The Heart Remembers Page 13

  “Don’t tell me anyone as popular as you could possibly have an enemy who would seek Minnie-Ola’s help in driving you out of town.”

  “It is ridiculous, isn’t it? Ridiculous, but not very pleasant. So it’s got to stop.”

  “Oh? But why come to me about it?”

  “Because, of course, you are the one who arranged it.”

  Dark, angry color burned in Selena’s face and her eyes blazed. And yet there was something in the woman’s haughty outburst that did not quite ring true.

  “Why, you—how dare you accuse me? You impertinent, outrageous creature! Have you no pride? Why don’t you go away? You know you’re not wanted here. This should convince you.”

  “Let’s not go into all that again, Miss Durand.” Shelley’s composure grew as Selena’s melted, and now Shelley’s manner was cool, almost pleasant. “Now that we understand each other, I’m sure that I shall be spared any further attention from Minnie-Ola. You will see to that, won’t you?”

  And before Selena could manage an answer to that, Shelley turned and went swiftly down the steps and got into the little car. The motor stirred, but before she could shift gears she heard Jim’s voice and saw him come striding toward her from the back of the house.

  “Hi, what’s the hurry?” he demanded, and leaned on the door of the car and studied her curiously. “To what are we indebted for the honor of this much appreciated early morning visit?”

  Shelley saw Selena hovering in the doorway, and knew that in the clear morning air her voice would carry perfectly to Selena’s undoubtedly straining ears.

  “Oh, there was a bit of gossip going the rounds,” said Shelley lightly. “I thought I’d check it with Miss Durand.”

  Jim studied her, and then he flung a glance at his aunt. As he turned back to Shelley, his jaw hardened.

  “There’s something going on,” he stated flatly. “I don’t know why you have your knife out for my aunt, but you may as well know here and now that I won’t have it.”

  Shelley went pale, and her eyes blazed.

  “Really? Has Miss Durand complained?”

  “Miss Durand isn’t in the habit of complaining,” Jim told her grimly. “But for the past week or so she’s been sick with worry and somehow, I have the impression you’re mixed up with that worry. She’s not so young; her health is frail; and while I don’t have the faintest idea what it’s all about, I’m telling you here and now I will not have her disturbed and upset.”

  “Your solicitude for your aunt touches me deeply,” said Shelley, shaken with anger and hurt. “But whatever is between us, your aunt started. She dislikes me intensely.”

  “And does that make you her sworn enemy? Does everybody in the world have to bow down and worship you? Surely, with all the popularity you enjoy in these parts, one harmless, inoffensive old lady should be permitted to dislike you without rousing you to destructive fury.”

  The words and the tone struck her like a blow. She and Jim were friends! Jim had kissed her! Jim had seemed to like and admire her. Like the silly little fool she now knew herself to be, she had even allowed herself to dream a little.

  “It doesn’t matter in the least whether your aunt likes me or not. But I will not have her sicking old Minnie-Ola on me,” she burst out before she could stop herself. She hadn’t meant to say that! But it was too late.

  Jim stared at her for a moment, too startled, too shocked for speech, and then he straightened and his eyes were cold and hard, and he looked as though he loathed the sight of her.

  “I think you’d better explain that,” he said harshly.

  “I found a voodoo doll in my bed last night.”

  At first he was too startled to take in the full implications of her statement. And when he did his anger was so savage that she shrank from him.

  “And you dared come here and accuse my aunt. Shelley, you are a little fool. I think you’d be very wise to close up that cockeyed business of yours and get away somewhere before you lose what little sense you still have. And if you so much as dare breathe a hint to anyone that in the smallest measure my aunt is linked with Minnie-Ola, I’ll do something drastic—I swear it. Now I think you’d better go.”

  “Thanks, it’ll be a pleasure,” she told him furiously. “But first there’s one little point I want to make perfectly clear. I still have no intention whatever of being frightened away from here.”

  For a moment Jim glared at her, white with fury. And then, confusing her, startling her, he chuckled dryly.

  “Still the most stubborn little cuss ever born, aren’t you?” He spoke almost in a friendly tone. “I like a good fighter. I’ll investigate this mess and see if I can find out who ordered Minnie-Ola to get to work on you. But don’t you go around hinting Aunt Selena had anything to do with it, or we’ll sue you for libel, slander, defamation of character and anything else we can think of. We might even take that silly little paper away from you.”

  “Try it! I’d just like to see you! Because once you try anything like that, I’ll show you some fighting,” she promised him like an angry child, and jammed the car into gear and went rocketing off, too blind with tears of fury to more than guess at the gateway when she came to it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Morning, Boss Lady,” said Philip when she stormed into the office a little later. “Hey, what’s up? You look like a battle-flag, demanding a call to arms and a pitched battle.”

  Shelley breathed hard and lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

  “I’ve just discovered that I’m a double-starred, first-class, full-fledged prize idiot,” she exploded.

  “Oh, is that all?” Philip grinned cheerfully. “Be proud that you discovered it all of a sudden while you’re still young enough to do something about it, instead of having it creep up on you late in life. Would there be anything a battered old campaigner could do to help?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. And suddenly she was telling him the whole story, from the moment when she had caught the flicker of movement in the shrubbery, up to the scene with Selena Durand, and even the one with Jim. And when she had finished, Philip sat very still for a moment, his eyes going past her to the window.

  After a long, thoughtful moment, he asked quietly, “What makes you so sure that Selena Durand is the gal behind all this?”

  “Who else hates me as she does?”

  “That’s one of the things I’d like to know; just why she has it in for you so deeply. It can’t all be because Jim’s in love with you, can it?” asked Philip thoughtfully.

  She caught her breath and felt her face go hot.

  “Oh, don’t look so astonished,” he said teasingly. “Half the town’s making book on the wedding date. The other half is quite sure Miss Selena will put a spoke in your wheel, on account of they feel sure she doesn’t want him to marry anybody.”

  “You’re just being silly,” Shelley stammered. “Jim’s not in love with me. For two cents, I think he’d have taken a stick to me this morning.”

  “That’s a feeling that often sneaks up on a man when he’s in love,” Philip told her cheerfully. “Half the time he worships the ground his girl walks on and is quite content to grovel for her smiles; the other half, he wonders how he can even like a creature so stubborn, so exasperating. Jim’s nuts about you. Anybody that ever saw the two of you together would know that, so hush your foolishness.”

  For a moment there was a little warm glow in Shelley’s heart. Then resolutely she put it out and lifted her young chin stubbornly.

  “Even if that were true, which of course it isn’t, nothing would come of it. For he’d never forgive me for what I’m trying to do to his aunt.”

  “You mean in attempting to clear your father’s memory?” asked Philip quietly.

  For a moment she stood perfectly still, wide-eyed with shock.

  “You see, little Patsy-Jane Newton, I knew your father and liked him a lot,” Philip added very gently.

  “You knew who I was—from
the very beginning?”

  “Why else would I have come here other than in the hope of being able to help you?” asked Philip. “I’ve more or less kept an eye on you, from a distance I admit, ever since your mother died. And I had an understanding with the bank that held the mortgage that they were to keep me advised if the paper sold and to whom. That’s why I dropped in on you and got myself hired almost the minute you arrived.”

  Shelley drew a long shaking breath and blinked the tears away.

  “I never for a moment believed Hasty was guilty of anything but being a heck of a swell guy, devoted to his wife and child,” Philip went on when she could not manage to speak. “From the very first I felt he was being ‘framed’; we all three did. And of course we knew who was doing the ‘framing.’ But there wasn’t a shred of actual proof, and to have him look the traditional cad and bounder trying to hide behind the petticoats of ‘the great lady herself’—”

  He made a little tired gesture, lit a cigarette from the stub between his fingers and went on wearily.

  “Of course I know that ever since you came back you’ve been trying to find something you could use against Selena, to force her out into the open. But frankly, youngster, I don’t believe such proof exists.”

  “That note——” Shelley stammered.

  “Sure. Callie and I took the place apart with our bare hands, piece by piece, and never found it.”

  “I know it exists—or did. Selena tacitly admitted it to me here in the office when she thought I had it,” said Shelley, and then her shoulders drooped wearily. “But if you’ve searched and I have and nothing has been found, I suppose I might as well give up.”

  “Hush such foolishness. The child of Callie and Hasty Newton admit defeat? I never heard such shameless talk!”

  “But without proof—”

  “Hasty was ‘framed’—why can’t we ‘frame’ Selena?” asked Philip quietly.

  Shelley stared at him, wide-eyed, scarcely daring to hope.

  “The mere fact that Selena is so scared she wants to force you out of town and will even stoop to traffic with Minnie-Ola in the hope of accomplishing that, proves she’s plenty scared! So if we scare her just a little more, she’ll give herself away, maybe.”

  Shelley shivered at the cruelty of that. And yet Selena had been merciless in her persecution of Callie and Hastings, without any reason at all. Her pride, her arrogance, her bitter frustrated desire for Hastings had made her hound two helpless, innocent, inoffensive people to heartbreak and death. Why should the child of those two pity her now? Coldness bit deep into Shelley’s heart and she drove out the small, gentle touch of pity.

  “How?” she asked Philip thinly.

  “What did you have in mind, in case you found the note?”

  “I’d have a perfect right to publish it, wouldn’t I? To demand the case be re-opened?”

  Philip nodded, his manner cool, almost detached.

  “Of course. Publication of the note would bring out all the old, ugly story, and this time the drama of it would ‘make’ the big city newspapers,” he drawled, following the thread of thought slowly. “Your father’s—er—difficulties rated perhaps a couple of inches of space in big city papers as far away as Atlanta; probably none at any greater distance than that. But this ought to make a front page story; perhaps even some of the Sunday magazine sections. Yes, I feel quite sure that such a story would rate considerable space.”

  Shelly flung up her head, her face quite white. “You sound as though you think I should drop the whole thing and let Selena off,” she cried hotly.

  “Then I was not making myself clear.”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “Yours, Boss Lady.” Philip’s tone was mild.

  “Well, you sound as though you were fighting for Selena.”

  “That’s because I express myself badly, Boss Lady. It’s you I’m thinking of,” Philip told her earnestly. “I’m thinking of what you are going to feel like after you’ve forced Miss Selena to reveal the ugly truth; after you’ve seen her shamed and disgraced and humiliated among the people where she’s always been the untouchable ‘great lady,’ where she’s held her head high and walked like a queen.”

  “My father and mother had pride, too, and decent, honest self-respect. They loved each other—and me.”

  “I know they did, Shelley. You were a most intriguing infant.”

  She drew a deep breath and Philip stood up.

  “Guess I’ll go for a little walk. See you later, Boss Lady. Oh, by the way, I’m invited for supper. Shall I appear?”

  “Well, of course, idiot!” She tried to sound gay.

  “Thanks. Just didn’t want to make myself a nuisance.”

  He went out and Shelley sat down at the battered old desk, rested her elbows on it and hid her face in her hands. In spite of herself, she was seeing Selena as she had stood at the door of her old home that morning, her face a pasty-gray, terror riding high in her tormented eyes. Yes, Shelley told herself, she almost had Selena where she wanted her; where she could force her to right the wrong she had done to an innocent man and his wife and child.

  Fear would lie down with Selena at night; fear would rise up with her in the morning. Fear would walk beside her every minute of the day. Hourly she would wait for the blow to fall.

  “She deserves it,” Shelley told herself savagely. “She deserves to be hurt and scared. Maybe I can’t make her clear Dad’s memory. But I can make her suffer. And she deserves it.”

  She seemed to hear Philip’s voice saying very quietly, “I’m thinking of what you are going to feel like after you’ve forced Miss Selena to reveal the truth, after you’ve seen her shamed and disgraced and humiliated.”

  Shelley shivered and there was a bitter, brackish taste in her mouth. …

  The next few days were not easy. Philip said no more on the subject of Selena nor did Shelley bring it up. Nor did he ever by so much as word or gesture remind her that he knew the truth about her own identity.

  He and Marian were firm friends and Philip a frequent visitor to the little house beyond the print-shop. Rarely now did he turn to the Tavern, once the paper had been “put to bed.” Instead, he took Marian to the movies at the county seat; or the three of them sat and gossiped on the screened porch after the dishes had been cleared; or with some other young man, usually Billie Stone, the four played bridge.

  Philip was a reformed character because of Marian’s frank interest in him and his growing and very obvious admiration for her.

  Shelley saw Jim almost daily. In a place the size of Harbour Pines that was inevitable. But he never paused to talk; nor did he come near the office. Often she saw him driving past the office in the battered station wagon, but he never turned his head.

  “So he’s in love with me, is he?” Shelley asked herself, and tried furiously to deny the fact that it hurt to admit he wasn’t. “A likely possibility!”

  She and Philip were busy with the paper; with the increasing number of job-printing orders they were able to pick up. And life in Harbour Pines followed its accustomed pattern.

  Until a night when it seemed to Shelley that everything blew up in her face.

  It was a warm summer night and she and Marian were in the living room. Marian marking papers and muttering in disgust at some of the revelations of ignorance her pupils had innocently made. Shelley was trying to read, but for the last half-hour she had not turned a page, when suddenly a car stopped outside, there were hurrying footsteps on the bricked walk and a thunderous rap at the door.

  “Heavens to Betsy, it’s almost eleven. Who’d come calling at such an hour?” protested Marian, wide-eyed.

  But before either of them could move toward the door, never latched until bedtime, it banged open and Jim stood there, his face grim and ashen behind his sun-bronze, his eyes cold with an implacable fury that chilled Shelley.

  “Aunt Selena is very ill, and wants to see you,” he addressed Shelley, ignoring Marian. �
�There’s no time to waste. Let’s get going.”

  “Hi, who do you think you’re talking to?” protested Marian.

  “You keep out of this, Small Fry,” Jim ordered her unsmilingly. “After what you’ve done to my aunt, I think you owe her this small courtesy. So come on. Let’s get going. That is, of course, unless you are afraid to face her.”

  “Why should I be afraid to face her? I’ve done nothing to her.”

  “And you’d like me to believe she has done something to you?” Jim’s voice was thin and shaken with anger and anxiety.

  Despite Marian’s protest, Shelley walked out ahead of him, her head held high. It was not until they were in the car and moving toward Pinelands that Jim said harshly, “You may as well know the truth. Aunt Selena tried to kill herself.”

  Shelley caught her breath in a stricken gasp.

  “None of us have the slightest idea why, but I have a hunch that it has something to do with you. Then when she asked to see you, as soon as she rallied, I knew my hunch was right.”

  Shelley sat very still, her hands clenched tightly together, a feeling of guilt strong upon her. But alleviating it a little was the relief that she had not after all, delivered the final turn of the screw by letting Selena think the incriminating note had been found.

  “I don’t know just what you did or said to her to make her sneak off into the swamp, lie down behind a fallen tree and slice her wrists with a razor-blade,” Jim began. Shelley’s horrified gasp was almost a scream, and he looked down at her grimly. “That’s how it happened. Pretty picture, isn’t it? Makes you proud of your persecution of a helpless, inoffensive old woman, doesn’t it? If Mam’ Cleo hadn’t happened to see her go, and wonder, knowing how deathly afraid she is of snakes and that there are snakes in the swamp—well, if Mam’ Cleo hadn’t become uneasy about her and followed her, Aunt Selena would have accomplished her purpose. As it was, Mam’ Cleo was able to give her crude first aid and to get help. We got the doctor on the double, and she’s got a fifty-fifty chance. If she wants to recover. And before you go in there to see her, you’re going to tell me what you’ve got against her, why you are hounding her—or I’m going to wring your neck!”