The Heart Remembers (7 page)

“I'd hope to pick up some job-printing work to help with the expenses,” Shelley pointed out quietly.

Philip Foster grinned at her.

“Then you
are
an incurable little optimist, aren't
you?”

“I suppose I am.”

Once more Philip Foster studied her curiously and hesitated.

“Since I'm not yet officially on the pay-roll—indeed, may well never be!—I suppose I may risk being presumptuous enough to ask you a frank question; which is—why in blazes you ever thought of starting a newspaper in this place, of all others in the wide world?”

Shelley colored but met his eyes straightly.

“Because I've always wanted a country weekly, and I haven't money enough to buy a big, already established one, and I haven't had much experience in running a paper and
I
thought it would be wise to start small and hope to build big.”

“And the other, the
real
reason, of course, is none of my business so let's forget I asked you,” Philip finished for her pleasantly. “Right. Now, shall I continue to shove this mound of dust and debris around until I lose it? Or have I lost a job before I got it?”

Shelley laughed warmly.

“By all means let's lose the trash; I'm very glad to have you here.”

“Thanks,” said Philip quietly, the deep sincerity of his voice adding emphasis to the word, as he fell to again on the task of cleaning.

She could not but wonder about him as they worked, making the barn-like room ready for the new equipment, getting the two battered, ink-stained desks cleared of their accumulation of old papers and trash.

Who was this Philip Foster? A journeyman printer, of course; one of those men who are experts in their field, yet find the daily grind unbearable unless the scene is changed frequently and usually for no better reason than boredom. He would knock about the country as long as his money lasted; stopping off to
pick up a job somewhere, holding it until once more the devil of restlessness harried him into moving on—and on—and on. A well educated man who could exert a certain amount of debonair charm; a man who seemed quite content to be a tramp, except when necessity forced him to earn money enough for his simple wants. His humor was wry, but not malicious. He interested her, amused her, aroused her curiosity. And she mentally crossed her fingers for whatever their future relationship as employer and employee might bring about.

A few days later, the arrival of the truck bearing the first pieces of equipment brought about the shop a swarm of the idly curious, out of which they were able to pick up the extra labor so badly needed to set up and arrange the machinery. Shelley realized immediately that she could safely leave all the technical details to Philip and so was deeply relieved. And by the end of the week, she knew they could safely promise the publication of the first week's issue for the following Friday.

When the last small task had been attended to and the old place was neat and shining and its new equipment looked brave and promising, Philip smiled wryly at Shelley.

“And now that we are ready to start work and you won't be needing me for the next two or three days, I have a date with a celebration,” he told her quite formally. But there was a look in his eyes that made her sick with pity.

Shelley said impulsively, “Must you, Philip?”

“Afraid I must, Boss Lady,” he said curtly, settled his battered hat at a defiantly jaunty angle and swung out of the place, hurrying toward town and the one liquor store the place possessed.

She was bitterly sorry for him. Yet she had come to know in the few short days they had worked together that he was gripped and ridden by “black
devils” whose savagery she could only guess at, appalled. And wisely she knew better than to attempt anything in the nature of a protest which, of course, would have availed her nothing, anyway.

He was a man in his late thirties, perhaps a little older. This was not a new way of life for him. In it she sensed the explanation of the waste of a really brilliant man and a deeply trained skill that might easily have led him to the top of his profession, but for the “black devils.”

She locked up and made her way back to the house in the thickening twilight. The weather had been beautiful for the past two weeks, but today the skies had been lowering and sullen, with frequent lashing rain. The people said there was a “nor'easter” blowing on the coast forty miles away and it might easily last several days.

The wind that mourned through the pines tonight had an eery quality. The night was very dark, as she went busily about preparing her supper. So dark that it seemed to press against the window-panes, as though trying to force its way in and vanquish its ancient enemy, the yellow lamp-light.

She put on the lights all over the little house, for added comfort against the howking wind and the close darkness. In the living room she knelt and set a match to the fire already laid on the hearth; and then she put her supper on a tray and took it in to the living room, and curled up comfortably in a deep chair, suddenly conscious of an aching weariness.

She lost track of time. There wasn't any reason to hurry. She ate her supper leisurely and at last rose to take the tray back to the kitchen. The hall was dark, because with lights in the living room and kitchen, she had not set one there.

She finished in the kitchen, turned out the light and came back into the little hall that ran through the house. And at the door of the living room, still in
the shadows of the hall, she paused, transfixed, staring at one of the windows, incredulous, too startled to be frightened.

She was quite certain that her imagination was playing her tricks and that she wasn't really seeing the white, ghostly thing that hovered close to one of the living room windows, as though peering in. It was not until Shelley caught the glimmer of light against those peering eyes that the full horror of that moment struck her. For while the shining eyes glimmered in the light, the thing had no face! Only the eyes, shining like an animal's eyes, were visible above and beneath a glimmer of misty white.

For a moment sheer primitive terror clutched her throat. The darkness pressing close to the windows, the misty swaying filmy white thing seeming to float there, faceless, though with shining, cat-like eyes, the mournful soughing of the wind in the pines, the rattle of a loose shutter somewhere—

It was the ordinary everyday sound of a horn on a passing car that broke the paralysis of shock and horror that held Shelley. At the sound of the horn, the misty thing wavered and drew back, and the shining, hideous eyes were gone, and Shelley flung herself across the living room, fumbling with the catch of the window to open it. But there was nothing to be seen in the darkness; no sound save the wind in the pines. The rain was coming down again, and lashing her in the face as she stood at the open window.

She made herself close the window at last, and stood for a little, her face in her hands, trembling so that she could barely stand. And then she made a terrific effort to pull herself together.

“Don't be a goop, Shelley Kimbrough! There's no such thing as a ghost. And even if there were ghosts, they'd have no reason to haunt
me
here. This is my home. I have every right to be here.”

Outside, the thick darkness pressed close and the humming of the rain was like a drumming on the roof, and the wind whined. But there was no white, misty thing clinging to the window. There was only darkness.

She drew a long shuddering breath and suddenly, even while she still scolded herself furiously, she was across the room, putting out the lights, drawing the curtains close. She made herself go across the hall to her bedroom and search it thoroughly, trying to laugh at herself as she looked under the bed and in the shallow closet. But ignominiously, once she was safely in bed, she drew the covers over her head and it was a long time before she finally managed to fall asleep.

In the morning, with the “nor'easter” dying down and a thin, watery sunlight trying to find its way through the clouds, she could laugh at herself; almost convince herself that the whole thing had been a trick of her imagination—some flicker of light and shadow, maybe. Yet no matter how she argued she could not quite argue herself out of remembering the cat-like shimmer of those awful eyes!

She was at the office shortly before noon when Aunt Hettie parked her ancient Lizzie at the curb and came swiftly up the walk to the shop.

“Well, sir, I run into some people that was in town for the day yesterday,” she announced importantly, “and I brought you a list of 'em and the news from their part of the section. Who's been where, and who's visitin' who, and the new babies out over the community. Seein' as folks gets a sight of pleasure out of seein' their names in print, I thought maybe you could find room to print some of these.”

“Aunt Hettie, you're a lamb! It's exactly what we need to give the ‘personal' touch, and the
Journal
has to lean heavily on the personal touch! You must help me round up some correspondents in the vicinity, so we can have a local ‘gossip column.' ”

Aunt Hettie was pleased and excited and they discussed it for a few minutes, and then Aunt Hettie laughed.

“And there's something else I know you won't want to publish,” she added. “Old Minnie-Ola, the kunjur-woman, came to my house this morning wanting a set of my Buff Orpington eggs and my, my, what a tale she had. 'Course, I don't pay much attention to old Minnie-Ola, but there's a heap o' folks that do.”

Shelley stared at her, halfway between laughter and surprise.

“A kunjur-woman? Oh, come now, Aunt Hettie, don't tell me there's a ‘conjure-woman' here or that anybody pays any attention to her,” she protested, amused. “Spells, love potions and voodoo!”

Aunt Hettie hesitated.

“Well, I dunno's I'd care to go so far as to say
I
believe in 'em myself,” she admitted wryly. “But there's a sight of folks, white
and
black, around here that does. Especially the swamp black folks and them that work at the still. 'Course most of 'em have been here all their lives and their mammies and daddies before 'em and it's kinda hard to get 'em to give up their old beliefs.”

“But surely there are schools and their children are being educated away from such superstitions.”

“Oh, sure, sure. Reckon they're gettin' a kinda thin overlay of white folks' learnin' on top of the knowledge of their forefathers, if it comes to that,” Aunt Hettie admitted. “Still, it's not only in little back-woodsy places like Harbour Pines that they still have ‘kunjur-women'—and men, too, o'course. I was readin' in an Atlanta paper few days ago about a
‘kunjur-man' his own folks beat up and had arrested on account of his charms and potions didn't work. Police had to arrest him for his own protection.”

“Oh, but that's
fantastic.
”

“I reckon maybe it seems so to a Yankee like you, child. But to us folks that's lived in these parts all our lives and likes and understands and respects colored folks and their ways, it seems natural enough that some of the old superstitions they took in with their mother's milk, and that was brought over in the first shipload of slaves from Africa, would kinda hold onto 'em. Anyway, Minie-Ola is quite a character. And she was all bug-eyed with excitement this morning. 'Course I'll admit it don't take much to get Minnie-Ola excited, her bein' not too right in her mind. Only folks crazier than Minnie-Ola, to my way of thinkin', is the folks that buys her stuff.”

Shelley laughed. “What was exciting her this morning?”

“Minnie-Ola's nephew, Jason, works for the Hargroves. Takes care o' the stock and such. Well, when he come to work this mornin' he claims he found Blue Belle, Miss Selena's fine saddle-horse that nobody don't ever ride but Miss Selena, in bad shape. Claims somebody sneaked her out o' the stable last night and rode her near 'bout to death.”

Shelley gasped, wide-eyed and incredulous.

“Minnie-Ola claims the horse is so wild and scared this mornin' it's plain couldn't have been nothin' less than the devil hisself that was ridin' the poor thing last night,” Aunt Hettie finished.

Shelley laughed.

“The chances are it was Jason himself, maybe visiting a girl friend and making up a fancy tale to explain the horse being winded.”

“No, I don't reckon it was that. Jason knows Jim Hargroves would just about skin him alive if he ever caught him taking Blue Belle out; and anyway, the
horse won't let anybody ride him, so the story goes, but Miss Selena. If Jason had wanted to go visitin' last night, he'da took one of the mules. They ain't workin' in the fields yet and nobody would have minded his usin' one of the mules and they're gentle enough to be rode. No, I reckon it wasn't Jason.”

Shelley saw the futility of arguing with Aunt Hettie, and hid her amusement, affectionate and gentle as it was, at the knowledge that Aunt Hettie was not too sure that some visitor from another world had not been abroad on Blue Belle the night before.

“Well, for a quiet place like Harbour Pines, apparently there was rather a lot going on last night,” she said lightly. “I had a—well, I scarcely know how to describe it. But under the influence of the devil riding Blue Belle, maybe I can just say ‘a ghostly visitant.' ”

“Land of Goshen, child, what are you talking about?”

Aunt Hettie was startled, and there was a wary look in her kind, twinkling eyes as she listened to Shelley's spirited account of her experience of the previous night. And Shelley was startled to see that some of Aunt Hettie's fresh, vigorous color had faded by the time she had finished.

“My saints above!” whispered Aunt Hettie. “Then the yarns folks have been tellin' about this place bein' ha'nted are so!”