by Peggy Gaddis
“I don’t indeed. And I think it’s a poor idea for a gal to live alone, even in a small place like Harbour Pines. I’m not a bit happy about your being there all by yourself. You should have someone with you. Aunt Hettie, preferably, only Aunt Hettie has her own place and her livestock to take care of and she’d be miserable living anywhere else.”
“Of course she would. And I don’t want anybody living with me. I like living alone.”
“I can’t quite feel it’s safe.”
“With you representing law and order? Why, Sheriff!”
“Don’t you get smart with me, young woman!”
She laughed, relieved that he was willing to break the fast growing tension.
“And anyway, now that the Journal is launched and the worst of it is over, I needn’t get so worked up and tired out and nervous that I’m easily frightened,” she told him lightly.
His face was grim once more in the feeble light from the instrument board.
“I don’t seem to care much for the picture of you being frightened half to death in your own home. We’ll think of something,” he assured her, as the car turned in at the entrance gates to Pinelands. And crazily enough there was an oddly pleasant warmth about her heart at this evidence of his interest and his concern for her.
The big old house was ablaze with lights and there were two other cars already parked in front of it. As Jim parked the convertible, the door opened and Sue-Ellen stood there, and Shelley’s heart fell a little. For Sue-Ellen, in frothy white, her pale gold hair done in an artfully simple, yet devastatingly sophisticated coiffure, was something to stir a man’s dreams.
“Hi, Shelley, what do you mean keeping my man out this long?” Sue-Ellen demanded with cheerful severity as Jim and Shelley came up the steps. “We were just about to send out a search-party complete with bloodhounds to find you.”
She linked her arm with Shelley’s and drew her toward the group that stood in the living room. A group dominated by an unexpectedly regal and handsome Selena, in silvery-gray crepe, her hair done high and a narrow velvet ribbon held by a diamond brooch about her throat.
“Good evening, Miss Kimbrough.” Selena’s greeting was courteous but entirely without warmth. “I’m glad you could be with us tonight.”
“Thank you, it was good of you to ask me,” said Shelley politely.
There were three young men and two other girls, all in evening attire and not too much at ease in the presence of Selena’s almost regal manner. Shelley had met them all. The girl who had come home from college at the death of her mother to take over the rearing of half a dozen younger brothers and sisters was Ann Stevens. The other was Marian Harper, teaching for the first year in one of the county schools.
“Hi, Shelley,” Ann greeted her gaily. “I’ve been hearing exciting things about your paper.”
“Kind words, Annie my love, but very kind words!”
“Don’t try to be modest with me, gal,” ordered Marian. “She’s doing a swell job, Ann. Harbour Pines needed a good newspaper.”
“And of course the mere fact that Marian is correspondent for the Locust Grove community has nothing to do with her enthusiasm for the Journal,” said Jim teasingly.
“Certainly it has! I boast with pride I was the first person to place an advertisement in the Classified Columns of the Journal—‘room and board wanted’—and possibly the first that ever paid for an ad in cash!” said Marian cheerfully.
“I do hope you’ve been overwhelmed with answers,” laughed Shelley.
“Well, it’s not the Journal’s fault there isn’t so much as a vacant mouse-hole for miles around,” Marian defended the Journal.
Jim looked at her, startled, and then at Shelley and said blandly, “Well, Marian, my pet, your troubles are over. I know exactly the place for you.”
Marian laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve decided to rent rooms in the local hoosegow, Jimmy my lad. Though it might be one way of making the taxpayers a little money.”
“It’s an idea,” Jim admitted. “But I know another place where’s there’s a very attractive room, undoubtedly with kitchen privileges, though you’d have to work that out with your landlady.”
Marian’s eyes were wide and she shot a startled glance toward Selena, who was in low-voiced consultation with a dignified looking elderly Negro in a stiffly starched white coat.
“Oh, now, wait a minute; you know Miss Selena would have a fit at the bare idea of renting a room,” Marian protested.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean at Pinelands. It would be too far from your job,” said Jim, and turned, drew Shelley’s hand through his arm, and brought her about to face Marian. “Miss Kimbrough, permit me to introduce your new boarder; Miss Harper, meet your new landlady. And I feel sure you two will be very happy together!”
Marian said, confused and embarassed, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Jim, don’t you suppose if she’d wanted a roomer she’d have said so when I placed the ad? Pay him no mind, Shelley.”
“But I think it’s a marvelous idea! For goodness’ sake, why didn’t we think of it before? If you think you’d like it, Marian—if you don’t want too much luxury—which, being brutally frank, means none at all! No running water. Electric lights, yes, but very little else!” protested Shelley eagerly.
Marian’s pretty oval face beneath twin wings of shining dark hair was glowing with eagerness.
“Oh, Shelley, don’t kid me. Do you really mean it? I love your little house. It’s cute as the dickens and picturesque as all get-out. But are you sure I wouldn’t be crowding you?”
“Quite sure, I’d love having you,” laughed Shelley. She went on, without having had the slightest intention of saying anything of the kind, “But it’s only fair to warn you: I think we’ve got ha’nts. Do you mind?”
“Ha’nts?” Marian laughed. “Lamb, if you could see where I’m living now! After sharing a room with two half grown girls who spend half the night rolling their hair up in curlers, discussing Cary Grant and Gregory Peck and playing Sinatra records on a wheezing little old victrola, vintage of the 20’s, any well-behaved, self-respecting ha’nt would be a relief. Only of course you’re kidding.”
“I imagine I am,” responded Shelley. “But after all, when my house is supposed to be haunted, I’ve a right to see something on a stormy night, haven’t I?”
The others clamored for the story and lightly, deliberately stressing the melodramatic tale with the idea of burlesquing it into something ridiculous, Shelley related what she had seen.
Almost before she had finished, Selena, her hands gripped so tightly together that the old-fashioned rings on her fingers stood out heavily, interrupted, her voice tight with anger.
“Really, Miss Kimbrough, you are being absurd and in the worst possible taste. I very much resent your spreading such a lurid and impossible tale. If you are trying deliberately to keep from sharing your place with Miss Harper, don’t you think it would be more honest just to tell her frankly you don’t want her?”
The reproof in the tone and Selena’s obvious anger blazing in her eyes were so stinging that Shelley’s cheeks burned, and she felt, as Selena wanted her to feel, like a naughty child being reprimanded in front of its elders.
“I am sorry, Miss Durand. I apologize,” she said when she could steady her voice. “I did not mean to be offensive. It simply struck me as a rather amusing tale.”
“I see nothing amusing in a lurid tale born of over-imagination. Shall we go in to dinner?” Selena cut her short brusquely.
She turned and swept away, her head held high, and subdued, angry, the others followed her meekly.
Jim, drawing Shelley’s hand through his arm, said softly, “Sorry, honey. That was rotten of her. I apologize for her.”
“Don’t bother,” said Shelley stiffly. “It was thoughtless of me. And we may as well face it! Miss Selena doesn’t like me.”
“Leave us all face it, pally,” said Sue-Ellen cheerfully, giving Shelley a comforting little pat. “M
iss Selena doesn’t like anybody—not even Miss Selena. How could she, being a poor, frustrated old maid?”
“Sue-Ellen!” Jim said sternly. “Mind your manners.”
“Sure, sure, sure,” agreed Sue-Ellen, quite undisturbed as they all reached the dining room and found Selena waiting for them, her gray head held high, her manner more regal and forbidding than ever.
As they settled to their places, Sue-Ellen turned to Jim and said gaily, “Jamesy, darling—”
Jim glared at her.
“If you don’t stop calling me that—”
“Isn’t he cute? He hates being called Jamesy. It was his nickname when he was a broth of a boy. I think it suits him.”
“I think we all loathe our childish nicknames,” Marian tried to make light conversation. “I remember it used to make me furious when people called me ‘Mary Ann.’ ”
“You should talk,” said Billie Stone, aiding her cheerfully. “I was called Slats, on account of I was tall and skinny.”
“Carrot-top was mine,” Ann admitted. “Thank Heaven it darkened as I grew older.”
“My father always called me Patsy-Jane, but I loved it,” said Shelley—and caught her breath, her hands gripped tightly beneath the table’s edge.
Across the candle-lit, beautifully appointed table, she saw the look in Selena’s eyes and the sudden ugly pallor that touched her face. For a moment Shelley and Selena looked straight into each other’s eyes and there was a tiny tremor in Shelley’s heart as she realized how completely she had given herself away to her enemy.
“Now she knows,” Shelley told herself, and could have bitten out her own tongue for the little careless slip. “Before she has been merely suspicious, alarmed; but now she knows.”
There was an instant of tension of which only Shelley and Selena were conscious, for the others were still chattering gaily, and the white-coated Negro man was deftly serving them, unobtrusive, yet watchful of their needs.
Jim said quietly, “Patsy-Jane, eh? Funny how he could get such a nickname out of Shelley. Or did you grow up and select a name for yourself that you liked better?”
Through the whirling of her senses, Shelley realized that Jim, sitting beside her, had gone a little still, and she wondered desperately if he, too, had noticed that momentary rigidity of his aunt, or the malevolence in her eyes.
“No,” said Shelley quietly. “It was given me by the woman who adopted me after my mother died.”
She was still looking straight at Selena, though sharply aware of Jim beside her. But after a moment Selena turned to the young man, Don Benton, who sat on her left and made some remark to which he responded over-eagerly. And eventually dinner was over.
Later, in the living room, Marian found a moment to say anxiously to Shelley, “Look, Shelley, I don’t want to be a nuisance, and I know Jim was speaking way out of turn. But if you do decide you’d ever like somebody to share your house and help you fight the ‘ghoses,’ put my name at the head of the list, will you?”
“I think it would be fun to have you there, Marian. Come over one afternoon and we’ll look the situation over, and if you think you’d be comfortable—”
“You won’t think I’m being impetuous or thrusting myself on you if I bring my baggage when I come, will you?” pleaded Marian.
“I won’t, I promise,” laughed Shelley.
And when she had gone home from the party, she told herself, as she went into the dark, chilly little house, that it was going to be nice to have someone there with her; someone like Marian, young and gay and cheerfully matter of fact.
She lay awake a long time, unable to sleep; seeing again the scene at the dining table when she had thoughtlessly tossed her father’s nickname into the table conversation and had looked into Selena’s eyes and seen there fear and suspicion become dreaded reality. In that moment, Selena must have known the truth: that “Shelley Kimbrough” was really “Patricia Newton,” Callie’s and Hastings’ beloved “Patsy.” And Selena must know, too, that only one thing could have brought Hastings Newton’s child back to Harbour Pines to resurrect the old newspaper; the desire to ferret out secrets Selena must have thought dead long ago.
Selena must be wondering how much Hastings Newton’s child knew of that old, ugly story of fifteen years ago. Only they three, Selena, Hastings and Callie, had known the truth; Selena may have thought that only she and Hastings knew. What an ordeal it must have been for her—the trial, waiting minute by minute for Hastings or his lawyer to bring her name into the ugly story, giving it the final sordid touch.
How she must have comforted herself that she had been clever, adroit; that she had concealed her part well; that no matter what Hastings might be driven to reveal, it would be only his word against hers. The word of a man on trial for theft, faced with an almost unbreakable web of evidence, against the woman who was stainlessly pure, arrogantly untouchable.
But, Shelley told herself with grim satisfaction, she felt quite sure Selena Durand was sleeping badly tonight!
Chapter Nine
She was busy in the office a day or two later, reading and clipping small items to be used in that week’s edition of the Journal, when the station wagon stopped outside and Jim came in, clad in worn khaki, battered boots and a thin cotton shirt open at the neck and with the sleeves rolled above his elbows.
“Hi, lady—busy?” he demanded.
“Just snitchin’ some news from the big city papers for this week’s Journal. Nothing that can’t wait. Why?”
“How’d you like to go out and grab a ‘look-see’ at what makes a naval stores tick? We’re beginning operations on a new stand this morning, and I thought it might interest you.”
“I’d love it!”
She was on her feet instantly, eager-eyed.
As he helped her into the station wagon, she demanded eagerly, “Tell me all about it. I’ve nothing but an appalling ignorance about what causes a place like this. How old does a tree have to be before you start doing things to it that eventually turn into turpentine?”
Jim grinned down at her. “Well, the U.S. Forest Service recommends that the tree be ten inches in diameter from a point four and a half feet from the ground, though it’s really better, they point out, to wait until it’s eleven. That takes about twenty years.”
“My goodness!”
Jim chuckled, and returned greetings and waved at people who called to him from the sidewalk as the station wagon rattled through town.
“We used to do our own processing here,” he said, and indicated an old-fashioned fire-still, with dilapidated sheds and platforms, that huddled forlornly beyond the highway. “But in recent years central plants have been built all over the area, and they get a much better grade of gum, because of course they have proper equipment for filtering and washing, so as to remove all trash and foreign matter that used to bother us. Most of the operators use the central plants now, as we do.”
They drove on past the outmoded still with its falling buildings, and then the friendly, murmurous forest welcomed and enclosed them. Shelley caught her breath in delight as she looked about her, sniffing the warm, tangy fragrance with deep pleasure.
On each side of the road, stretching away into infinity, were the tall, stately brown-trunked trees, lifting their great green tops until it seemed they must brush the very skies themselves. Down the wide aisles, between the straight, symmetrical rows, the resinous dry needles made an aromatic carpet. And here and there along the aisles, there were mule-drawn carts, with two or three men on each cart; the carts laden with stout barrels on the outside of which sticky-looking, whitish gum had the shimmer of cellophane in the warm golden sunlight.
“Dip-squads,” said Jim carelessly. “They make the rounds of all the trees that are being ‘handled’ and empty the gum from the paper drip-cups. See?”
He had parked the station wagon now and they got out, to walk along one of the aisles between the giant trees. He paused to show her the big V-shaped slash, the bottom of w
hich emptied the running sap into the brown cup. The white, gummy substance seeped so slowly, Shelley couldn’t see how it could ever fill the deep brown paper cup. And yet she noticed as she walked along that every cup was filling slowly, steadily.
“We begin operations early in March, when the sap begins to flow,” Jim explained as they walked along. “The gum circulates, of course, more freely in warm weather, so we begin in March and continue until November. I suppose you know that the ‘naval stores’ industry got its start in this country back in 1665, in North Carolina, when some of the colonists discovered the ‘inexhaustible’ forests of long-leaf pine there?”
Shelley admitted frankly, “I don’t know anything—not even why they call this a ‘naval stores.’ ”
“Oh, that,” Jim answered carelessly, his eyes on a group of men who were grouped about a giant tree, laughing, gossiping a little in the warm golden air. “That’s a hold-over from the days when commerce was carried on in wooden ships that required tar and pitch. And it’s been retained, for convenience, I suppose, or tradition.”
They had reached the group now clustered about the big tree and the men greeted Jim, their dark faces split with wide, white-toothed grins, their liking for him making Shelley feel warm and pleased.
Jim exchanged a few words with the men, who nodded and moved on, leaving one behind them. He carried a queer-looking axe about three or four inches wide with a handle not quite a foot in length. And while Shelley watched, fascinated, the Negro’s sure, deft hands struck a light blow on one side of the pine and a V-shaped gash appeared, done with only a few adroit strokes the grace and skill of which made her eyes widen in honest appreciation.
“He’s ‘chipping a face’ or ‘box,’ ” Jim explained, pleased with Shelley’s eager curiosity. “Each week, for the next thirty-two weeks or until late November, he or some of the other ‘turpentine hands’ will cut a new ‘streak’ above that. He’ll use that hack in his hand every year for the next three years; then he will have to have one with a longer handle. It’s called a ‘puller,’ and every year until the ‘face’ is ninety inches in height, he will add a ‘streak.’ But when the ‘face’ reaches ninety inches, the tree’s usefulness as a producer of turpentine is gone.”