kitchen, but neat and composed, every graying hair in place.

  “Supper is ready,” she announced curtly, and turned to go, leaving them to follow her.

  The dining room, like all the rooms in the big, old-fashioned house, was large and shabby. The oval table was of mahogany; the cloth itself of fine damask, but old and carefully darned. The china was museum stuff and there was an old silver bowl filled with giant pansies in the center.

  A tall, ancient Negro woman, her skin ebony-satin beneath a snowy-white turban, her crisply fresh percale dress starched so stiffly that it, and the snowy apron tied about her lean middle, rustled as she walked, stood beside the enormous mahogany sideboard, her eyes lively with a faintly hostile curiosity as Jim and Shelley took their places. Selena sat stiffly erect at the head of the table.

  “Shelley, this is Mam’ Cleo, our friend, boss and household mentor,” said Jim, smiling warmly at the old woman as she passed the plates Selena was deftly serving. “Mam’ Cleo, Miss Shelley is going to reopen the newspaper office here. Think you could find somebody to help her get her house cleaned up?”

  Mam’ Cleo stiffened and her dark eyes swung to Shelley with a suddenly sharpened scrutiny that absurdly enough made Shelley a little uncomfortable.

  “In dat house, Mist’ Jim? Is yo’ funnin’? Ain’ nobody gwine go in dat house lessen dey has to—an’ I dunno nobody whut have to,” said Mam’ Cleo sternly, and stalked out, her duties for the time being completed.

  Shelley shivered a little and tried to mask the shiver with a laugh. “Apparently Mam’ Cleo doesn’t think much of my new-old home.”

  Selena was staring at Shelley with an intentness that added to Shelley’s uncomfortable feeling, and this was not lessened when Selena leaned forward suddenly and demanded harshly, “Who are you?”

  Shelley’s hands gripped each other beneath the edge of the table. Here was the question she had dreaded and known she must face all these years. She had thought she was braced for it, and yet when it came, as she had known inevitably that it must, she almost found herself caught off-guard.

  “I’m Shelley Kimbrough, Miss Durand. Didn’t your nephew tell you?” she managed quietly.

  “Why did you come here? Why did you buy the Journal? Why did you come to Harbour Pines at all? And what can you possibly hope to find here?” The questions poured from Selena’s trembling lips with a shaken fury that made Jim rise and go to stand beside her, trying to soothe her, his eyes worried and anxious.

  “Well, I wanted a place where the winters were mild,” Shelley marshalled all her arguments, trying to speak lightly, casually, as though Selena’s agitation had not set her own heart to pounding with frightened excitement. “I wanted a place where living expenses were not too high; a place that wasn’t
too close to a county seat that had a paper that would offer me unbeatable competition; a place that was small and friendly and not crowded. So when I wrote to a real estate firm in Atlanta and described what I wanted, they sent me a list of several places they thought might interest me. And the price quoted for the Harbour Pines Journal came so near the exact amount I felt I could afford to invest that I decided on it. And now that I’m here, I feel I’ve made a wise choice and that I’m going to like it.”

  She met Selena’s wide, harried eyes straightly and prided herself that she had offered her explanation logically and pleasantly, in a manner that must surely allay whatever were Selena’s fears. As though, Shelley told herself with secret bitter triumph, she couldn’t understand Selena’s fears!

  At last Selena relaxed a little and drew a long shuddering breath and motioned Jim back to his seat with a pallid smile.

  “I probably sound very rude and inquisitive,” she made herself say with the polite courtesy demanded of the laws of hospitality, by which one may never be rude to a guest beneath one’s own roof. “It was just that I was so surprised to know that anyone at all remembered there had been a newspaper in Harbour Pines. It’s such a small, forgotten place.”

  Jim said, in an obvious effort to loosen the tension of the moment, “It’s no use trying to discourage her, Aunt Selena. I’ve been trying to do that ever since I first set eyes on her. But she doesn’t discourage easily.”

  “I can’t afford to.” Shelley made her voice light and gay. “I’ve already paid for the paper and all its assets, including good will.”

  Selena’s little gasp was almost a snort. “Good will? There was no good will! How could there be for a paper owned and published by a man who died in prison?”

  Shelley caught her breath and once more her hands were gripped tightly beneath the table’s edge. But she had been mentally braced for this moment and dimly she was proud of the steadiness of her voice.

  “Oh, really? I didn’t know that. The real estate men didn’t mention it.”

  “No, I’m sure they didn’t. Naturally not. They would have been afraid of spoiling the sale by frightening you off.”

  “I suppose so.” Shelley’s voice, in her own ears, sounded merely politely interested, with just the amount of concern that was natural under the circumstances. “What did the former publisher do to get himself sent to prison? A libel suit, I suppose?”

  “He robbed the bank,” said Selena between her teeth; her tone ugly and harsh.

  “Oh, now, wait a minute.” That was Jim, of course.

  “There’s no possible doubt of his guilt. He was seen lurking about the bank at midnight. In the morning the bank vault was open and fifteen thousand dollars was gone. And the money was found later hidden under a loose board in the Journal office.”

  Selena’s tone was vicious and her color was feverish.

  Shelley set her teeth hard and knew that her own color was fading. She dared not look at either of them, lest she cry out in sharp, bitter protest and express the fury that boiled within her. She had thought herself braced to hear the ugly story as she knew she must, with a pretense of hearing it for the first time. She had thought that she could listen, pretend a polite interest, ask questions that would make it possible for her to get every tiny detail; but for a moment she was so blind with anger and protest that she dared not allow herself to speak.

  “Good grief, do we have to have all this rehashed again? I’ve heard the painful story until I could recite it backward,” protested Jim wearily.

  Shelley was greateful for the moment that gave her the strength to say quietly, “The evidence does sound rather convincing, doesn’t it? Did the man offer any denial?”

  “Over and over again, and then some more,” Jim took up his aunt’s story as though anxious to get it over with. “But he refused to say what he was doing lurking around the bank at such an hour; he had been seen and identified beyond any possible doubt. And when the money was found in his place all he could say was that he had been ‘framed.’ ”

  “Couldn’t he have been?” Shelley managed to ask.

  “By whom? After all, the money was in his own place.”

  “Yes, that seems a bit odd, doesn’t it? I mean that he should have taken it there and hidden it so carelessly on his own premises. Doesn’t that seem silly—that he couldn’t find a place farther away?”

  “Time, my dear Miss Kimbrough,” Jim told her as though painfully bored with the subject, “was of the essence! He couldn’t go very far away if he expected to be back on the job in the morning. Remember, he was seen at midnight outside the office of the bank. He had to get in, open the vault—a child’s job, really, for it could have been opened almost with a dull knife, though it did take a bit of time—and then get back to the Journal, loose a board and tuck the money away. And then he was found sound asleep in his bed when the cook and his printer’s devil arrived. You see?”

  Shelley nodded, unable to speak.

  “He could have taken the money and skipped, I suppose,” Jim went on slowly, thoughtfully. “Still, he wouldn’t have deserted his wife and child; he seemed devoted to them. And taking them with him would have slowed him up so that he would have been captured in no time at all. No, his only out was to hide the money and hope.”

  “Oh,” said Shelley brightly, while her heart knocked against the cage of her ribs so loudly that she felt sure they must hear it, “so he had a wife and a child? What became of them?”

  “Oh, the wife fought bitterly to save him, of course, and when he was sentenced to prison she and the child went away. Out West, according to rumor, where the wife had relatives who would take them in. Far enough away, I hope,” said Jim quietly, “to escape the ugly stories and gossip. After all, they were completely innocent.”

  Selena again gave that small, ugly sound that was almost a snort.

  “I’ve always wondered if Callie Newton didn’t know a lot more than she told,” she said thinly, her voice ugly with an old, never-to-be-forgotten hate that made Shelley shiver. “Callie was very ambitious for her child. She hated Harbour Pines and never allowed anyone to forget it. Thought herself above it and all its ways. I’ve wondered if she didn’t plan the whole thing and help carry it out.”

  “Oh, no!” The words were wrung from Shelley so sharply that Jim and Selena stared at her, startled, and the color flowed into Shelley’s face as she went on hastily, “I mean, it doesn’t sound as though she did. If she loved him and fought for him, don’t you think, if she had shared his guilt, she would have confessed her share?”

  “No, I don’t, because there was the child,” Selena said. “Callie just about worshipped Patsy. And she would reason that if the father were found guilty and locked away in prison, she herself must stay free to look after Patsy. But I shall always believe that Callie knew as much as Hastings did about what really happened that night.”

  Shelley looked straight at Selena for a long moment and then she made herself smile and say gently, “Perhaps you’re right. After all, you were here then, and you must have followed the whole case very carefully, I’m sure.”

  Selena looked at her sharply, suspiciously.

  “Fifteen years is a long time in most places. But in Harbour Pines memories are long.” Selena’s voice was thin and harsh. “The same people are here now that were here then, with the exception of a few of the oldsters who have died, or some of the youngsters that have grown up and gone away since then. But people haven’t forgotten. You’ll find that out, Miss Kimbrough.”

  Shelley made herself say lightly, “Well, I do hope their long memories aren’t going to react against the new Journal.”

  “For your sake, let’s all hope not,” said Jim, and welcomed Mam’ Cleo who came in bearing generous slices of pecan pie, topped with whipped cream.

  Lying awake that night in the big, airy room with its windows wide to the cool spring night, Shelley wept with her face hidden against the pillow, so that no sound of her aching grief c
ould reach beyond that room.

  Chapter Four

  She came down to breakfast in the dewy early morning, crisp and fresh in a beige gabardine sports frock, a little uneasy lest she be too early. It was barely seven o’clock, but her Army years had conditioned her to early rising and it was a habit not easy to lose.

  The smell of crisping bacon and coffee came to her from the direction of the dining room, and when she reached the door, Jim was coming in from the kitchen, greeting her with pleasure.

  “No use asking how you slept,” his eyes added the compliments not in his words. “You’re as fresh as a rose.”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Hargroves.” She swept him a gay little curtsy. “How very nice of you—and so early in the morning.”

  “Oh, I’m one of those rare and very exceptional people who are cheerful even before breakfast, and kind as all get-out, especially to pretty girls who are strangers in town.”

  “What—only to girls and strangers?”

  “Pretty girls, if they have sense, get the heck out of Harbour Pines the minute they’re old enough to have sense enough to know there are other places to live,” he assured her grimly.

  “Oh, dear, here we go again—a hymn of hate to poor Harbour Pines!” Shelley mourned, taking the chair he held for her and seeing the breakfast table was set for only two. “But where is your aunt?”

  “She always has breakfast in her own room. She’s not very strong, and is supposed to spend a good deal of time in bed. Bad heart,” Jim explained, and accepted Shelley’s polite little, “Oh, I’m so sorry!” with a nod as Mam’ Cleo pushed into the room carrying a heavily laden tray.