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!”
“Oh, now, Aunt Hettie, that’s nonsense and you know it!” Shelley scolded her lightly. “Either my imagination tricked me, or somebody, perhaps a youngster, is playing a practical joke on me. You and I don’t believe in ghosts!”
“Well, I dunno. I’ve seen a sight of funny things in my time. O’ course I couldn’t just rightly say they was ghosts. But I couldn’t rightly say they wasn’t, neither! All I could rightly say is—I dunno what they was!”
She was silent for a moment while Shelley stared at her. And then she nodded wisely.
“Well, I reckon if there was any place in the world that has a right to be ha’nted, this could be it. I reckon maybe Callie Newton was happier here than anywhere in the world and I reckon she was more miserable here than ’most any place, later on. Likely she walks o’ nights.”
Before she could check the words Shelley cried out hotly, “It wasn’t Callie Newton. Don’t you think I’d have known?”
There was a tiny tense silence, while the color left Shelley’s face and she could not quite meet Aunt Hettie’s kind eyes.
“You knew ’em, didn’t you, Shelley? The Newtons?” she asked at last very quietly.
Shelley sat very still for a moment and then she lifted her chin defiantly, her eyes cold and wary.
“Yes,” she admitted curtly.
Aunt Hettie nodded, satisfied.
“Well, I reckon that explains a lot I ain’t had no business to think about but that’s been worryin’ me,” she said mildly. “Why you come here and bought the paper. Or more likely you ‘hired’ it from the Newtons?”
Shelley turned her face away and made an effort to steady her voice.
“No. Mrs. Newton mortgaged the plant and the house and everything to hire lawyers. I bought the plant and the house from the bank that held the mortgage,” she explained briefly.
Aunt Hettie sat very still, studying the pale, averted face, the shining soft hair, and then she nodded to herself with a satisfaction that was gentle and inoffensive.
“I reckon I’m so plumb stupid that I never seen the ‘favor’ before,” she observed. “You take a lot after your paw, more than you do after your maw. She was a mighty pretty woman and your paw was a fine-looking man. You wasn’t much more’n a baby last time I saw you, after it all happened. But I can see now you got a heap o’ the Newtons about you.”
Shelley had sat rigid as Aunt Hettie’s gentle old voice went on, and when at last Aunt Hettie was still, she made a gesture of resignation.
“I was a fool to think I could get away with it, even after fifteen years. To come here and keep my identity a secret—” she admitted wearily.
“Why can’t you?” demanded Aunt Hettie.
Shelley caught her breath.
“You mean you won’t tell?” she whispered, incredulous.
Aunt Hettie snorted and her color rose.
“I been accused of a sight of things in my time, but gossipin and tale-bearin’ ain’t among ’em. Far’s I’m concerned you’re Shelley Kimbrough right on, and the only way I ever heard you tell ’bout the Newtons is when you bought up the mortgage on this place.”
Shelley’s pallor had faded into a soft pink and her mouth was tremulous as she smiled, her shining eyes mirroring her gratitude.
“Thank you, Aunt Hettie,” she said unsteadily.
“For what? For mindin’ my own busness?” Aunt Hettie snorted again. “Shucks, I’ve been doin’ that for more’n sixty years. I aim to keep right on doin’ it, too. I was always taught it was a right sensible thing to do. Longer I live, the more sure I am it’s the truth, too.”
Shelley blinked and put out her hand and squeezed Aunt Hettie’s work-roughened one where it lay in her lap. Aunt Hettie patted Shelley’s hand and smiled warmly at the girl.
“You’re a right nice girl, Shelley, and a mighty sweet one. I reckon you’ve got your own reasons for wantin’ to come back here.”
“That’s pretty obvious, don’t you think?” Shelley flashed. “I’m going to find out what really happened, fifteen years ago, and clear my father’s name. He didn’t steal that money, Aunt Hettie. Mother knew it—and I’m going to prove it.”
Aunt Hettie was silent for a moment and then she sighed.
“Well, to tell you the truth, Shelley, I don’t think many people ever really believed that he did, even with the case them lawyers was able to build up against him,” she admitted at last. “Folks always thought the whole thing was mighty peculiar. Nobody believed Hastings Newton was a thief. But after all, he was seen lurking ’round the bank mighty late at night and the money was found here in the shop.”
Shelley sat very still, her hands locked tightly together. Aunt Hettie watched her and sighed.
“Some folks said it was like in the movies, that he was being ‘framed.’ That somebody else took the money and throwed the blame on him. Though why anybody’d go to the trouble o’ stealin’ the money and then not even get the spendin’ of it seemed right queer.”
Still Shelley did not speak, just waited.
“There was some talk,” Aunt Hettie went on hesitantly, “that there was a woman mixed up in it somewhere.”
“That’s not true! My mother and father were devoted to each other. My father adored her. He couldn’t have been interested in another woman. That’s ridiculous. It’s indecent. I won’t believe it.”
“Well, now, I don’t reckon it was true. I’ve seen ’em together, Hastings and Callie. If ever there was two people that was plumb crazy about each other, seems to me it was them two. It just done your heart good to be with ’em.”
Shelley smiled through her tears. Aunt Hettie leaned forward and laid her hand on Shelley’s and spoke softly and earnestly.
“Be careful, Shelley, be mighty careful. I dunno why I say that, but it’s just that after all these years, for you to come back here and start stirring up old troubles, old hates, living under a false name—”
“But it’s not a false name, Aunt Hettie. After my mother died, I was legally adopted by a close friend of hers, a Mrs. Kimbrough who was a widow, with no children of her own. I really am legally Shelley Kimbrough.”
“Well, now, I’m plumb glad you’ve a right to the name you are using.”
“It’s the way Mother wanted it.”
“O’ course—I can see that. Poor Callie. And poor Hastings! I liked ’em both a whole lot.”
“Thanks, Aunt Hettie.”
“Shelley honey, ‘course I know how you feel about wantin’ to clear your paw’s name and all that, but it looks to me like you’re makin’ yourself miserable and maybe runnin’ a dangerous risk stirring up things that had better be let lay,” said Aunt Hettie gravely. “Most folks ’cept right around here in Harbour Pines has most likely forgot the whole story. And most o’ them that remembers feels like Hastings got a mighty raw deal. After all, what good can it do now, after fifteen years, to open it all up again?”
“I promised Mother,” said Shelley stubbornly.
Aunt Hettie sighed and yielded.
“Well, I reckon it’s no use me sayin’ any more, Shelley. Except, o’ course, I’ll do anything I can to help you any way I can.”
“Thanks, Aunt Hettie—you’re sweet.”
“Aw, shucks,” said Aunt Hettie, greatly embarrassed.