Her heart was beating irrationally. She was tempted to race for the house, shut out that light. The light that wasn’t there, that couldn’t be there. Instead, she took a long breath and went steadily down the lawn to the river’s edge.
The light flashed again. A flashlight. Ghosts don’t carry flashlights. She was beginning to shake but she made herself go on, groped for the rope that moored the barge, scrambled up.
“Who’s there?” she asked in a low voice that would not carry to the house.
There was a gasp. The torch moved, caught her in a noose of light. Then there was darkness.
“Who’s there?” she repeated, a betraying quaver in her tone.
“Leslie, I’m sorry. It’s Donald. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” A hand touched her hair, her arm.
“Donald!” Her voice was still low. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I came for a walk down here by the river. Then I remembered what you had said about the barge. I was just exploring. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. Well—good night.”
“Don’t go yet.” He did not touch her again but his voice held her, charmed her. She could not move. Then his voice changed, lost its warmth. “I understand that congratulations are in order.”
“Why?”
“On your approaching marriage to Harrison.”
“But I’m not going to marry Oliver Harrison,” she exclaimed in indignation. “Where did you hear that?”
“From Felice Allen. She told me that it is common knowledge to everyone in the village.”
“Except to me.” She turned away.
“Hold on! Please, Leslie. Don’t go. Not just yet. We’ve never really talked. I meant to wait—if the time ever came—but I can’t let you go like this, not with such absurd misunderstandings between us.”
His hand groped for hers, closed on it, and he guided her to a bench. “He won’t mind our being here,” he told her softly.
“Who won’t?”
“Douglas Clayton. If this was really his sanctuary and he still haunts it, I think he would welcome us.” He spoke as though addressing the ghost that haunted the barge: “Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.”
In the dark of the night there were quiet murmurs. Water lapped gently against the barge. Leaves moved sibilantly, as though whispering to each other. In the sky the stars wheeled on their timeless journey. And still the man beside her did not speak. Leslie waited, wondering if he could hear her quickened breathing, the thud of her heart that seemed like the pounding of surf, thunderous in the night.
“Two misunderstandings,” he began suddenly.
“You don’t owe me any explanations, Donald,” she said.
“Yes, I do. I believe you know that. You know why. I love you, Leslie. I believe you know that, too. That is why there must be no more misunderstandings between us. There is no disloyalty or discourtesy on my part in clearing things up. First, there was Jane Williams’s dramatic reaction when she found me kissing you. There was—no occasion for it. There is nothing between Jane Williams and me, Leslie. Nothing at all.”
“But there was,” she said.
“Yes, there was.” His voice sounded tired. “There was all the magic of moonlight. But it’s gone now. Even if there hadn’t been you, there were the little things. Her dismay when she knew her son would be playing around again in a few days. Her disregard for everyone but herself. Her colossal and self-centered vanity. Her—cruelty.”
Leslie stirred in the darkness, remembering how Jane had run from him, with revulsion in her face, when she saw the scars on his scalp.
“The other thing,” he said quietly, “that silly incident tonight—Felice Allen staged the whole business. She was playing a game of her own. I’m not sure what it is, though I’d back my guesses and they have nothing to do with me. The point I’m trying to make is that she is of no importance. She—remember the talk we had that night when I kissed you? Your father had told you that your mother was like the sun shining on the Garden of Eden.”
She made no reply. His hand tightened on hers.
“Felice Allen is—just lamplight. But I want sunlight. I’ve been afraid of the sun for a long time but now I need it. The sunlight that is you, Leslie.”
She tried to speak but she could not utter a sound.
His arms gathered her close, his lips brushed her hair. “I want your love. Some day, I hope, I trust, I can ask you for it. But now I need your trust even more, perhaps, than your love.”
He waited a long time for her to speak. Then it was he who broke the silence.
“I’m sorry; I asked too much of you. I didn’t have the right. Forgive me if you can.”
She turned to him then. His fingers touched her cheek.
“Tears! You’re crying! What have I done? I didn’t mean to distress you, to cause you the slightest bit of unhappiness.”
“It’s—” She caught her breath and then said bravely, “It’s not unhappiness. You remember those words of Wordsworth: ‘Surprised by joy.’ ”
“Leslie,” he said huskily. He lifted her chin, found her mouth, kissed her. “Leslie, what have I done to deserve this?”
“People don’t deserve love,” she said, out of that new and sweet knowledge of hers. “They just accept it when it comes. They welcome it—if it is right for them.”
“Am I—right for you?”
She drew back from his ardent kiss with a breathless laugh. “I think you must be. Don’t you?”
“And you don’t even know anything about me,” he said in a shaken voice.
“Lots of things,” she said confidently. “All the important things.”
“Such as?” She could hear the smile in his voice.
“That you have suffered without growing hard; that you can be magnanimous, even to people who are unfair to you; that you have a gift for laughter to help keep you on an even keel; that you’re a man of integrity.”
“You know all that?” he whispered, his cheek brushing hers. His arms tightened abruptly and then, just as abruptly, he released her. He helped her to her feet.
“I’m coming back soon to ask you to marry me. But, meanwhile, you’re going to need all your faith in me. I hope it’s strong enough.”
“It’s strong enough,” she said confidently.
“It will need to be,” he warned her. “I’ll see you as soon as I can. It won’t be long.”
“But why can’t you—”
“That’s what I meant by trust, my beloved. No questions. Just blind faith.”
“All right. I’ll be waiting.”
She ran up the lawn in the dark, her heart singing. This is happiness, she told herself. The poets were always right. “Surprised by joy.”
She let herself quietly into the house, not even aware that the French doors stood wide open on the night. She turned once to look back. There was a flash of light on the barge that was quickly extinguished.
* * *
“I thought you had gone to bed!”
Leslie started as she heard her father’s voice. He had been sitting in the dark.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she told him, “and it’s much cooler down by the river.”
“I couldn’t sleep either,” he said. “I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to have a sound night’s sleep.”
She curled up at his feet. “You can’t keep this up, Dad, or you’ll have a breakdown.”
“It’s nearly over,” Corliss Blake said. “In one more week we should be ready to go into production. If we can hold the Gypton Company off that long. Once we’ve announced the new formula and entered the market they won’t be able to stop us. And then—” He sighed. “Then I’ll feel that I have done my job and I’ll be able to retire. Harrison can take over if he likes.”
“You don’t really like Oliver, do you, Dad?”
“He has made my position intolerable ever since that abortive burglary. I feel sure that he has started rumors about my complicity in th
e affair.”
“Dad!”
“And he has tried, in every way he can think of, to drive me out of the Company.”
“Then why should you retire and let him have his own way?” Leslie protested hotly.
“Whatever he is as a man,” her father told her, “and personally I hate his guts, he is a fine chemist. He is better fitted for the job of leadership than I am. I’ve always felt like a square peg in a round hole at the Company. That’s why I have let Harrison have his head as much as I have. I wanted to test him, to see what he was made of, how he would react to situations, how he could handle a big job.”
He paused to consider. “I don’t like the way he abuses his authority, but he’s an ambitious man. His heart is set on being president of the Clayton Textile Company. It’s quite possible, with a man of his type, that once he has acquired the power he seeks so desperately, he’ll be easier to deal with. It often works that way. As president he’d do everything he could to insure its success.”
“But to give such a splendid opportunity to a man who tries to undermine you,” Leslie said furiously. “It just isn’t fair!”
“He has found that there are limits,” her father said. “Over and over, he has tried his best to get Shaw fired but I have stood pat. Of course, when Harrison takes command, as I assume he is bound to do eventually, Shaw will be out in a flash. But that will no longer be my concern.”
“Dad, about that burglary—”
“I don’t know, Puss. I simply don’t know. I have an unpleasant suspicion—”
“Please tell me.”
“That the state police know more about it than they have been willing to tell me.”
“You mean they don’t trust you?”
“I don’t know what they think,” he confessed. “All I am sure of is that Harrison is in the clear on that business. He was in this house, under my own eyes, when the incident took place. Everyone has told me the same story, that he was genuinely shocked and surprised.” He added slowly, “And Donald Shaw, on the other hand, was at the laboratory where he had no reason to be. There is no getting away from the fact.” His hand pressed her shoulder.
“Nors Swensen knows something he isn’t telling,” Leslie said.
“He has told the police.”
“You’re sure?”
“He hustled away with them the night of the burglary and he has avoided me as much as possible ever since. He is trying to escape having a showdown.”
“And—Donald?”
“The state police have talked with him, of course. After Harrison’s public statement, which was practically an accusation, he volunteered to answer their questions. I don’t know, Leslie. I just don’t know. Personally, I like the man. As you know, I gambled on him in the beginning. And I do not intend to condemn him without proof. It’s not that I am defending my own judgment; I believe in giving any man a fair chance to clear himself.”
He sat straighter in his chair and dismissed the subject. “You ought to get some rest. This is going to be a frenzied week. Next Sunday we’ll hold the Clayton Festival and on Monday the public announcement will be made about the formula. Try not to worry, Leslie. Things have a way of working out. Perhaps not the way we hope, but well enough. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“You’re too young to have to learn the bitter lesson that living is a lonely business.”
Because she was happy in her love, Leslie was eager to reach out and share from her own wealth. Perhaps only happy people are capable of full generosity. The unhappy are engrossed in themselves, and happiness comes only with self-forgetfulness.
“Dad,” she said impulsively, “life doesn’t have to be lonely. There is something I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, but I didn’t know how. About Aunt Agatha. About—Mother.”
The words tumbled out as she told him of that revealing talk with her stepmother. He did not interrupt.
When she came to a stop, he got up. “I’m glad you told me, dear. So blind! How could I have been so blind? She never asked anything of me. I thought she was contented. I—Good night, Puss. Get some sleep. You’ve a wild week ahead.”
She went up to her room. Some time later, she heard her father’s steps on the stairs. He mounted slowly but purposefully. He passed his own room. At Agatha’s door he paused. Then he knocked.
18
In some way, the following week seemed to slip by like greased lightning. Everyone in the laboratory at the Clayton Textile Company was working at top speed with a mounting frenzy of excitement as the goal loomed in sight. At night, the chemists were haggard and exhausted, but the exhilaration of success kept them buoyed up.
Every night a prowl car patrolled the Company grounds, coming at irregular and unscheduled hours. Nors Swensen plodded on his usual rounds. He had completely recovered from his accident but he had acquired a new wariness, a sharper lookout. Charlie Turgen had volunteered to go on night duty with him.
Everyone was aware of a tightening of nerves. Just one week more, just four more days, just three. Finally, only one day remained.
The men in the laboratory worked like demons. For once, they did not object to Harrison’s relentless drive. They were eager to give him all he asked for, all they had in them. Their common objective forged the kind of bond that one usually finds only in a small corps of men sweating it out under gunfire in wartime. The “all for one and one for all” of the Three Musketeers.
Donald Shaw ended every day in a fog of fatigue, more acutely aware than all but one other person of the extent of the possible explosion ahead. He was too tired to protest when Charlie Turgen insisted on accompanying him back to the Fox and Rabbit every night before he went on guard duty, though he thought the precaution absurd. It was unlikely that he was in any danger, but he let Charlie have his own way and, in response to Charlie’s pleas, he remained in his room in the evenings, though the nights were hot and sultry.
Sitting in the dark by his open window, night after night, he was able to cast off his exhaustion only when he let himself think of Leslie. “Surprised by joy.” Leslie, who had given him the unhoped-for treasure of her love and a steady undeviating faith. Whatever the revelations of the future, she would be steadfast. He wondered, humbly, what he had done to merit her faith and her love.
Sometimes, on the brink of sleep, he dared to imagine what their lives might be together in the future: Leslie to come home to at night, with her warmth and her sweetness and the occasional erratic emotional upheavals that made her so unpredictable. “Her infinite variety,” he thought. Certainly it would never cease to enchant him.
He remembered her long patient nursing of Jack Williams. What a mother she would be! Even if he lived to be a very old man, he would not have time to show her all the love and tenderness he felt for her.
Now and then, he was aroused from his preoccupation with Leslie and with the final steps in perfecting the formula to an awareness of the unusual activities going on in the village for the Clayton Festival, and particularly in the Green below his window. Bunting was being tacked up. Shop windows were being decorated with flags and pictures of Douglas Clayton. All day, women poured in and out of the Town Hall, where long tables were being set up and preparations were being made for the supper that was to follow the speeches and to precede the showing of the documentary of the Tower Heights offensive.
Up to now, the preparations had stirred in him only an amused wonder, but as he became conscious of their extent, of the seriousness with which they were being made, he was alarmed. Something ought to be done to stop the whole thing, he thought.
A grandstand was being constructed on the Green, attended by much hammering and shouting, and with half the small boys of the village getting under the feet of the workmen. A site had been prepared for the bas-relief, which was to be placed on the Green in honor of Douglas Clayton.
Only one day left, Donald thought, sprawled in an easy chair with his legs swung over the arm. After that, he would sleep fo
r a week. If he hadn’t forgotten how.
The shrill ringing of the telephone startled him in the quiet room and he stretched out an arm to silence it.
“Shaw speaking.”
“This is Charlie Turgen.” The boy’s voice was charged with excitement. “Come fast.”
“They’ve tried it again?” Donald asked sharply.
“No, there’s a fire. I’m putting in a call for the Volunteer Fire Department. Hurry!”
“On my way.” Donald slammed down the telephone, caught up his jacket, groped for billfold and car keys and ran. By the time the Volkswagen had reached the covered bridge he heard behind him the hoarse toots that summoned the volunteer firemen. He could picture clearly what was happening in the quiet village behind him. Young men were leaving the movies or their television sets or their night jobs, running to climb on the fire engine or piling into their own cars, everything from Lincolns to trucks, dinner clothes to over-alls, lights blinking as they raced to face the common enemy of a village set in the woods, the eternal menace of fire.
As the Volkswagen emerged from the bridge, and it had never seemed so long to him before, though it was one of the longest covered bridges in New England, Donald looked toward the Company buildings, half expecting to see them ablaze.
Everything was dark and still. Had he been called out on a hoax? Then he looked toward the river. Something like a huge birthday cake alight with candles was on the river, moving slowly toward him.
For a moment Donald stared in bewilderment. Then he understood. It was the barge, which had broken loose from its moorings, and was drifting down the river toward the covered bridge, ablaze with light. Someone had set fire to it.
In a flash, the whole pattern became clear to him. He knew now why Jim Mason had patrolled the river in his canoe, studying the barge and its position in relation to the Company. The fire was designed to provide a distraction while the real, the final attempt was made to steal the formula.
At the parking lot Donald got out of the Volkswagen and began to run. He could see moving lights now, flashlights used by men who were racing toward the river and the blazing barge, running away from the laboratory. He turned straight toward the building, tore around to the back. A window had been smashed open. He turned on lights, racing from room to room. In the room where the data on the formula had been locked up, a cabinet had been broken open, the drawers were empty.
A Candle in Her Heart Page 17