The Heart Remembers (20 page)

He nodded. “Don't think I don't know that! It's one of the things that's getting me down. I've roots here and I'll stay on and grow into a mean-tempered old bachelor, while you're off marrying some fine, upstanding young gent who won't be worthy of you. But then, who could be?”

“Don't be an idiot. Just because Miss Selena must have been not quite sane, Jim, is no reason for you to go off the deep end. There's no reason at all why you and I can't be friends, if you'd like it that way.”

“Thanks,” Jim's tone was dry. “I wouldn't like it that way at all.”

She winced at the curtness but said nothing. There was a silence between them. The wind was soft and warm and murmured above their heads through the taller pines beyond the small grove. A cardinal flashed across the road and perched, ruby-hued and exquisite, on a tree-branch and spilled his brisk, staccato tribute to the glory of the day.

“Well, I guess that's that,” said Jim at last, and
stepped on the starter. “I'll drive you home.”

“Thanks, no. I'm walking for exercise.”

“I can't leave you like this, this far from the highway, on Saturday afternoon. On Saturday in and around Harbour Pines comes drink and ructions. You'd much better take your exercise closer to town,” he told her curtly. And reluctantly, she had to admit he was right.

They drove in silence until they were in front of the newspaper office, where he stopped and said quietly, “I probably won't be seeing you again. I understand you're leaving shortly. Naturally, you're anxious to get away from a place you loathe as you must Harbour Pines.”

“I don't at all. I love it. It's a darling little place and people have been kind and I've made friends.” She broke off, on the verge of tears.

“And you loved having the paper and had all sorts of ambitions for it, didn't you? You hate giving it up, don't you?”

“Well, no, I never cared a lot for the newspaper end of it. It was just a means to an end. Of course I
do
think the
Journal
could help Harbour Pines to grow, and that it could develop into something very worthwhile. Philip is a really good newspaper man, and he and Marian can accomplish a great deal more with the
Journal
than I could.”

“I'm glad of that. It's bad enough for you to be driven out of a town you like and a house you like, without also having to give up a job you're fond of.”

“I'll find something I like even better.”

“I hope you do, Shelley, something worthwhile. You're a pretty swell person, you know. It's been a privilege knowing you. I'd give my right arm if things could have been different, if my name hadn't been Hargroves, nephew of a woman named Selena Durand.”

And before she could say anything to that, he had
sent the station wagon hurtling down the street at a pace considered very dangerous by Harbour Pines leisurely standards.

She stood watching for a moment, and was shaken to the depths of her lost and lonely heart.

She looked back at the little house, and knew she could not stay there alone tonight. She went and made the necessary arrangements for Rufus's pleasure and comfort during the night and set out for Aunt Hettie's.

Her heart grew warm at the thought of Aunt Hettie and the friendship and understanding that she would find there. Before she was out of town, a friendly farmer, his wife and five children packed into the pick-up truck with him, stopped and invited her to ride, and dropped her a little later at the lane leading to Aunt Hettie's shabby old house.

There was no sign of Aunt Hettie as she approached the house, but when she raised her voice in a call, Aunt Hettie came around from behind the old barn, carrying a fishing pole in one hand, a battered tin can in the other.

“Well, bless my buttons, Shelley, if I ain't right down glad to see you!” Aunt Hettie greeted her heartily. “It was such a grand afternoon that I was playing hooky from all the weedin' and hoein' and sprayin' I ought to be doing, and was goin' fishin'.”

“Oh, wonderful. Can I go, too?”

“Well, now, that's a right silly question. I've got a couple of extra poles and a nice mess of worms in this can. We'll get us a nice mess o' perch for supper. You'll stay to supper, won't you?”

Shelley laughed. “I'll even stay the night, if you'll ask me. Marian's gone home for the week-end and I'm lonely. I hoped you wouldn't mind, so here I am.”

Aunt Hettie beamed at her joyously. “Well, now, you couldn't have thought of anybody that would
have been gladder to see you. I declare, seems like I haven't seen you in a coon's age. What with the garden and the chickens and me fool enough to raise me a bunch of turkey poults, when anybody with a lick of sense knows turkeys are the craziest, silliest, most aggravating birds that ever grew a pin-feather. Why, the fool things will stand right out in a downpour of rain and lift their silly heads and open their beaks and drown right in front of your very eyes, because they ain't got sense enough to get to shelter. Since I've been worryin' with those fetch-taked things, I've been wondering how anybody could mind chopping their heads off. Me, I'm just purely going to enjoy slaughtering 'em come Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

Shelley laughed, and somehow the sun seemed warmer, the air more fragrant, and her heart lighter than it had been in a long time.

Armed with a fishing pole, line, hooks, weights and all the rest of the paraphernalia necessary, she and Aunt Hettie sat a little later on a mossy bank above the narrow brackish-looking river for two hours or more, not daring to speak lest the sound of their voices alarm the fish and keep them from biting. It was a blessed interval of quiet and peace for Shelley, and she felt her chaotic thoughts begin to achieve some small measure of coherence. Aunt Hettie's friendly, companionable presence gave the silence a quality that seemingly soothed and healed.

When Aunt Hettie decided their catch was “a nice mess” sufficient for their supper, they went back to the house, cleaned and dressed the fish and cooked the meal. As they drew up their chairs to the table, Aunt Hettie folded her hands and said grace, simply and reverently. And Shelley knew that she would never cease to miss the pleasant little back water of Harbour Pines and wished that she need never leave it. But even as the thought crept into her mind, she knew that she could not live in Harbour Pines as
long as Selena stayed.

“What's this I hear about Marian Harper and that nice Mr. Foster that works for you?” asked Aunt Hettie sociably.

“They're engaged. They're going to be married as soon as the school year is out.”

“Well, now, I heard something like that.” Aunt Hettie was warmly interested. “Folks say that he drinks a right smart.”

“He did, but I think he's changed. Marian says he drank because he was lonely and bored and had no roots, but now that he and Marian are engaged, he's like a different person,” said Shelley, and added quietly, “He knew my mother and father.”

“Well, now, you don't say,” marvelled Aunt Hettie.

“He and Marian are going to take over the paper when I leave.”

Aunt Hettie put down her knife and fork.

“You're going away? Well, now, Shelley, I'm right sorry to hear that. I hoped you'd stay. Of course I know Harbour Pines ain't much of a town for a girl with your training and education and all. But seems to me like Harbour Pines needs more folks like you. And your paper's getting so popular and all.”

“Philip and Marian will do a better job than I with the paper. Philip has more experience and training. I'm just an amateur.”

Aunt Hettie was silent for a moment and then she said quietly, “I don't want you to think me a meddlesome old busybody, poking my nose in where it ain't wanted. But you had some kind of idea when you first came about finding out the truth about what happened to your Paw. I reckon you gave that up?”

“Yes,” Shelley said quietly, “I gave that up.”

“I'm really glad,” said Aunt Hettie in frank relief. “I was right worried about it at the time. Afraid you
might find out more than was good for you or step on some right important toes and get yourself in a mess of trouble. And it ain't like you could do your Paw no real good by digging it all up again. Most folks feels like he was unjustly accused and punished; shucks, there's folks here in Harbour Pines that knows it, even if they can't prove it. And there's somebody that knows the truth, and I reckon it ain't very comfortable knowing, either.”

Shelley drew a long hard breath, but before she could manage an answer, Aunt Hettie said something that all but knocked the breath out of her.

“Sure was funny how Miss Selena, ‘the great lady' herself, would take a notion to kill herself, ain't it? Makes a body wonder what could a been worrying her, don't it?” said Aunt Hettie dryly, and carefully did not look at Shelley, who was staring, at her, wide-eyed.

There was a tiny, tense silence which Shelley broke.

“I suppose she was ‘temporarily of unsound mind,' don't you suppose? I think people must be who attempt that.”

“I reckon likely as not,” admitted Aunt Hettie, still in that dryly matter of fact voice behind which Shelley could dimly sense an entirely different meaning. “Still, I've knowed Selena Durand all her life, and I've never knowed her to let herself get really stirred up before. She's a heap more likely to try to do the other fellow in, seems to me. It's always seemed kinda funny to me that Jim is so little like her. Seems like she takes after the Durand branch, and Jim the Hargroves; and they was as different as day and night.”

Shelley said nothing, for her throat was closed tight and her hands were clenched. Aunt Hettie got up, poured fresh tea and sat down again, before she went on.

“I kind of hoped you and Jim might make a match, until I knew who you really was. And then o' course I knew there'd never be a chance of a Newton and a Hargroves gettin' together, not while Selena Durand lived.”

Shelley drew a long hard breath and said huskily, “Suppose we talk about something else. I can't seem to feel very deeply interested in the Durands and the Hargroves.”

“And a mighty good thing you can't; that woman's pure poison if ever I seen it,” said Aunt Hettie, and added impulsively, laying a warm, work-rough hand on Shelley's. “Much as I like Jim, I'm kinda glad you're not going to marry him, because I'd hate to see you where Selena could crack the whip over you!”

And she immediately launched into another subject, to Shelley's taut, sick relief.

The weekend with Aunt Hettie did Shelley a world of good, and when Marian and Philip came back to Harbour Pines Sunday afternoon, Shelley greeted them happily.

“The family liked Philip, being sensible people,” announced Marian happily. “And what's even more important, Philip liked the family.”

“It's a very swell family,” said Philip, and grinned at his bride-to-be. “Though, of course, she's the flower of the flock.”

“In fact, the family liked him so well I was afraid they were going to try to talk him out of marrying me!” Marian went on cheerfully. “Not that it would do him any good to try it; he's my man and he'll never get away from me, not even if he faints on the way to the altar.”

“The shamelessness of some women!” mourned Philip, shocked. “If a man fainted on the way to the altar, most girls would at least be sporting enough to give him a run before they went out hunting a more willing victim.”

“He's trying to be funny,” Marian explained fondly
to Shelley. “The family had a newspaper clipping, carefully preserved, of a few weeks ago telling how the bridegroom fainted twice at the altar while the bride was doing the ‘Mendelssohn quick-step'; but he was revived and the wedding went off as scheduled.”

“I keep worrying,” said Philip sadly, his eyes dancing, “about what the reactions of the poor devil must have been when he came back to consciousness and found himself on his honeymoon.”

“Well, don't fret your brain about him, lambie. In a couple of weeks, you'll know by actual experience what he felt.”

Philip's hand went out and covered hers, and the look in his eyes was so nearly worship that Shelley felt she had no right to witness it, and slipped away, unnoticed. …

It was several days later that Shelley, alone in the shop one afternoon, heard the screen door open and looked up, startled, into Selena Durand's tired, white face.

There was a moment of silence and then Shelley got to her feet and said with quiet courtesy, “Why, Miss Durand, should you be out? You look quite ill. Won't you sit down?”

Selena accepted the chair gratefully and said without preamble, “I'll be much better after I've had a talk with you, Miss Kimbrough. I could not ask you to come to me, of course.”

Her voice was low and hoarse, the voice of one to whom bitter tears and sleepless nights are no longer strange.

“If there is anything I can do—” Shelley's voice was taut.

“There is, Shelley, but it's a terrific thing I've come to ask of you. And of all people in the world, I have the least right to ask you anything.”

Shelley set her teeth hard before she could steady her voice to answer.

“Miss Durand, the past is done and finished with. There is nothing to be gained by going over and over it and torturing ourselves. Let's try to forget it, shall we?”

There were bitter tears in her eyes.

“Forget it, Shelley? That's something neither of us can ever do. It will always be there between us as long as I live. I know that you can never forgive me, no more than I could ever forgive myself; I couldn't even ask it of you. I know you hate me as you have every reason to do. It's not for myself that I've come to you, Shelley, but for Jim.”

Shelley was very still for a moment, and then she lifted her head proudly and her eyes were chill and smoky.