A Candle in Her Heart

by Emilie Loring

  Her face was radiant with relief. “Oh, Oliver!”

  His arms tightened, drawing her close. “He is ready to retire, anyhow. If he does it now, if I become president of the Company, if you marry me, we’ll fight this thing out together. We’ll lick it. That’s a promise.”

  Leslie’s thoughts whirled. What Oliver said corroborated what her father had told her. Perhaps—if she could save him—protect him from dishonor, save the jobs of the people of Claytonville—perhaps personal happiness wasn’t important.

  Oliver, watching the conflicting thoughts pass over her face, laughed exultantly. He bent over, kissed her lips, long and deliberately.

  Instinctively, Leslie pushed him back. She knew in a flash that, whatever the cost, this was one mistake she must not make. Even to save her father’s reputation she could not marry Oliver Harrison. Every feeling rebelled.

  “No,” she whispered. “No!”

  He laughed. He kissed her again. “My adorable Leslie.”

  “Let me go,” she panted. “Let me go, I tell you.” She was frantic to escape from his hands, his lips.

  “Never.”

  “I’ll scream for help.”

  His expression changed. His arms dropped. He looked at her in what appeared to be genuinely hurt surprise.

  “What’s wrong, darling? Don’t be frightened. You’ll learn to love me. I promise you will.”

  Leslie was surprised to hear herself say, “But what about your friend Felice Allen?”

  Oliver’s head jerked back in surprise. “Felice?” he repeated uncertainly. “Why? Are you jealous of her? I assure you, there’s no reason to be.”

  Leslie laughed, a spontaneous ripple of mirth. Then it died on her lips as she saw the terrible look on his face. He knew from that lighthearted laughter that he had no hold on her at all, that he had lost her irrevocably. For a frozen moment they faced each other and Leslie discovered that she was afraid of this man. Then they became aware of the uproar, raised voices, exclamations of alarm from the sun room where the music had broken off abruptly.

  Leslie turned away from him with a little shiver. “Something must have happened,” she said. He followed her silently into the crowded room.

  Corliss Blake’s voice was raised, dominating the confusion. “Nonsense. There is no point in breaking up the party. The state troopers will have everything under control and they would probably prefer not to have too many of us milling around. Sorry I have to leave you. Good night.”

  He was gone before Leslie could speak to him. There was a babble of voices, talking excitedly, and Leslie made her way through the small groups of people, warding off the questions with which she was bombarded on all sides and to which she had no answer, hunting for Agatha.

  The latter, looking placid and controlled except for the nervous twitching of her lips, was talking quietly to one of her guests. “I am sure,” she said, “that Corliss would greatly prefer to have you stay here. Everything at the Company will be under control.”

  “What on earth happened?” Leslie asked. “Aunt Agatha, where has Dad gone?”

  “The state police just called. Someone broke into the laboratory tonight. Swensen is injured. And some woman. The details weren’t very clear. Your father has gone to see what the situation is.”

  Oliver gave a sharp exclamation. “A woman! There was a woman at the Company tonight?”

  Leslie risked a look at him. Agatha’s words had startled and angered him.

  “Broke in!” he said after a moment. “My God, the formula—” He started for the door.

  “Oliver,” Agatha said in her placid voice.

  He turned back impatiently. “Forgive me for rushing off but—”

  “Oliver!” this time the voice was firm. “Corliss particularly requested that no one go over there. It will only cause confusion.”

  For a moment Leslie thought he was going to ignore her words. Then he turned back with a shrug of defeat. His lips were white with the effort he was making to control himself.

  “Burglary,” he said hoarsely. “If they’ve got away with it—” He broke off, his eyes roving around the room. “I don’t remember seeing Shaw here tonight. Did he come?”

  “I asked him,” Agatha said. “He had another engagement.”

  “Shaw!” Oliver said thoughtfully. “From the very beginning, I’ve said—”

  “Dear Oliver, I understand that you are greatly shaken. None the less, you are breaking our house rules for a second time and I cannot permit it. Now will you be kind enough to ask the Company receptionist—Miss Morris, isn’t it?—to dance? She is sitting alone in the sun room.”

  Oliver bowed slightly and went into the other room. With a look at Agatha, Leslie went in search of a partner, managed—for hours, it seemed—to carry on gay talk that had nothing to do with the burglary.

  At last, Ann, the older of the two maids, came into the room, caught Agatha’s eye. “It’s Mr. Blake on the telephone.”

  For once Agatha moved swiftly, almost lightly toward the telephone in the library. With a murmured excuse to her partner, Leslie followed. Oliver, who apparently had been equally alert, was close behind.

  “Yes, Corliss? … They got away … Then there was no harm done … Nors Swensen knocked out … a woman? … the cleaning woman seriously injured. Oh, dear! … smashed a window. Well, my dear, it might have been worse. When will you be home? … Good. But how about a guard? Can the police … Oh, Mr. Shaw was there. He’ll stay on guard all night. I must say, that’s very nice of him.”

  She set down the telephone, looked at Leslie. “You heard?”

  Leslie nodded, her fingers groped for the back of a chair. She needed support.

  Agatha looked at her stepdaughter and there was keen penetration in her eyes. “It’s just as well,” she said slowly, “that Mr. Shaw refused my invitation for tonight. He appears to be making himself very useful. Sit down, my dear. Oliver, bring her a glass of water, will you? Our guests are leaving. I’ll take care of them, Leslie, so you just go straight to bed. I’m afraid—the heat—has been too much for you.”

  * * *

  “I’m afraid the heat has been too much for you.”

  It was the following morning. Leslie was on her knees in the cutting garden, a trowel in her hand. The moist earth had a healing quality that dulled the pain in her heart. The early morning air was cool. She raised her eyes, seeking the cardinal whose sharp, clear, repeated call she heard. She saw a flash of flame against the blue of the sky. If only she could create something as lovely as the flight of a bird, leave behind her some record of the beauty she so loved.

  She left the trowel thrust into the earth, the restlessness that had driven her out of doors before the rest of the household was awake having drained away. For the first time in her healthy young life she felt bone-weary, drained of energy, while listlessness made her droop.

  “I’m afraid the heat has been too much for you.”

  She turned with a start, aware that she had heard the words before but that they had not registered clearly in the turmoil of her thoughts.

  “Sorry, Aunt Agatha, I—” She looked up in the older woman’s face, saw her concern, tried to smile.

  “It isn’t the heat,” she confessed.

  “I know.” Agatha brought a garden chair near the flower bed and sat down.

  Leslie moved to curl up at her stepmother’s feet, her hands clasping her knees. “Because I nearly fainted last night?”

  “Partly that. But I guessed long ago, the first time he ever came here. That’s why I asked him to supper last night. I wanted to have a chance to—study him a bit. Not,” Agatha added quickly, “that I had the slightest intention of interfering.”

  “There’s nothing to interfere with,” Leslie said dully. “Sometimes I think he cares for me; but there’s Jane, of course.”

  “Jane Williams?” Agatha said in surprise. “Why I thought—” She hesitated. “Mr. Shaw has been seen dining frequently with Miss Allen at the F
ox and Rabbit. You know how these things get around in a village. I thought she was the one.” She put out her large, shapely hand. “Sorry, Leslie. Forgive me if you can. I’m a blundering fool. Somehow I always manage to say the wrong thing.”

  Leslie managed an uncertain, rather wavering smile. “It’s all right. If Donald Shaw cares more for someone else, I’m not going to let it matter. Not for long, at any rate. I’ll get over it. But he wasn’t the burglar last night. He wasn’t. He couldn’t be.”

  “You are too honest to try to fool yourself or to fail to face the facts, Leslie. He refused my invitation because he claimed to have another engagement. But he seems to have been at the laboratory when Nors Swensen and a new cleaning woman, a Mrs. Turgen, were both attacked.”

  Leslie watched a butterfly with orange stripes flutter from flower to flower. “What does Dad think?”

  Agatha made an oddly protective gesture toward Leslie and then met squarely the demand for truth in the girl’s level eyes.

  “Corliss doesn’t know what to think,” she admitted. “But he believes there was something queer—about the whole operation. Something staged. It was so noisy, to begin with. Nothing was stolen. And then the attack on Swensen and particularly the one on that poor cleaning woman were needlessly brutal. Corliss thinks the purpose of the whole thing was to indicate that it was an outside job, to clear any employee of the Company of complicity in case suspicion should be aroused.”

  Leslie reached for what scanty comfort she could find. “But Dad left—Donald—on guard for the night. He must have trusted him.”

  “There was no risk that anything would be stolen then. It would point too clearly at Mr. Shaw. At least, that’s what Corliss thinks. The purpose had already been achieved. The presence of an outsider had been established.”

  Agatha got up heavily. “Don’t forget that Jane and Doris are coming to lunch. They are the only members of the Committee I’m sure of, at this point, though I’ve telephoned like mad. But I’ve ordered a flexible menu in case any more of them show up.”

  “Committee?” Leslie said blankly.

  “The Planning Committee for the Clayton Festival. There are so many members that no one has been taking any responsibility. You know how committees are as a rule. One person does all the work, the rest talk and feel important.”

  “Don’t I know,” Leslie said fervently. “The trouble with this town is that there aren’t enough busy women. They are the ones who get things done.”

  “So,” Agatha told her, “I’m going ahead more or less on my own. Corliss would be upset if this should fail—too.”

  Leslie took a long breath. “Nothing has failed yet, Aunt Agatha. We’ve got that to hang on to. Who was it who said, ‘A lost battle is a battle you think you have lost’? We’ve just begun to fight.”

  She scrambled to her feet, gave Agatha a quick hug. “Bring on your Committee. We’re going to make Claytonville sit up and take notice.”

  14

  It was a brave challenge, but when Leslie reached the lunch table, wearing a silky-looking cotton dress of browns and yellows, which reflected the brown tones of her hair and eyes and tanned skin, her enthusiasm began to dwindle. Three more members of the Planning Committee had appeared, all rather fretful and abused at having had to change their plans at the last moment.

  Agatha fought a valiant but losing battle to get the women to cope with the program for the Festival. Mrs. Ballard had been having servant problems; Mrs. Hastings seemed to cherish the vague idea that the purpose of the Committee was to organize summer sports for youngsters; and Miss Eustace, a formidable woman with a bass voice, had come prepared with all her recollections of the Clayton family and its history, which included data that went back to the late 1600s.

  Leslie, listening with dismay to the babble of voices, realized that it was less like conversation than a series of determined monologues.

  Agatha: “We must start by drawing up a general plan. Then we can get down to the details, allot the work and do the minor things like deciding what kind of supper is to be prepared.”

  Mrs. Ballard: “Just what I told my Sarah this morning. ‘If you’d make a general plan,’ I said, ‘you’d get your work done in half the time and twice as efficiently.’ It’s two weeks at least since any of the silver has been polished.”

  Doris: “So if we’re to be married in August, I’ll have to go to New York right away to pick out my trousseau.”

  Mrs. Hastings: “I think it would be nice to plan some picnics with someone to arrange races; you know, with potatoes or those three-legged ones, or something like that. So amusing. Children love them.”

  Jane: “Children love anything that is noisy and exciting, and the noisier the better. Now Jack has persuaded one of the Company clerks to take him out in his canoe. But, if you ask me, Jim Mason is doing it only—”

  Miss Eustace, her deep voice drowning out the others: “Of course, the Claytons were the first settlers here. Somewhere I’ve got some notes my mother made about the family. Very nicely written, too. It might be a good idea to have them printed and distributed at the Festival. Historical interest, of course. My dear mother made a hobby of genealogy, you know.”

  Everyone knew. Their hearts sank. Agatha gave Leslie an appealing look. Leslie finished her dessert of lime ice with melon balls and stood up.

  “We must start planning now,” she said crisply. “If we aren’t going to make a disgraceful failure of the Clayton Festival, we’ve got to think hard and work hard. We owe Douglas Clayton a great debt. Let’s put aside personal things and arrange to pay him the finest tribute we can.” She looked from face to face, collecting their attention, forcing them to put aside temporarily their private concerns in the general interest.

  “Now then, Aunt Agatha.”

  “First,” Agatha Blake said, “we’ll have a parade, of course. With three bands. Then the speeches on the Green and the unveiling of the sculpture. Finally, a supper in the Town Hall followed by a showing of the movie of the Tower Heights offensive. Now suppose we begin.”

  The Committee, considerably to its own surprise, settled down to work.

  * * *

  Late that afternoon, Agatha got out her cream-colored Buick and drove Leslie to the hospital. She drove easily and competently. Beside her Leslie suddenly burst into delighted laughter.

  “When I think how you made them hew to the line,” she chortled. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  Agatha shared her laughter. “I’ve never fancied myself in the role of Madam Chairman but someone had to do something.”

  “Do you really think they’ll do all they promised to do?”

  There was a quirk of amusement on Agatha’s lips. “Want to bet?” she asked mischievously.

  Leslie laughed again. “Not I! You’ve not only got them eating out of your hand but they love it. They were terribly impressed by your efficiency and everyone wants to show you how much she can accomplish.”

  Agatha beamed. “I never realized before how interesting it is to find out what potentialities various people have. The only trouble is that it’s a two-edged sword. Before I knew it, I began to get involved in all sorts of things. I found I had committed myself to taking part in everything from the PTA to civil defense.”

  “You’re going to be knee-deep in village affairs before you are through,” Leslie predicted.

  “I expect I shall,” Agatha answered happily. A flush on her cheeks made her seem younger, prettier, less stately and more approachable than usual.

  She parked in the wide space reserved for visitors to the hospital. The receptionist smiled at them. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Blake. Hello there, Miss Blake. I hear there’s been a lot of excitement going on.”

  “May we see Mrs. Turgen?”

  The receptionist spoke over the telephone, shook her head. “Sorry, she’s sleeping right now. But her boy Charles is in the sun room on the second floor, waiting for her to wake up. Perhaps you’d like to talk to him.”
>
  Agatha nodded. “We’ll go right up. Now, about her expenses—”

  “Charles Turgen told us that they are being taken care of by a Mr. Donald Shaw. Mr. Shaw telephoned to confirm that.”

  “That was very kind of Mr. Shaw,” Agatha said, “but Mrs. Turgen is our responsibility. I’ll appreciate having you bill me direct.” Her tone was pleasant but the order was meant to be obeyed, and the receptionist made a note of it.

  “And how is Nors Swensen getting along?”

  The receptionist called again and hung up smiling. “They x-rayed his head. There’s no serious injury. He is sitting in the sun room with young Mr. Turgen right now and he is to be released in the morning. Your husband has already called and left instructions that Mr. Swensen is not to report for duty for at least another week.”

  They took the self-service elevator to the second floor. Agatha was thoughtful. As the door opened she said in an absent tone, as though thinking aloud, “Conscience money.”

  Leslie made no comment. It was easy enough to follow the direction of her stepmother’s thinking.

  There were only four ambulatory patients in the sun room. One was looking out on a street of arching elms, a second listened to a radio whose volume was tuned low, a third turned the pages of an illustrated magazine. The fourth, with a bandage like a turban wrapped around his grizzled head, was talking cheerfully to a slight young man with a worried face.

  Leslie went to them with outstretched hand. “Hello, Mr. Swensen. That’s very impressive-looking headgear you are wearing. Very becoming, too. No, don’t get up, please, or we won’t stay.”

  Nors settled back with a grunt. “This is nice of you, Miss Blake. Mrs. Blake, this is Charlie Turgen, whose mother got bunged up. He is waiting for her to be able to talk to him.”

  Agatha shook hands with both of them. “I’m so sorry about your mother’s injury,” she told Charlie.

  His face hardened. “To knock her out was bad enough. I suppose the rat was afraid she would recognize him. But to slash her with a knife! There was no sense in that. She couldn’t have done him any harm, even if she had wanted to. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Shaw, she might have bled to death. He made a tourniquet and—”