The Shining Heart

By Sibyl Spande Bowen

(Previous chapter)

Chapter Nine

Robert Lathrop hurried into the Alaska house and started a fire in the rock fireplace before he took off his coat. These Northwest summers! Chill a man to the marrow! He had better have taken the nervous breakdown to the California deserts where he could bake to his heart’s content, as his mother ad advised. Then he wouldn’t be in this affair – and he’d never have heard of Nell Carey, with her red hair, her tantalizing eyes.

Rob laughed. He wondered what had been in his mind before he saw the girl, because she most certainly filled it – every corner of it – now. It must have been there, his love for Nell, since the first day he saw her coming through the corn, the sun in her bright hair, indignation flashing from her eyes like points of light on deep Sound water. The brave darling, shouldering the weight of the whole moldering place, Miss Brill’s illness – and still finding the will to paint in spite of it all.

Rob threw his coat upon one of the numerous chests that flanked the room, and in the so-doing tumbled a smaller one that rested upon it to the floor. Its patchwork cover slid off; it lay sideways, its lid open, its carved Chinese depth disgorging a musty assortment.

Rob set the old chest upright and began to put the trinkets back – some little bone idols, bits of Indian beadwork, an old doll with elaborate pink silk skirts and staring lack eyes, carefully wrapped in old linen. Women cherished old dolls. Just why, a man couldn’t say, but they all kept them.

And then he found it! Carefully wrapped in yellowed tissue paper tied with a bit of ribbon, its heart shape shining through the thin covering, was this bit of fate Miss Brill had uttered about in her illness – that which she had haltingly told Rob about. But she’d forgotten where she had hidden it. Of all the Chinese chests Rob had rummaged through, nobody had thought to disturb this little one, this baby chest of all Tom Carey’s collection. Flinging the scrambled pile of things on the floor into the chest, Rob grabbed his coat and hat and ran out.

A furious wind lashed the trees and shrubs back and forth in the darkened air. The deep boom of breakers pounding the beach kept time to the hoarse croak of foghorns out on the almost invisible Sound. Rob lowered his head and ran to the gray house. About to knock, he stopped short. Inside he could hear Miss Brill laughing uproariously, out of all reason. He pushed the door open and rushed in.

Miss Brill was in her wheel chair near the glowing kitchen fire, wiping the tears from her laughter-wet eyes and clutching a newspaper in her hands. She saw the open-mouthed Rob and thrust the paper at him.

“It’s Fred,” she gasped, “and Twilly.”

Rob glanced at the county paper. On the back page was a news cut of a lanky young lady in breeches smiling up at the frowning, be-sweatered Fred. The couple was standing, significantly enough, outside the courthouse. “Young Poultry Growers to Wed,” the caption read.

“I never knew a girl could look so silly in breeches,” Miss Brill chuckled. “I’m going to send that girl a wedding present.”

“But Nell loves the fellow,” Rob cried indignantly.

Miss Brill gave him a sidelong look. “Not at all. This may hurt her pride a bit, but not her heart. Fred was purely a matter of habit with her, and I don’t believe in such marriages.”

But Rob wasn’t so sure, in spite of the pounding of his heart. “Has Nell seen this?”

“I don’t know. Mary Kelly saw Nell down at the post office, and she had a paper. Nell ought to be here now. I can’t understand why she isn’t here. It’s going to rain any minute, and there she is out in her good blue dress and no raincoat.”

“I’ll drive down the road and pick her up,” Rob offered, and at the door he remembered his errand.

“I’ve found it,” he called back, “but we’ll talk about it when I get back.”

“Found what?”

“Nell’s heart.” Rob had the door open against the buffeting wind.

“Well,” retorted Miss Brill cryptically, “it’s about time.”

“Now what,” the young man thought, “did she mean by that?”

Large drops of furious rain were already flattening in spatters on the highway. Rob drove slowly, scanning the landscape to the turn of the road, but no Nell was in sight. On past the wooded Oakwood estate he drove and by the grassy paddock where the Maddox horses huddled at the gate, wanting the shelter of the stable. Someone was hurrying along the distant beach path. It was Nell, shielding her head against the storm with a newspaper.

Rob parked his car beside the road, grabbed the raincoat and ran through the paddock. The rain was lashing down in sheets now, and Rob stumbled over the stile into the beach path only to find it empty. Nell had vanished. He was exhausted by his run against the storm, and for a moment the emptiness of the landscape angered him all out of reason. He sagged against the stile and looked about. Just as he had decided to return to the car, he saw her.

White against the slate gray of sky and water, and nestled in a tangle of blackberry thorn, was the Maddox beach pavilion pillared and open on all sides. Huddled on the floor of the small place was Nell, her face buried in a crumpled newspaper.

“And that’s how she feels about that bird Fred,” Rob said bitterly. His fingers found the package in his pocket, and he smiled a tight smile without mirth.

Rain had lashed into the open pavilion with saturating thoroughness, but the spot Nell had sought was dry. Rob went to it and stood there mopping water from his face with his handkerchief. “Something tells me this is all wrong,” he said with forced lightness. “I was supposed to keep you from getting wet, and look at me.” He indicated Nell’s comparative state of dryness and his own soaking condition.

Nell was not diverted. She sobbed quietly into the papers and declined to be concerned. Rob shrugged. Just how did a man go about comforting the girl he loved for the defection of the other man? He found a bench, dragged it into the dry center spot and sat down.

“See here,” he said, “Fred’s not the only man in the world, and eighteen’s not too old to start looking for another one.”

“Nineteen,” corrected Nell damply, lifting her head, “yesterday.”

“Why,” cried Rob, “didn’t someone tell me. I’m an expert at birthdays. Anyway, there’s no use mourning. We’ll go into town tonight and have dinner and a show. That’ll show young Fred you aren’t heart-broken.”

Nell got up and dusted herself off. “Just what are you talking about?” she inquired coldly.

It was Rob’s turn to be nettled. “You’re crying, aren’t you? And you’ve just read about Fred’s wedding plans? Girls make me sick. Go out of your way to sympathize with them and what do you get?”

“Find out first what to sympathize about,” Nell retorted. She dabbed at her eyes with a soggy handkerchief. “Then you might get somewhere. Yes, I’m crying, and yes, I know Fred’s going to marry Twilly; but there’s no connection. I’m glad he is – so glad I could jump for joy. This,” she choked, thrusting the paper at Rob, “is it.”

The art contest! Across the top of the page were the winning paintings. Nell’s was not there.

“Don’t take it too hard,” Rob urged reasonably. “After all, one of so many entries, it would be sort of a miracle if a girl like you, almost without training, should win a prize.”

“But I did win,” said Nell. “If you’d read about it you’d see. I didn’t get first, or even second place, but I am third.”

Rob leaped up. “Why girl, that’s marvelous! I take it all back. You’ve got more than talent. Third place against that mob, and you cry about it!”

“Yes,” Nell told him, “they’ve decided to send the third place winner down to that art colony on the beach in California, and I won’t leave Aunt Brill. Oh, if I could only take her along! As it is, I might just as well have lost out. I’d feel happier, really.”

Rob stared at her. “That settles it, Sally Delavan gets the works,” he said firmly, “then you can take Miss Brill with you. I’ll have no more pity on our fine lady.”

Nell looked at him warily. “You haven’t by any chance lost your mind?” she asked. “Just what has Miss Delavan to do with me?”

“Plenty,” Rob told her. He took the small package from his pocket and tore away the wrappings. It lay in his palm, the trinket, a heart entirely covered with small diamonds.

“I know,” cried Nell, “that’s the shining heart.”

“You’ve seen it before? Then you know what’s in it.”

“No,” said Nell, “but Aunt Brill talked about it. I thought she was delirious.”

Swiftly Rob opened the large locket with his penknife and handed it to Nell. “Those,”he said, “are your parents.”

Silently Nell studied the two tinted miniatures. “He has red hair, too,” was all she could say. The enormous fact of finding her parents had dazed her.

“He was Frank Delavan, Sally’s brother,” Rob told her. “Your mother was French – a little nurse at the hospital where Frank was a shattered war invalid. But she’s dead, too, of course. It was like this –” and with Nell’s hand in his own, Rob told her the story.

“And of course,” he said, touching the jeweled locket, “this clinches my evidence. A dozen orphans may be running around with your baby shirts on, but you can bet my life they didn’t have Frank’s picture tangled up in them. I remember the fuss they made when this gadget showed up missing. It’s worth money, you know, and Sally hunted for the thing for weeks; so she can’t deny whose it is. And it’s my guess that after you’ve worked your wily way with her she won’t want to. I think even Sally of the hard heart will soon be eating out of your hand.”

Nell fingered the locket. “Everything changed by the shining heart,” she said. “It’s sort of a magic talisman.” To Rob’s amazement, she did not seem particularly happy over it.

“By your shining heart,” he muttered, almost to himself.

“It means,” whispered Nell, “that with all that money we’ll go away where Aunt Brill can be in the sun and get better – where I can study. Rob,” she cried suddenly, “what will you do?”

He flushed, caught off his guard. “I – why, I’ve just been choking over a large piece of humble pie. Your earnest little soul will be delighted to know that I’m going back to dad’s office. He’s going to let me design old ladies’ kitchens and corner cupboards. Now aren’t you satisfied?”

“No!” she said, and abruptly she ran out of the pavilion.

And suddenly it dawned upon the young man. He ran after her. “Nell! Wait a minute, darling.” He called recklessly, “Nell, do you love me?”

She didn’t turn, but hurried on through the diminishing rain. “Of course I do. Everybody but you knows it. Even Fred had the sense to see how it was” – indignantly.

And then he did catch her, breathlessly, into his wet tweed arms. ‘I’ve been such a mole, such a blind bat, darling; but I never dreamed –”

“Rob, Rob, you’ll make me lose the shining heart –”

“No, sweet, never again – not that one, nor yours, nor mine.”

Nell murmured, “We’re being selfish, Rob. Let’s hurry and tell Aunt Brill about it – and us –”

And they hurried up the path to the old house where lights already challenged the lowering night.

(The End)