A Candle in Her Heart Read online

  A CANDLE IN

  HER HEART

  Emilie Loring

  © Emilie Loring 1964

  Emilie Loring has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1964 by Little, Brown and Company.

  This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Note: The names of all characters in this novel are fictitious.

  If the name of any living person has been used it is coincidence.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  1

  “How much longer,” the man asked impatiently, “is this to go on?”

  Dr. John Forsyth studied his patient. There was a faintly Mephistophelean cast to the famous doctor’s features, emphasized by the small pointed beard, the triangular peak of black eyebrows. At the moment, a sardonic look of amusement on his face increased the impression.

  He got to his feet. “It’s over—as of now. I’ve done my best for you.” With a swift gesture, like a conjurer, he flung open the two folding sides of a full-length mirror and stood back.

  “Well, how do you like yourself, Donald Shaw?”

  The patient stood up slowly, as though bracing himself for a shock. “Donald Shaw,” he said in a thoughtful tone. “I’ve got to get used to that. It—”

  He caught sight of the man in the mirror and broke off sharply. The man in the mirror repeated his involuntary step backward, stared at him with shocked, unbelieving eyes. He was a tall man in his early thirties, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, with thick dark hair cut very short and neatly parted on one side. There were unexpected patches of white above his ears. Startled gray eyes looked back from a thin face. A resolute chin was balanced by the sensitivity of the mouth. It would have been a singularly handsome face if it had not looked so grim.

  When at last he spoke his voice was shaken. “I look like a man who has just climbed out of hell.”

  “That’s about what you have done,” Dr. Forsyth told him, his tone so matter-of-fact that his patient relaxed, though he still continued to stare in incredulous fascination at his own face.

  “I’ll be lucky if I don’t scare small children into nightmares,” he said, trying to laugh.

  “When you stop feeling grim you’ll stop looking grim,” the doctor said. “After all, this was your own idea, you know. You brought it on yourself. It’s rather late in the day to find that you have any regrets.”

  “No,” the man called Shaw said quietly. “No regrets.”

  “Take it all in all,” Forsyth said, “you could get by anywhere without arousing any comment, any question, except—”

  “Well?”

  “There are, of course, a lot of—signs of what has happened to you. I think you’d be wise to keep out of strong sunlight and I’d advise you not to go swimming, unless you can prepare yourself with a convincing story.”

  Shaw turned away from the mirror as though dismissing his image from his mind. He held out his hand. “Doctor, I can’t begin to tell you—”

  “There’s no need,” Forsyth assured him as they shook hands. “It has been a most interesting and rewarding experiment for me. The important thing now is, how much money do you have left?”

  Shaw grinned at him. “Enough.”

  “Of course, you’ll let me help when you run short.”

  Shaw held up his hand in protest. “No,” he said firmly. “You’ve done enough. No one else could have done or would have attempted to do a tenth of what you have done for me.” The sensitive mouth twisted in a grimace. “There must have been many times during this interminable ordeal when you wondered whether there was any point in going on.”

  The doctor’s eyes were on his patient’s face. “Is that the way you felt about it?”

  “At first, yes. It seemed so hopeless. But when I stopped feeling sorry for myself I began to realize what you were doing for me. After that, the struggle was worthwhile. The fact that there were people like you made it worthwhile.”

  Dr. Forsyth hastily dismissed any discussion of the assistance he had given the young man.

  “Nearly anyone,” he said, “would have regarded it as the inadequate payment of a great debt. In any case, that’s the past. Let’s forget it. What counts is the future. How do you expect to live if you stick to this insane idea of yours?”

  Shaw reached for his wallet, pulled out a small newspaper clipping. It was an advertisement for experimental chemists to work at the Clayton Textile Company at Claytonville, Connecticut.

  Dr. Forsyth read it slowly, returned it. “Isn’t that rather risky?”

  For the first time Shaw smiled, an engaging smile that lighted the grim face, that made the man likable and irresistibly attractive. “I’ve taken other risks.”

  “God knows you have!” the doctor said fervently. He added, “I wish I knew what you are up to, why you are doing this.”

  The younger man made no reply. He sat on the edge of the desk, lighting a cigarette, his gray eyes, which were so warm when he smiled, now cold and bleak.

  “From the beginning,” the doctor protested, his face troubled, “I have been opposed to the whole idea. I don’t know why I ever let you talk me into it. But you were so determined and, what with one thing and another, I didn’t want to argue about it.”

  “One thing and another!” Shaw laughed softly. “Well, I must get busy now.”

  “At least, tell me what you plan to do, beyond going to Douglas Clayton’s home town and trying to land a job in his company.”

  “Douglas Clayton is dead,” Shaw said quietly. “He died in Korea years ago. And his—”

  “By the way,” Forsyth interrupted, “did you ever see an old documentary war film of the Tower Heights offensive?”

  “No!” Shaw was startled.

  “It might interest you. I noticed in the morning’s paper that it is being shown at that old-film theater on Fiftieth Street. Last time Clayton was ever seen alive. His stature as a hero has grown so much over the years that the film is being shown again by popular demand.”

  “Well, I’ll be darned. I’ll see it this afternoon.”

  “And after that?” the doctor persisted.

  “After that—well, I’ve applied for that chemist’s job. There’s a reason for it. The chief thing is that I’d like to see how sound the company is, how it is being handled.”

  “You’re holding out on me,” the doctor accused him. When Shaw made no reply, Forsyth said slowly, “I don’t know much about the outfit. Of course, Corliss Blake inherited it when Douglas Clayton was missing, presumed dead, in Korea. So far as I know, he’s a good man. He’s not a chemist, and he was such a distant relation, third or fourth cousin, I think, and so much older than Clayton, that he never expected to inherit.”

  “What else do you know about him?”

  “His wife—his first wife, that is—died when his only child, a daughter named Leslie, was born. The story is that he never got over it. He remarried, about a year later.”

  “Then what do you mean, he never got over it?” Shaw asked in amusement.

  “Well, the second marriage, as far as I can make out, wasn’t a love match. Not by a long shot. Agatha Winslow. Tremendously wealthy woman.”

  “Oh.” Shaw was thoughtfully silent.
r />   “Blake may have had his eye on her money but he seems to be running the Clayton plant all right.” Forsyth was answering Shaw’s tone, the speculation in his voice. “He’s honest enough, so far as I’ve learned. I’ve heard rumors that they are working on a new kind of textile, a secret formula, revolutionary by all reports. They might be on to something big. I don’t know.”

  The doctor studied the younger man’s brooding expression. “I wish,” he began abruptly. Stopped. He added casually, though it wasn’t what he had started to say, “By the way, the girl Douglas Clayton was engaged to at the time of his death is still living in Claytonville. She married a local man named Williams. John Williams. Well-heeled but considerably older than she was. He died a couple of years ago. She has a son Jack, nine years old.”

  “Nine years. Apparently she didn’t mourn Clayton very long.” Shaw went to the window and stood looking out on Park Avenue. He spoke without turning around. “Spring loses its magic in New York. It will be good to live in the country for a change.”

  “Perhaps that is what you need,” Dr. Forsyth told him. “A little spring magic.”

  “That comes only once,” Shaw said quietly.

  “Nonsense!” The doctor addressed Shaw’s back, his voice brisk and professional. “It comes every year. But you have to know how to recognize it, how to welcome it.”

  Shaw turned around. To the doctor’s relief, he was smiling. “You’re a very wise man.” He laid his hand lightly on the doctor’s shoulder, then turned toward the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  Shaw grinned at him. “I’m going to look for spring,” he said, flipped his hand in a gay little salute and went out of the office, closing the door firmly behind him.

  * * *

  Even in the heart of Manhattan there were hints of early summer. Shaw strode rapidly along Park Avenue, turned west and waited for a green light so he could cross the street. Men were carrying their topcoats over their arms, women had changed from dark winter clothing to light dresses, and sauntered, pausing to look at the shop windows. Tufts of cloud scudded across a deep blue sky.

  Shaw walked to Fifth Avenue and into Central Park. Small boys wobbled past uncertainly on bicycles or sprawled on the grass. Children, he thought, knew how to welcome the coming of summer, knew how to respond to it.

  On benches in the sun a couple of elderly men read newspapers and rejoiced in the beneficent season’s warmth. A middle-aged woman was feeding squirrels from a bag of peanuts. When they had whisked off with the peanuts stuffed in their cheeks, she sat in placid contentment, watching the slow progress of the man with the balloons, the dazzling reflections of the sun on the higher windows of apartment buildings on Central Park West.

  A young couple strolled along the path, their arms around each other, as isolated as though they were on a desert island. For them life was at its radiant beginning. Watching them, Donald Shaw was aware of loneliness. It was as though a black cloud had covered the sun even while it continued to shine as brightly as before, casting its light and its warmth on everything but the tall man who walked alone under the trees with their shiny new leaves.

  Like a man in flight, trying to escape from himself, Shaw took the first path that would lead him back to Fifth Avenue, back to the safe anonymity of a great city. Far downtown he could see the shining tower of the Empire State Building, and, closer to him, the great shafts of Rockefeller Center reaching up into the sky. Beside him there was the ceaseless roar and movement of traffic, buses, taxis, every possible variety of car from tiny Volkswagens to long sleek chauffeur-driven Lincolns and Rolls-Royces.

  As he continued to walk south, with no particular destination in mind, he left the park behind, and passed the shop windows below Fifty-ninth Street. Deep in his thoughts, he was unaware of the people who turned for a second look at him. Men observed enviously his lithe carriage, the proud bearing of his head, the unstressed authority he wore like a coat, and thought he must be someone of importance. Women’s eyes lingered wistfully on his face, wondering who he was.

  Through his absorption in his thoughts there crept an increasing awareness that he was tired. He had been walking for more than two hours. How long was it, he wondered, since he had walked so far? But this, at least, was healthy fatigue. Tonight, he might be able to sleep soundly, to sleep without nightmares.

  He had to rest. No point in overdoing it on his first day of real freedom. He looked at a street sign. He was at Fiftieth Street. His hesitation was only momentary. After all, why not? He had to admit to himself that he was curious. He turned west, looking for the movie theater. He saw the sign: The Tower Heights Offensive. He bought a ticket and went inside.

  The theater was small, only one floor. Now, in the late afternoon, it was nearly empty. Even before he looked at the screen he heard the sounds of battle, the rattle of machine-gun fire, the long scream and explosion of a shell. Instinctively, he ducked, and then grinned wryly to himself.

  The screen was gray. It was hard to distinguish what was going on in the dim light. Little by little, he could make out American Infantry moving cautiously across a plain. It was halted by fire from the Heights. Suddenly, through a silver mist of dust, a man emerged, a tall man, haggard, with sunken eyes.

  He turned, shouting, his revolver in his hand. He was pushing his way among the men. He was out of sight. Then he emerged again, alone now, moving up the side of the hill. There was a barrage of fire and he dropped. Then he was moving again, crawling, clawing his way up the hill toward the hidden machine-gun nest.

  The troops in the foreground were scattering, trying to escape the relentless fire from the enemy over the crest of the hill. The crawling man was nearly at the top now, taking advantage of every rock, every bit of cover he could find. Beside him there was an explosion. The ground seemed to blow apart. For a moment dust concealed him. No, he was moving again. One hand groped around, found a rock, pulled feebly. Stopped. Tried again. Inch by inch, he dragged himself, always moving toward the enemy. A final pull. He was over the crest. Out of sight.

  There were shots. A strange silence. Nothing moved. Then a cheer rocked the troops in the foreground, they rallied, began a concerted rush up the side of the hill.

  The screen was suddenly blank and white. The small audience stirred, women powdered their noses and gathered up their packages. Men reached for cigarettes, prepared to light up in the lobby.

  Donald Shaw went slowly up the aisle, and out onto the street. Twilight had fallen. There was a red glow in the west. New York was a blaze of light. For a moment, Shaw paused uncertainly until he became aware that impatient, hurrying New Yorkers were bumping into him, shoving past him. He walked to the curb and hailed a passing cab.

  “Grand Central Station,” he said.

  It was still commuting time when he reached the station. He stood at the top of the wide flight of stairs on the Vanderbilt Avenue side, looking at the mammoth lighted advertising signs and at the scurrying throngs below who were racing for the various tracks, at the lines formed at a dozen ticket windows, at redcaps weighted down under suitcases or pushing handtrucks piled high with luggage.

  He made his way through the crowds to a ticket window, bought a ticket to Claytonville, Connecticut.

  “Round trip?” the ticket agent asked without looking at the purchaser.

  “One way.” Donald Shaw pocketed the ticket and his change with an oddly excited feeling of finality. There was to be no turning back now.

  “Next train in an hour and a half,” he was told. “You just missed one.”

  An hour and a half. Now what? Dinner, perhaps? Shaw paused to consider, ran the fingers of his left hand through his hair, a gesture so automatic that he had become unconscious of it. He had been dimly aware that behind him two girls were chattering eagerly. One of them gasped, whispered.

  Unexpectedly, a hand touched his arm, a girl cried out on a note of incredulous delight: “Douglas Clayton!”

  He wheeled around. The girl, no
hat on her short copper curls, big brown eyes wide with shock, dropped her hand as though she had burned it on his sleeve.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. “My mistake.”

  She backed away from him uncertainly, the warm color sweeping in a tide over her face.

  As the two girls walked quickly toward the information desk, he stood looking after them. He tried to light a cigarette and discovered that his hands were shaking.

  2

  Leslie Blake opened her eyes, saw the sunlight in a wide golden path across the carpet, and got out of bed. She thrust small feet into satin mules the color of Killarney roses at their deepest, threw a filmy negligee of a slightly warmer hue over her shoulders, and went to look out of the window and welcome the morning.

  She drew a long breath. The air was spicy with the wet breath of firs and balsams. The glistening stepping stones of a prim path led from the warm red brick of the house to an opening in a hedge flushed with rhododendrons, dripping with snowy bridal wreath, fragrant with waxy syringa. On the smooth emerald of the lawn a robin strutted haughtily, looked round him in disdain, and lifted his voice in his morning chant. Pines and spruce towered against a sunwashed sky. The lawn sloped down to the river, sparkling in the sun, with a thousand spangles dancing on it.

  The only flaw in the scene was a battered-up old barge, moored to heavy stakes on the bank. Leslie made a face at it.

  “Your days are numbered. Sometime I’ll get rid of you, you old eyesore, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  She dressed in pale green, brushed the soft curls until there were splinters of copper light in them, and ran down the stairs. Her father and stepmother were already in the breakfast room, and the glow faded from the girl’s face as she heard her stepmother laying down the law as usual in a long monologue, punctuated at intervals by a monosyllabic comment from her patient husband.

  Corliss Blake didn’t, Leslie thought, look like the kind of man who could be bossed by women. He was heavyset, his brown hair lightly streaked with gray. Shaggy brows hung over his eyes like thatch from the edge of a country roof. A Roman nose and a jutting chin gave his face a touch of belligerence.